China Power | Society | East Asia

China Fears the Church, America Fears the Chinese: A Chinese Christian Student Caught in Between

For some Chinese, studying in the U.S. is a welcome breath of freedom. But they are increasingly met not with open arms but with suspicion.

For spring break, we took the kids to Disneyland. The line for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride stretched to 95 minutes. Standing in front of me was a young Asian man, scrolling on his phone. I glanced over and saw him using WeChat, the Chinese social media app. So I decided to strike up a conversation in Chinese: “Are you excited to ride Guardians? It’s one of the most thrilling roller coasters in the U.S.”

He looked up, smiled, and said, “Oh, I’m so excited! Hallelujah!”

Hallelujah? My religion-scholar antenna went up. “If I could ask – are you a Christian?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m a fifth-generation Christian from Wenzhou, and I study in America.”

My wait time suddenly became a window into the life and plight of “Peter,” a Christian youth from “China’s Jerusalem,” navigating the tensions of Trump’s America as an international student.

Wenzhou: China’s Jerusalem

Wenzhou, a coastal hub in southeastern China, is renowned for its entrepreneurial and religious fervor. Economically, it leads in regional light manufacturing – textiles, shoes, and small commodities. The distinct “Wenzhou model” is famous: family-owned workshops, dense networks of small businesses, and relentless risk-taking markets. 

But Wenzhou is even more significant as the largest urban Christian center in China, commonly known as “China’s Jerusalem.” With a long history of Christianity and some distance from Beijing, Wenzhou developed dense, vibrant Christian communities closely tied to business networks – less common in northern regions where central control of religion is tighter. Local Christian entrepreneurs – “boss Christians” – build factories and trading companies while also financing church buildings, evangelistic campaigns, and charity ministries. Here, Christianity is not a fringe subculture; it is integral to business, local power, and Wenzhou’s global outreach.

Given both the size of the Christian population and its economic weight, the local government often tries to “manage” churches pragmatically – tolerance at times, pressure to register under official religious associations, and coercion when needed. House-church Christians negotiate over land use and endure financial harassment through tax audits rather than purely religious charges. There have also been waves of cross demolitions, as local governments fear the “over-popularity” of Christianity and try to keep it from being “too visible and beyond control.” Yet “nameless” churches continue to thrive, in factory spaces, rented apartments, restaurants, with or without a cross on the roof.

A Fifth-Generation Christian Family

Peter’s family embodies this landscape. His great-grandparents came to faith through American missionaries before 1949. Peter’s parents never went beyond middle school. They entered the textile industry as teenagers, working long shifts in noisy, humid factories in Wenzhou and Shaoxing – another key textile hub in Zhejiang. Over time, through relentless work and shrewd entrepreneurship, they moved from wage labor to owning several medium-sized textile facilities. They are not China’s elite or “red families” from high-ranking Communist Party officials. Their capital comes from sweat, entrepreneurship, and faith networks.

Devout in belief, they endure ongoing repression but cherish the privilege of providing Peter with a family-based religious education, since religious activities for minors – church attendance, baptism, Sunday school – are forbidden by Chinese law. Peter’s faith grew in “underground” spaces that exist only in gray zones – tolerated at times, always vulnerable.

Like many Chinese parents, they want to give their children opportunities they never had. They are also uneasy about China’s public education system. From kindergarten, their sons would be required to study Marxism, “scientific atheism,” “Sinicizing religion to core socialist values” and “Xi Jinping Thought.” From their perspective, the issue is not just exam pressure; it is a worldview in which the CCP defines “truth” and controls the future.

Under Xi, as under Mao, patriotic education begins with the young. A new wave of directives calls for “patriotic education at every stage and in every aspect of schooling,” and for threading socialist core values through “the entire process of national education” so that students “form a correct outlook on the world, life, and values” and “fortify their faith” in the party’s leadership. The aim is to form a generation taught that the CCP is the only legitimate voice of the people, that criticism of it is an insult to the entire Chinese people, and that the proper, party-approved instinct is suspicion – if not hostility – toward Western ideas. 

