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Beijing Jiaquan Church Pastors and Workers Reported Detained Days Before Xi’s Washington Visit

Free China Movement

BEIJING/WASHINGTON, September 24, 2026 — Chinese authorities have detained multiple pastors and church workers from Beijing’s Jiaquan Church, an influential urban house-church network with more than two decades of ministry in the Chinese capital, according to first-hand reports received by the advocacy group ChinaAid.

ChinaAid reported on September 21 that it had received first-hand reports of the detentions from inside China, but said it was still working to confirm the approximate number of people taken into custody, the locations of the arrests, and the specific charges, if any. No official statement on the detentions has been published by Chinese authorities as of publication.

The reports place the detentions days before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s scheduled meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday. ChinaAid explicitly said it had no evidence linking the detentions to Xi’s trip; the timing is noted but no causal connection has been established.

An independent Chinese-language news outlet, chinafocus.news, reported on September 24 that the full list of those taken away has not been made public and described the defining feature of the case so far as an information vacuum: the number of detainees, the agencies involved, and the legal basis for the actions all remain unconfirmed. Third-party corroboration that detentions took place dates to at least September 20, when a Vancouver Chinese church service included public prayer for Christians of the Jiaquan Church described as illegally detained.

According to sources familiar with the church cited by ChinaAid, Jiaquan Church has ministered in Beijing for more than 20 years, developed congregations and gathering points across several parts of China, and serves more than 1,000 believers. The church is influential among younger urban Christians and has incorporated contemporary Christian music, interactive fellowship, and discipleship into its ministry. For more than a decade, church leaders have operated the Noah Music School in Beijing, training musicians and worship leaders who serve house churches across China.

If confirmed as a coordinated operation, the action against Jiaquan would extend a pattern of enforcement against prominent independent urban churches that has intensified over the past year. Beijing’s Zion Church faced a nationwide crackdown beginning in October 2025, after which eight pastors and leaders remain detained awaiting trial and nine others remain on bail facing similar charges. In Chengdu, eleven elderly Christians from the Early Rain Covenant Church were taken to a police station on September 11 during a small reading gathering; most were released, while two were held for administrative detention. The Xi’an Light of Zion church has also faced renewed enforcement this month, including new detentions.

The detentions come as U.S. lawmakers press Trump to raise religious persecution with Xi at the summit. A bipartisan group of ten U.S. senators urged Trump this week to press for the release of detained religious leaders.

The numbers, names, charges, and current whereabouts of the Jiaquan detainees remain unconfirmed at publication. This story will be updated as further information becomes available.

Update, October 13, 2026

New reporting has filled in the names, headcount, and charges that were unconfirmed when this article was published. The Dui Hua Foundation’s Prisoner Updates #9 reports that Pastor Zhou Zixun — whose real name is Cui Xianfeng — and seven church workers are in criminal detention on suspicion of fraud, following a police operation on September 4, 2026. According to an open letter from Zhou’s South Korean wife, more than 100 police officers raided a hotel conference room where about 50 congregants were preparing for the church’s twentieth-anniversary celebration. Seven workers were taken away during the raid; Zhou, who was summoned separately, did not return home. Two workers were later released, but two others were subsequently detained, leaving eight people in custody.

The new account corrects the timeline in the original report: the operation took place on September 4 — not in the days immediately before the September 24 summit — and the fraud allegation, per Zhou’s wife, stems from the church’s unregistered status and official scrutiny of church offerings. No official detention notice or government account of the factual basis for the charges has been published. ChinaAid’s September 29 account, the Voice of the Martyrs Canada on October 1, Worthy News on October 2, and Bitter Winter’s collected testimonies corroborate the September 4 raid, the headcount, and the fraud-suspicion charge.

The seven co-workers’ names and their places of detention have still not been made public. The Free China Movement continues to call for their immediate and unconditional release and for full disclosure of the legal basis for their detention.

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