Officials in China’s Eastern Jiangxi Province have replaced religious images dis-played by Christian families with portraits of the country’s leader Xi Jin-ping. On November 12, pictures were uploaded to an account on the popular social messaging service WeChat account of Huangjinbu town government, Yugan County, showing officials removing images of the cross and other religious subjects.
The message from officials stated that the Christians involved had “recognized their mistakes and decided not to entrust to Jesus but to the (Communist) Party” claiming the Christians voluntarily removed 624 religious images and posted 453 portraits of Xi.
The officials also claimed they were “converting” Christ-ians to Party loyalty through poverty alleviation and other schemes to help the disadvant-aged. Nearly 10% of Yugan County’s largely impoverished one million population is Christian.
