China’s economy is in a dangerous nose dive right now and it is directly impacting the church in both positive and negative ways.
During the height of the Covid Pandemic, China was touted as an example to the rest of the world of how an economy can shut down and still prosper. BBC Business, like many others, suggested that China’s shut down was the foundation for a quicker recovery, reporting in April 2021, “Helped by strict virus containment measures and emergency relief for businesses, the economy has recovered steadily since the pandemic hit.”
NBC News went even harder, reporting in September 2020, “Chinese officials announced this week that the country’s economy grew by 4.9 percent in the third quarter, a positive sign from the initial Covid-19 epicenter. Some of the rebound in the world’s second-largest economy is due to containment measures that would be hard to replicate or enforce in a democracy — but there are still lessons the United States can learn.”
Now in 2025, we are discovering that the reports of an economic recovery were not true at all. BTJ missionaries have been reporting on the situation from inside China for the last couple of years and many of the reports that we shared were in direct contradiction to the mainstream media.
“The economy has gone down a lot,” said one Chinese pastor during a meeting in December of 2024.
As soon as China launched targeted attacks on Christians in 2019, the economic situation began to take a downturn. In 2020, the world was hit by a pandemic which originated in China. The CCP worked very hard to control the narrative, by implementing extreme measures including welding the doors of their citizens shut!
In 2023, it was already evident in China’s southern Guangdong Province, the first location of China’s Special Economic Zone, where the economic boom has been rocketing straight up for the last three decades. This SEZ was the first location in China to really implement free market strategies, similar to that which was enjoyed in Hong Kong. The economy grew so fast that China had to limit access to the area, setting up check points along the roads leading into cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
In 2023, the once booming cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen were barely recognizable. Massive shopping centers which once hosted cross-border shoppers were closed. It felt eery, but it was understandable. After being locked up for years during the pandemic, it was never expected just to open back up and return back to its former glory in a matter of days.
However, the same was evident the following year in Guilin, home to one of the first tourist destinations open to foreigners in the 1990s. If there was going to be any place where foreign investment would return quickly, it would be in Guilin, but it didn’t. In one of the largest Guilin malls in the city on a Friday night in spring of 2024, it was a ghost town.
Even the famed streets of Wang Fujing, the most famous streets in all of China, are a skeleton of their previous glory. Wang Fujing is arguably one of the most well-known tourist attractions for foreigners and is even home to the first McDonald’s in Beijing.
But nothing compares to what is happening in Shanghai today. Qibao, one of the busiest business districts close to the Hongqiao International Airport, has a major metro station, has several house churches, and has immediate access to everything one needs without having to go all the way to The Bund.
Today, it is miles and miles of empty vacant shopping centers that are not just vacant, but boarded up with barriers. “The shops have all closed up,” Sarah (not her real name) shares. “They all closed down during Covid-19 and were not allowed to open up for almost three years. Now that China has opened back up, those shop owners are all gone.”
Qibao is part of the Minhang district of Shanghai, which has about 2.6 million residents. With its central location and extremely dense population, it is the ‘canary in the coal mine’ to partially gauge China’s economy and what it shows is that China is in much worse shape than anyone in the news has been reporting.
The Chinese economy isn’t heading for a crisis. It is already in the middle of one.
However, it seems that a bad economy in China is good news for missions work! In a move that has not been seen in recent history, to turn the economy around, China is offering visa-free entry for 39 nations!
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, dropped the bombshell announcement last year and every month it seems they are expanding the list. Currently 59 nations can visit Hainan Island in China without a visa!
These are massive developments that are allowing people and resources to flow into China.
In January and February 2025, BTJ had a window to send $450k USD to China for Bibles and workers. This is the first time that this kind of opportunity has been available in over 10 years. The economic challenges in China are opening up several doors for the church.
