This English version may have been machine-generated from the Chinese original and may not convey the original meaning accurately.
Pastor Wang Sanyuan, 73, a Jinan pastor suffering from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, was taken away by police on March 17 and his whereabouts remain unknown to this day. His family has received no notification and does not know the reason. According to reports, sources among church members say that "since he went in, nothing has been found to be wrong so far," and they can only pin their hopes on prayer. What gives public authority the right to silently take away and keep disappeared for a long time such an elderly man in his seventies, frail and beset by illness, without offering any legal justification whatsoever?
What is thought-provoking is that the Changchun Lane Church is not an "underground" house church, but a registered church under official administration—a Three-Self church that is supposed to exemplify "compliant" religious activity within the system. Pastor Jin's analysis suggests that this arrest is related to a dispute over church property more than a decade ago, when the church successfully resisted demolition—this is a case of "settling old scores." If this analysis holds true, it means that even the most docile and cooperative religious organizations within the system can, at any time, have old accounts reopened and settled against them, so long as there exists any record of past "disobedience." This reveals a brutal logic: so-called "legal registration" and "Three-Self patriotism" have never been a talisman of protection—the only real talisman is absolute obedience.
What deserves further inquiry is this: a citizen (even an elderly patient with serious illness) has been taken away by police for nearly five months, and yet his family cannot obtain even a single official explanation—this would be unthinkable in any society governed by the rule of law. What is the reason for the arrest? Where is he being detained? What legal procedures have been followed? What avenues for appeal or relief exist? The answer is: all blank. This is not an oversight in an individual case, but an institutional norm—the police can restrict a citizen's freedom without notification and without accountability, because in this system, police power towers above the judiciary, and the judiciary is in turn subordinate to Party leadership, with no independent institution capable of saying "no" to power. The family's experience of having "nowhere to file a complaint, no path forward" is precisely the starkest portrait of unchecked power and a judiciary lacking independence.
Looking deeper still, this incident reflects the essential nature of the entire religious management system: regardless of whether a church is registered or "compliant," the ultimate standard of judgment has never been the law, but rather whether one submits to the will of the Party. Behind policy rhetoric such as "sinicization of religion" and "Party leadership" lies the transformation of the freedom of religious belief promised by the constitution into a kind of favor that can be revoked at any moment. Today it is possible to suppress unregistered house churches; tomorrow it is equally possible to settle scores with registered Three-Self churches, because power itself has no boundaries and no force to counterbalance it.
The reason such cases keep repeating themselves in China—from house churches to Three-Self churches, from rights-defense lawyers to ordinary believers—lies not in the conduct of some particular local official, but in the structural flaw of one-party rule, under which power is not authorized through democratic elections, is not subject to independent judicial oversight, and is not exposed through press freedom. Without separation of powers, police authority can act with impunity; without judicial independence, citizens have nowhere to seek redress; without freedom of speech and the press, the truth can only be conveyed through overseas media and word of mouth.
Only by establishing a constitutional democratic system, achieving the separation and balance of powers, ensuring that the judiciary is independent of Party authority, and guaranteeing citizens' genuine freedom of religious belief and speech, can tragedies like the "disappearance" of Pastor Wang Sanyuan be fundamentally eradicated. A person's faith, dignity, and personal freedom should not depend on whether he is "obedient," but should instead receive equal protection under the constitution and the law—this is precisely the most essential dividing line between constitutional civilization and authoritarian rule.
News background: The original report on which this commentary is based can be found at Radio Free Asia Mandarin.