For a teenager like Peter, studying abroad is not just about academics. It means a few formative years outside a tightly managed information ecosystem, with room to learn what China’s classrooms do not offer.

So Peter’s parents did what many Wenzhou Christian entrepreneurs have done: worked hard, saved, and poured profits into tuition. They sent both sons to the United States, imagining a place where academic excellence, religious freedom, and a different civic order would lead to a brighter future. 

John, the older brother, graduated from a private Christian college on the East Coast with a Master of Divinity and returned to China to serve in ministry last year. Peter, in contrast, is the math genius and scientist in the family. He’s currently a senior at a private Christian high school in the U.S., excelling in science and sports.

A Star Student, Sobering Options

The demographic of Chinese students in the United States has changed significantly over the past 25 years. Around 2000, three-quarters of the Chinese students were in graduate programs. Over the next 10-15 years, that picture flipped as China’s urban middle class expanded and parents began sending children out earlier to escape the gaokao track. By the mid-2010s, Chinese undergraduates outnumbered graduate students, and “younger” cohorts – undergrads and high-schoolers – made up well over half of new enrollments. 

On the K-12 side, the transformation was striking. Before the pandemic, there were nearly 40,000 Chinese students in K-12 schools, roughly half of all foreign K-12 students in the U.S., with many in private Christian schools. That number has fallen since 2020 with COVID-19 disruptions, visa tightening, weakened Chinese domestic economy, and geopolitical anxiety, but many American high schools still see visible cohorts of Chinese students.

Peter belongs to this younger, more vulnerable group. He is not a Ph.D. student in a prestigious high-tech lab. He is a teenager whose parents bet on the United States as an educational and spiritual haven.

On paper, Peter is exactly the kind of student American institutions say they prize: a star athlete, student leader, and a math prodigy. He loves chemistry, has won awards, and led his high school team to its first ever state-level math Olympiad championship in 2025. 

Naturally, he aimed for chemistry and biochemistry programs at reputable universities across the United States – Purdue, the University of Illinois, Georgia Tech. His grades, awards, leadership, and recommendations should have made him a superb candidate. Yet as admissions decisions rolled in, he received rejection after rejection. 

When he and his school counselor probed further, a troubling pattern appeared: many of the programs he applied to are deemed “sensitive” under evolving U.S. policies concerning Chinese students – especially in advanced materials, biotechnology, chemistry, quantum-adjacent fields, and other domains entangled with national-security concerns.

In 2020, Presidential Proclamation 10043 barred many Chinese graduate students and researchers linked to “military-civil fusion” institutions from entering the United States. Combined with later visa practices targeting “critical fields,” it has created a de facto barrier around certain STEM paths for Chinese nationals, even though undergraduate majors are not explicitly banned on paper. 

From a U.S. national security perspective, the rationale is clear: the Chinese government aggressively seeks foreign technology through various means, legal and illicit, with universities a key battleground. Tightening controls to prevent espionage appears prudent. But beyond the text of proclamations, many administrators have internalized a less nuanced message: Chinese passport holders plus advanced STEM interests equals elevated risk. Even without a public blacklist of majors, the result can feel like an informal ban. 

Here is how Peter described the inability to gain admission to his desired colleges: “I am Chinese; I want to study chemistry – that makes me a problem.”  

Reflecting on it, Peter told me, “I wanted to come to America to study, because we aren’t taught critical thinking in Chinese schools. As a Christian, that’s important to me. I want a place that allows me to question, to think freely, and to seek truth. But now, I don’t know what my future holds.”

Balancing Security and the Next Generation

Peter’s experience captures a broader dilemma. He stands at the intersection of two fears. 

On one side, Beijing fears the church. It has watched house churches grow into powerful grassroots networks with transnational connections, resources, and power that transform local economies and communities. Their growth is almost impossible to control. Campaigns to demolish church buildings, remove crosses, force registration, ban public Bible sales, and keep minors out of religious spaces reflect a judgment: Christianity, if not controlled, can reshape China. The CCP will not allow that.

