Chinese Christians Leaving China: Abandonment Or Gospel Expansion?

An increasing number of Chinese Christians are leaving China — some as migrants seeking freedom and opportunity. Others as believers carrying a spiritual vision for mission.

During a recent period of ministry in New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore, I witnessed this growing movement of Chinese believers leaving China. In Malaysia, in one meeting which was exclusively for mainland Chinese believers, there were no less than five Chinese pastors who had left China recently. In a major city in New Zealand, two believers came to me after I'd spoken and explained that they had been pastors in a well-known Beijing church which has suffered strong persecution, causing them to leave China. They introduced me to a colleague in a similar situation in Singapore. The leader of that work was at the time in Jordan. 

“Recent analysis of emigration suggests that Christians are over‑represented among new Chinese migrants, with some estimates placing them around 15–20% of those leaving - far higher than their share of China’s population. Urban house‑church believers, including pastors, elders, and ministry leaders, form a visible segment of this wave, relocating to Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa and especially North America.”

The reasons behind this exodus are complex and interwoven with China’s recent political environment.

1. Recent new legislation has made Church life in China more and more difficult. “Heightened religious scrutiny under the current administration has transformed churches—especially unregistered house fellowships—into monitored or dismantled communities. Surveillance technology, limitations on online worship, and the enforcement of “Sinicization” policies (which demand alignment of religious practice with state ideology) have driven many believers to consider life abroad. The narrowing public space for worship and discipleship has made long-term ministry inside China increasingly difficult.” 

Since around 2018 and especially after 2023, the Chinese Communist Party has sharply intensified controls on house churches, including raids, arrests of pastors, and forced closures. Under the campaign of “Sinicization of Christianity,” authorities pressure churches to display Party symbols, promote Party loyalty, and accept tighter ideological oversight, effectively reshaping Christian faith into a tool of state power.

Unapproved (by the Communist government) online teaching is classified as “illegal transmission of religious information.” Most independent livestreams, short‑video sermons and group Bible studies are banned. 30 leaders from the Zion Church Network were simultaneously arrested across six or seven cities in October. The reason given was illegal activity on the web. Eighteen of the pastors face lengthy prison sentences. In December, more than 100 people were detained in Wenzhou in eastern China in a raid on Christian groups.

2. Concern for children and their future prospects. Many Christian parents leave to secure education for their children in environments where they are not required to absorb “Xi Jinping Thought” as a quasi‑ideological faith and where religious belief is not stigmatised. Practical family concerns are pushing believers to seek spiritual and personal breathing space abroad.

3. Economic slowdown and uncertainty further weaken confidence in long‑term prospects in China.

4. But “a growing number of Chinese Christians interpret their migration through a missional lens. Some describe it as a modern form of ‘diaspora mission’—a term used by missiologists to describe how displaced believers can become evangelistic bridges across cultures.” Their relocations to Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa have given rise to vibrant Mandarin-speaking congregations that serve both as spiritual homes for migrants and as launching points for outreach.

Will this migration weaken the church within China? Or will the Chinese church, once viewed as a domestic phenomenon, become a transnational reality? Will the movement be abandonment or mission expansion - the scattered Chinese church writing “a new chapter of God’s redemptive story - one in which exile becomes mission, and migration becomes multiplication?”

Pray for those leaving China, for their steps to be aligned with the will of God.

Pray for those left behind, that they will find sufficient help in their walk with Jesus. 

Pray that many of those leaving China will reach the unreached.