BY  :  Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor 

Liu Zhenbin, a pastor detained in China amid a crackdown on his unregistered congregation, says a prosecutor invoked his young children in an attempt to press him into a confession.

He made the claim in a letter he sent while in detention, according to the U.S.-based advocacy group ChinaAid, which tracks religious persecution in China.

Citing people close to the case, Liu wrote that a prosecutor in Beihai, a city in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, warned him to think about his children while pursuing a confession.

The prosecutor told him, “Your children are still very young. You need to consider them.”

Liu said the remark left him deeply pained, since he wants to see his children grow up.

The charges he’s facing, Liu said, were designed to intimidate the house church movement nationwide, discouraging future pastors and pressuring detainees to give up under threat of prosecution.

Rights groups and legal observers have raised objections over how Chinese authorities are handling the case, questioning both the due process followed and the basis for the charges.

Under Chinese law, using family members as leverage to obtain a confession would violate rules governing lawful evidence collection.

Liu’s relatives say prison officials have limited his mail privileges, blocking letters, photos and books they have tried to send him.

Born in the 1980s, Liu holds a master’s degree from Taiyuan University of Technology, in China’s Shanxi Province, and became a full-time minister in 2016.

He went on to serve at Beijing Zion Church, leading its congregation in the coastal city of Qingdao. He and his wife are raising three young children.

Beijing Zion Church never joined the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the government-controlled body that oversees officially sanctioned Protestant congregations in China. Church leaders have said formal registration would undermine the congregation’s independence.

Chinese authorities forced the church to close in 2018. Services moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the congregation grew.

Authorities began a nationwide sweep against Zion Church on Oct. 9, 2025, questioning or detaining about 30 pastors and members of the congregation. Two days later, officers took Liu from his residence in Qingdao and seized his belongings, church supporters reported.

Investigators held Liu for months before revising the initial accusation of illegal use of information networks. They replaced it with two heavier charges, illegal business operations and fraud.

Eight leaders and workers from the church remain in custody, among them Liu, Wang Lin, Gao Yingjia, Yin Huibin, Lin Shucheng, Wang Cong, Wang Zhong and Wu Qiuyu.

Ezra Jin Mingri, the church’s senior pastor, spent nine months in detention before authorities released him. He entered the United States on July 4, after diplomatic contacts between Chinese and American officials led to his release.

Jin, 56, spent 266 days in detention before his release. It marked his first reunion with his family in eight years, arriving just before the 250th anniversary of American independence. Roughly two months earlier, President Donald Trump had raised Jin’s case directly with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, during a meeting in Beijing.

Jin said he will not stop advocating until the eight remaining detainees go free. He said they are packed into small cells and sleep on the floor in intense heat.

China launched a Sinicization campaign in 2015, requiring religious and ethnic minorities to place loyalty to the Communist Party above their own beliefs, according to The Telegraph.

Three years later, authorities issued a five-year plan targeted at Christians. It ordered sermons censored, church donations monitored, Bible translations supervised, and material on Xi Jinping’s ideology added to seminary training.

ChinaAid founder Bob Fu says China has arrested more than 10,000 people amid its decade-long suppression of Christians. State-sanctioned churches count an estimated 44 million members, while roughly 115 million people belong to unregistered congregations, a total forecast to double before 2030.

Frontline Defenders, an Irish human rights organization, says Chinese authorities revoked the law licenses of at least 30 lawyers who took on politically sensitive cases between 2017 and 2023. Zhang Kai, a lawyer whose firm represented Zion Church members including Jin, lost his license after authorities said he had “disrupted order in the court.”

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