According to the South China Morning Post, Christians in China have been visited by government officials and told that to raise their ‘Social Credit Score,’ they needed to replace all religious imagery with portraits of Communist leaders and replace the Holy Bible with Communist quotations. According to the news reports, hundreds of thousands of Chinese Christians are surrendering their Christian paintings and writings to comply with government rating standards.
The so-called Social Credit Score is a nationwide “reputation scoring system” implemented in China in 2014 that has the entire world spooked. By providing a credit score for reputation, the Chinese government is more effectively controlling their populace than by violent force. The system gives scoring based upon social media posts, neighbor opinions, employer records, and stats provided by public utilities. These scores are then used to determine hiring eligibility and social standing in Chinese institutions.
Technology watchdogs have been reporting that America already has a similar system in place, invented by technology firms in Silicon Valley and allegedly shared with the U.S. government. President Trump floated the idea of using just such a system to determine eligibility to own firearms, scaring many conservatives.
The South China Morning Post reports that thousands of Christians in rural southeast China have swapped images of Jesus for President Xi Jinping as part of a local government poverty-relief program that seeks to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party.”
Additionally, a local social media account reported over the weekend that in Yugan’s Huangjinbu township, government officials made visits to poor Christian families to promote the party’s “poverty-relief policies” and convinced them to rid images of Christ and translations of the Bible to make them eligible for such programs. The officials successfully “melted the hard ice in their hearts” and “transformed them from believing in religion to believing in the party.”
Reportedly, over 600 villagers “voluntarily” got rid of the religious texts and paintings and replaced them with 453 portraits of Xi.
Xi, the Chinese president, said, “Many rural people are ignorant. They think God is their saviour … After our cadres’ work, they’ll realise their mistakes and think: we should no longer rely on Jesus, but on the party for help.”
His messaging seems to have worked.
Please pray for our brothers and sisters in China who will not bend their knee to Ba’al…or the Communist Party (same difference).