On the other side, Washington increasingly views Chinese students with suspicion, worrying they are spies – willing or coerced – out to steal U.S. research and technology. Someone like Peter falls into a “risk profile,” regardless of what he believes. 

Yet Peter does not fit the national security threat stereotype. He is not an agent of the Chinese state. His parents are not CCP officials; his family’s loyalties are bound more to their church than to the party. He admires American society and longs to learn. 

In Beijing’s eyes, he is too Christian, not reliably loyal. In Washington’s lens, he is too Chinese. He is caught in between.

Peter is also a snapshot of a larger strategic question. Young people from authoritarian regimes who seek American education – Christian or not – are uniquely positioned to become long-term allies: culturally, morally, politically. They are already pushing against the constraints of oppressive home systems. It takes a great deal for a teenager like Peter to resist the ideological conformity of China’s socialist state. His loyalty to his faith already places him at odds with the CCP.

Of course the United States should not ignore security risks. The question is how to tighten national security without casting all Chinese students in STEM as threats. At a time when authoritarian regimes are blasting anti-U.S. propaganda, America remains a coveted refuge for youth facing oppression. If the United States chooses blanket suspicion over careful safeguards, it will lose talent; it will also forfeit one of the few remaining ways to interrupt the Communist Party’s intensive effort to shape how young Chinese see the world. 

These students are targeted at home by patriotic education and digital propaganda. When they come to the United States to study, for a brief window, they have the opportunity to learn about alternatives. If U.S. policy slams the door, Beijing’s narrative will be the only one that sticks. The United States must move beyond fear – insisting on real vetting, yes, but also embracing a longer-term vision that educates and accompanies young people willing to question what they have been taught.

As I said goodbye to Peter and stepped onto the roller coaster, I wished him not only a thrilling day at Disney, but also a hopeful, smoother track for his studies in America. 

Get to the bottom of the story

Subscribe today and join thousands of diplomats, analysts, policy professionals and business readers who rely on The Diplomat for expert Asia-Pacific coverage.

Get unlimited access to in-depth analysis you won't find anywhere else, from South China Sea tensions to ASEAN diplomacy to India-Pakistan relations. More than 5,000 articles a year.

Unlimited articles and expert analysis

Weekly newsletter with exclusive insights

16-year archive of diplomatic coverage

Ad-free reading on all devices

Support independent journalism

Already have an account? Log in.

For spring break, we took the kids to Disneyland. The line for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride stretched to 95 minutes. Standing in front of me was a young Asian man, scrolling on his phone. I glanced over and saw him using WeChat, the Chinese social media app. So I decided to strike up a conversation in Chinese: “Are you excited to ride Guardians? It’s one of the most thrilling roller coasters in the U.S.”

He looked up, smiled, and said, “Oh, I’m so excited! Hallelujah!”

Hallelujah? My religion-scholar antenna went up. “If I could ask – are you a Christian?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I’m a fifth-generation Christian from Wenzhou, and I study in America.”

My wait time suddenly became a window into the life and plight of “Peter,” a Christian youth from “China’s Jerusalem,” navigating the tensions of Trump’s America as an international student.

Wenzhou: China’s Jerusalem

Wenzhou, a coastal hub in southeastern China, is renowned for its entrepreneurial and religious fervor. Economically, it leads in regional light manufacturing – textiles, shoes, and small commodities. The distinct “Wenzhou model” is famous: family-owned workshops, dense networks of small businesses, and relentless risk-taking markets. 

But Wenzhou is even more significant as the largest urban Christian center in China, commonly known as “China’s Jerusalem.” With a long history of Christianity and some distance from Beijing, Wenzhou developed dense, vibrant Christian communities closely tied to business networks – less common in northern regions where central control of religion is tighter. Local Christian entrepreneurs – “boss Christians” – build factories and trading companies while also financing church buildings, evangelistic campaigns, and charity ministries. Here, Christianity is not a fringe subculture; it is integral to business, local power, and Wenzhou’s global outreach.

