Protestant evangelical groups are blossoming clandestinely in central and south China despite ongoing repression that dates back to the 1980s and has been renewed with vigor in recent months by Beijing.
The strongest crackdown -- five people sentenced to death late last month with two of them getting suspended sentences -- was meted out to the founders of the underground South China Church in Hubei province.
The group was accused of propagating a "heretical sect."
Three followers of another group, the Holy Spirit Reconstruction Church, a group linked to Taiwan, were sentenced in recent days to seven years in prison by a court in southeastern Fujian province for organizing "illegal sect activities."
China's treatment of such groups took on even more prominence this week after US President George W. Bush said he was "troubled" by the recent arrest of a Hong Kong businessman in Fujian province for secretly importing some 16,000 Bibles.
Lai Kwong-keung, a 38-year-old member of the mainland Shouters evangelical group, has been charged with propagating a "heretical cult," foreign ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said Tuesday.
"His case is being dealt with according to law, and no other country should interfere in China's independent judicial system," Sun said in response to Bush's remarks.
China's atheist communist government only recognizes the major religions of the world and places them under strict control by the Bureau of Religious Affairs, which also has the power to identify "heretical" splinter groups.
China's official Protestant church has 15 million followers, while followers of unofficial underground churches and splinter Protestant groups could number as many as 10 million.
"These sects easily recruit followers because they are very simple and they promise immediate spiritual gratification to their followers," Zhang Jilian, a professor of psychology at Beijing Normal University.
The major religions are too restrictive to satisfy a population confronted by fast social changes and in need of immediate spiritual answers, so people flock to the underground sects, she said.
Even before the brutal three-year-long crackdown on the Falungong spiritual group and other Buddhist and traditional Chinese mystical sects, police in central and south China were smashing underground Protestant groups.
In the past years, dozens of groups have been accused of being "heretical sects," including the Church of the Supreme Spirit (Zhushenjiao) whose guru Liu Jiaguo was executed in 1999 after being convicted of rape.
The Shouters have been targeted by the government since 1983 when some 2,000 adepts were arrested and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
Mainly present in central Henan province, the group urges followers to publicly shout out their faith