Colombo, Dec 13 : China's tightening control over religious expression appears to be intensifying, with the recent arrest of church leaders marking a further escalation in its long-running campaign to place all expressions of faith under the authority of the state, a report said on Saturday.

"The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) campaign against unregistered Christian communities escalated sharply in November with the formal arrest of 18 leaders from one of the country's most influential underground churches. Rights group ChinaAid announced that the detentions â?? part of a sprawling, multi-city clampdown â?? signal an increasingly aggressive posture toward independent religious activity, deepening concerns about the shrinking space for faith outside state-sanctioned channels," a report in Sri Lankan media outlet Ceylon Wire News detailed.

"The arrests, which follow weeks of nationwide raids targetting members of the Beijing Zion Church, underscore the Chinese regime's growing intolerance for religious networks operating beyond the control of the state's ideological apparatus. For many observers, the developments reflect not only a hardening of the CCP's longstanding suspicion of unregulated religion but also its willingness to deploy criminal charges to dismantle organisational structures it views as politically threatening," it added.

According to the report, on October 9, police in Beihai, a coastal city in southern China, carried out a coordinated operation against members of the Beijing Zion Church, a prominent house-church movement founded in 2007.

In the days that followed, nearly 30 pastors, ministers, and congregants were arrested by Chinese authorities across several regions â?? including Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan â?? underscoring the scale and planning behind the campaign.

Citing the rights group ChinaAid, the report said that 18 individuals who remain detained were formally arrested on November 18, following weeks of being held incommunicado.

It highlighted that the US State Department and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom quickly condemned the arrests, and called on Beijing to release those detained and halt its crackdown on unregistered Christian groups.

However, the report noted that public discussion inside China remains tightly restricted, with heavily censored and monitored social media platforms removing posts related to the arrests, while state media has remained silent.

"For China's underground churches, the sweeping crackdown on Zion Church represents a stark reminder of the CCP's determination to dismantle religious networks it cannot control. The arrests of 18 leaders â?? not merely congregants â??signal a hardening approach: an effort to eliminate the organisational backbone of one of China's most influential unregistered churches," it stressed.

/IANS