CHINA-INTERNAL: RELIGION - POLICE DETAIN 18 MEMBERS OF CHRISTIAN CULT QUANNENGSHEN (EASTERN LIGHTENI

Police in China's Changxing County, Zhejiang Province have, following a 6-month investigation, detained 18 members and destroyed two “lairs” of the Quannengshen (Eastern Lightning) sect, notorious for its followers’ murder of a woman in a McDonald’s in 2014. Police confiscated items from two properties, including over 150 Eastern Lightning books, 460 propaganda pamphlets, 81 handwritten notes, and multiple hard drives and laptops. Quannengshen, which literally translates as “almighty god,” is also known in English as the Church of Almighty God, or, more commonly, Eastern Lightning. Eastern Lightning claims that Jesus was reincarnated as a Chinese woman. The group has been banned in China since 1995 as a cult. The group has stated that its mission is to bring down the Chinese Communist Party, whom they refer to as the “big red dragon.” 

(Comment: The sect is one of 14 religious groups that are banned by the Ministry of Public Security in China. Eastern Lightning was founded by a physics teacher, Zhao Weishan, in the central Chinese province of Henan in 1989, and later spread across the country. Zhao Weishan fled China for Tokyo in 2000, and according to state news agency Xinhua, later claimed political asylum in New York in 2001 on the grounds that he had been persecuted as a Christian in China. The group is now headquartered in the U.S., though their website lists contact numbers in more than 20 countries.)









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