Given both the size of the Christian population and its economic weight, the local government often tries to “manage” churches pragmatically – tolerance at times, pressure to register under official religious associations, and coercion when needed. House-church Christians negotiate over land use and endure financial harassment through tax audits rather than purely religious charges. There have also been waves of cross demolitions, as local governments fear the “over-popularity” of Christianity and try to keep it from being “too visible and beyond control.” Yet “nameless” churches continue to thrive, in factory spaces, rented apartments, restaurants, with or without a cross on the roof.

A Fifth-Generation Christian Family

Peter’s family embodies this landscape. His great-grandparents came to faith through American missionaries before 1949. Peter’s parents never went beyond middle school. They entered the textile industry as teenagers, working long shifts in noisy, humid factories in Wenzhou and Shaoxing – another key textile hub in Zhejiang. Over time, through relentless work and shrewd entrepreneurship, they moved from wage labor to owning several medium-sized textile facilities. They are not China’s elite or “red families” from high-ranking Communist Party officials. Their capital comes from sweat, entrepreneurship, and faith networks.

Devout in belief, they endure ongoing repression but cherish the privilege of providing Peter with a family-based religious education, since religious activities for minors – church attendance, baptism, Sunday school – are forbidden by Chinese law. Peter’s faith grew in “underground” spaces that exist only in gray zones – tolerated at times, always vulnerable.

Like many Chinese parents, they want to give their children opportunities they never had. They are also uneasy about China’s public education system. From kindergarten, their sons would be required to study Marxism, “scientific atheism,” “Sinicizing religion to core socialist values” and “Xi Jinping Thought.” From their perspective, the issue is not just exam pressure; it is a worldview in which the CCP defines “truth” and controls the future.

Under Xi, as under Mao, patriotic education begins with the young. A new wave of directives calls for “patriotic education at every stage and in every aspect of schooling,” and for threading socialist core values through “the entire process of national education” so that students “form a correct outlook on the world, life, and values” and “fortify their faith” in the party’s leadership. The aim is to form a generation taught that the CCP is the only legitimate voice of the people, that criticism of it is an insult to the entire Chinese people, and that the proper, party-approved instinct is suspicion – if not hostility – toward Western ideas. 

For a teenager like Peter, studying abroad is not just about academics. It means a few formative years outside a tightly managed information ecosystem, with room to learn what China’s classrooms do not offer.

So Peter’s parents did what many Wenzhou Christian entrepreneurs have done: worked hard, saved, and poured profits into tuition. They sent both sons to the United States, imagining a place where academic excellence, religious freedom, and a different civic order would lead to a brighter future. 

John, the older brother, graduated from a private Christian college on the East Coast with a Master of Divinity and returned to China to serve in ministry last year. Peter, in contrast, is the math genius and scientist in the family. He’s currently a senior at a private Christian high school in the U.S., excelling in science and sports.

A Star Student, Sobering Options

The demographic of Chinese students in the United States has changed significantly over the past 25 years. Around 2000, three-quarters of the Chinese students were in graduate programs. Over the next 10-15 years, that picture flipped as China’s urban middle class expanded and parents began sending children out earlier to escape the gaokao track. By the mid-2010s, Chinese undergraduates outnumbered graduate students, and “younger” cohorts – undergrads and high-schoolers – made up well over half of new enrollments. 

On the K-12 side, the transformation was striking. Before the pandemic, there were nearly 40,000 Chinese students in K-12 schools, roughly half of all foreign K-12 students in the U.S., with many in private Christian schools. That number has fallen since 2020 with COVID-19 disruptions, visa tightening, weakened Chinese domestic economy, and geopolitical anxiety, but many American high schools still see visible cohorts of Chinese students.

Peter belongs to this younger, more vulnerable group. He is not a Ph.D. student in a prestigious high-tech lab. He is a teenager whose parents bet on the United States as an educational and spiritual haven.

On paper, Peter is exactly the kind of student American institutions say they prize: a star athlete, student leader, and a math prodigy. He loves chemistry, has won awards, and led his high school team to its first ever state-level math Olympiad championship in 2025. 

Naturally, he aimed for chemistry and biochemistry programs at reputable universities across the United States – Purdue, the University of Illinois, Georgia Tech. His grades, awards, leadership, and recommendations should have made him a superb candidate. Yet as admissions decisions rolled in, he received rejection after rejection. 

