A Chinese court upheld a seven-year prison sentence for a businessman arrested and charged with “illegal business operation” after selling thousands of Bibles and Christian books.
According to Bitter Winter, Chen Yu, the owner of a Christian online bookstore, was sentenced in 2020 for selling more than 20,000 Bibles and Christian books, many of which were published in Taiwan and the United States. Law enforcement discovered and destroyed over 12,000 books on his property.

Bitter Winter reported that an appeals court recently upheld the 2020 decision.

Chen had sold books to customers in Shandong, Henan, and other provinces and was “comparatively undisturbed” by authorities until 2019, when he was apprehended, according to Bitter Winter. The fact that he sold books written by Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church may have led to his arrest. Wang is currently serving a prison sentence for illegally operating a house church and criticizing China’s persecution of house churches.

Chen’s bookstore was described as a “anti-Chinese conspiracy” by the prosecutor.

Chen is a detainee in Zhejiang province’s detention center.

Gina Goh, International Christian Concern’s Southeast Asia regional manager, stated that Chen’s seven-year sentence demonstrates “how the Chinese government is increasingly frightened by all things religious.”

“From religious symbols to Chinese couplets to Christian books, the Chinese Communist Party no longer tolerates anything with religious elements,” Goh explained. “The disproportionate sentencing of Christians, such as Early Rain Covenant Church Pastor Wang Yi and Chen Yu, on the same charge suggests that the crackdown on Christianity will only worsen.” The US government and international community must continue to oppose Beijing’s tyranny.”

Christians who bought the books from Chen could be in jeopardy.

People who buy Christian books are practicing believers, so the government looks into them to determine how dangerous they are to the stability of their regime,” a house church pastor previously told Bitter Winter

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