1992 - Cui Chaoshu

April 5, 1992

Huize, Yunnan

Huize County is located in the mountainous northeast of Yunnan Province, about 250 km (154 miles) from the provincial capital Kunming. When the religious policy of the government loosened up in the 1980s many Christians who had been worshipping secretly in house meetings decided to apply for registration so they could worship legally and freely. An evangelist named Cui Chaoshu was involved with one such church in Huize. The local authorities, however, refused to look at the application. A complaint even came from a publication sympathetic to the government-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The magazine documented that

“From 1982 to 1992, believers…have been arrested, locked up, cruelly beaten up and fined at will; their houses searched and their properties confiscated…. Moreover, they lock believers up and interrogate them without summons or warrants; they search and confiscate properties without legal documents…. In the past two years, 74 incidents of people being illegally locked up, interrogated and cruelly beaten up occurred.”[1]

Despite the extreme provocations, the Christians in Huize continued to meet together, and with God’s blessing their churches continued to grow in grace and in number. On three consecutive Sundays from March 29th to April 12, 1992, the police prohibited the Christians from gathering together. When the believers still decided to meet together out of obedience to the command in Scripture, the local officials flew into a rage. A Christian in Huize reported,

“Cui Chaoshu was kidnapped from the meeting point of Huani and pounded to death with a thick stick, his nose and mouth were bleeding profusely. A sister of more than 70-years-old was on the spot. She pleaded with the murderers: ‘If you want to kill, kill me. Brother Cui was invited here by me’….

The instruments of torture they use include clubs, firewood, ropes, handcuffs and electrically-charged stun-batons. They cuffed and kicked until these instruments broke.”[2]

The brutal officials at Huize were not deterred by the murder of Cui. They posted notices around the countryside offering rewards for the capture, dead or alive, of two church leaders. For Pastor Wang Jiashui they announced: “Alive: 300 Yuan, Dead: 400 Yuan.” And for evangelist He Chengzhou: “Alive: 150 Yuan, Dead: 200 Yuan.”

Despite these satanically-inspired attacks, the church in Huize continued to grow and propsper. More than 150 new believers were baptized on Easter Sunday, 1992. The persecuted Christians concluded, “We, the church in Huize, issue an urgent call. We appeal to churches everywhere to pray for us and let the Gospel grow and prevail even more in the whole world.”[3]

1. “The Huize Church is Bleeding!” Bridge (No.55, September-October 1992), 14.
2. “The Huize Church is Bleeding!” 14.
3. “The Huize Church is Bleeding!” 14.