Beijing Court Jails House Church Minister for Giving Away Bibles

December 6, 2005

The Beijing Haidian District People's Court found Cai Zhuohua, a Protestant house church leader, Xiao Yunfei, his wife, and Xiao Gaowen, her brother, guilty on November 8 of violating Article 225 of China's Criminal Law. The Protestant minister and his family members were accused of printing Bibles and other Christian literature without government permission.

The Beijing Haidian District People's Court found Cai Zhuohua, a Protestant house church leader, Xiao Yunfei, his wife, and Xiao Gaowen, her brother, guilty on November 8 of violating Article 225 of China's Criminal Law. The Protestant minister and his family members were accused of printing Bibles and other Christian literature without government permission. According to its November 8 opinion, the court found Cai and his relatives guilty of causing disruption by printing and giving away books without a government permit. The court sentenced the defendants to 3 years, 2 years, and 1 1/2 years imprisonment, respectively, and fined them 150,000, 120,000, and 100,000 yuan (approximately $20,000, $15,000, and $12,500), respectively. The court also found Hu Jinyun, Xiao Gaowen's wife, guilty of violating Article 312 of the Criminal Law, which criminalizes the knowing concealment of illegally acquired goods, because she handled the funds connected with the printing enterprise. The court spared Hu any punishment, however, saying that her crimes were minor and that she had cooperated with the prosecution.

Public security officials detained Cai and seized 237,776 editions of 51 separate titles at a Beijing storeroom on September 11, 2004. Two weeks later authorities detained Xiao Yunfei, Hu Jinyun, and Xiao Gaowen. The Beijing Haidian District People's Procuratorate formally arrested the four house church members in October 2004, and indicted them in December. In June 2005, the Haidian District People's Court placed the case on its docket, and on July 7 it tried the four in a hearing that lasted 4 1/2 hours. Procuratorate officials asked the court the same day to extend the hearing of the case, to allow the government time to supplement its evidence. The procuratorate filed a second request on September 20, but the court did not notify defense counsel of either extension request until October 25, according to an October 27 press release from the China Aid Association.

Article 225 of the Criminal Law requires, among other elements, that the accused's actions must have involved operation of "a business." The defense argued, and the government did not appear to dispute, that the printing enterprise was not conducted for profit, and that the defendants had not sold any of the publications, but rather had given them away. The court said, however, that Cai had compiled and printed the books as an agent for third parties that provided both materials and funding (but which the court did not name or otherwise describe). The court found that the defendants had earned 80,000 yuan (about $9,000) through their compiling and printing of books, but no evidence was presented that the defendants acquired the money through sales. Moreover, the opinion cited no evidence indicating that the unidentified third party gave the funds to Cai specifically in connection with the publishing enterprise. Nevertheless, the court held that Cai's and the Xiaos' behavior constituted operating a business within the scope of Article 225.

Article 225 of the Criminal Law also requires that the accused's actions must have "disrupted market order." As noted above, the government did not claim that the defendants sold their publications. The court’s decision says that the defendants "disrupted market order," but did not cite any evidence to support this conclusion.