When he and his school counselor probed further, a troubling pattern appeared: many of the programs he applied to are deemed “sensitive” under evolving U.S. policies concerning Chinese students – especially in advanced materials, biotechnology, chemistry, quantum-adjacent fields, and other domains entangled with national-security concerns.

In 2020, Presidential Proclamation 10043 barred many Chinese graduate students and researchers linked to “military-civil fusion” institutions from entering the United States. Combined with later visa practices targeting “critical fields,” it has created a de facto barrier around certain STEM paths for Chinese nationals, even though undergraduate majors are not explicitly banned on paper. 

From a U.S. national security perspective, the rationale is clear: the Chinese government aggressively seeks foreign technology through various means, legal and illicit, with universities a key battleground. Tightening controls to prevent espionage appears prudent. But beyond the text of proclamations, many administrators have internalized a less nuanced message: Chinese passport holders plus advanced STEM interests equals elevated risk. Even without a public blacklist of majors, the result can feel like an informal ban. 

Here is how Peter described the inability to gain admission to his desired colleges: “I am Chinese; I want to study chemistry – that makes me a problem.”  

Reflecting on it, Peter told me, “I wanted to come to America to study, because we aren’t taught critical thinking in Chinese schools. As a Christian, that’s important to me. I want a place that allows me to question, to think freely, and to seek truth. But now, I don’t know what my future holds.”

Balancing Security and the Next Generation

Peter’s experience captures a broader dilemma. He stands at the intersection of two fears. 

On one side, Beijing fears the church. It has watched house churches grow into powerful grassroots networks with transnational connections, resources, and power that transform local economies and communities. Their growth is almost impossible to control. Campaigns to demolish church buildings, remove crosses, force registration, ban public Bible sales, and keep minors out of religious spaces reflect a judgment: Christianity, if not controlled, can reshape China. The CCP will not allow that.

On the other side, Washington increasingly views Chinese students with suspicion, worrying they are spies – willing or coerced – out to steal U.S. research and technology. Someone like Peter falls into a “risk profile,” regardless of what he believes. 

Yet Peter does not fit the national security threat stereotype. He is not an agent of the Chinese state. His parents are not CCP officials; his family’s loyalties are bound more to their church than to the party. He admires American society and longs to learn. 

In Beijing’s eyes, he is too Christian, not reliably loyal. In Washington’s lens, he is too Chinese. He is caught in between.

Peter is also a snapshot of a larger strategic question. Young people from authoritarian regimes who seek American education – Christian or not – are uniquely positioned to become long-term allies: culturally, morally, politically. They are already pushing against the constraints of oppressive home systems. It takes a great deal for a teenager like Peter to resist the ideological conformity of China’s socialist state. His loyalty to his faith already places him at odds with the CCP.

Of course the United States should not ignore security risks. The question is how to tighten national security without casting all Chinese students in STEM as threats. At a time when authoritarian regimes are blasting anti-U.S. propaganda, America remains a coveted refuge for youth facing oppression. If the United States chooses blanket suspicion over careful safeguards, it will lose talent; it will also forfeit one of the few remaining ways to interrupt the Communist Party’s intensive effort to shape how young Chinese see the world. 

These students are targeted at home by patriotic education and digital propaganda. When they come to the United States to study, for a brief window, they have the opportunity to learn about alternatives. If U.S. policy slams the door, Beijing’s narrative will be the only one that sticks. The United States must move beyond fear – insisting on real vetting, yes, but also embracing a longer-term vision that educates and accompanies young people willing to question what they have been taught.

As I said goodbye to Peter and stepped onto the roller coaster, I wished him not only a thrilling day at Disney, but also a hopeful, smoother track for his studies in America. 

Dr. Elisa Zhai Autry is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Before joining Hoover, she served as chief policy advisor for public diplomacy on China and the East Asia–Pacific region at the U.S. Department of State.

China crackdown on religion

China religion freedom

Chinese students in the United States

U.S. anti-China sentiment

© The Diplomat