top of page

Church of Almighty God Refugees Asylum Claims. 7. How Did They Obtain a Passport?

A typical but ill-founded argument against CAG refugees is that, if they were really persecuted in China, they could never have obtained a passport.


January 31, 2025


Border control in China. From Weibo.
Border control in China. From Weibo.

Almost all negative decisions mention, as one of the reasons and perhaps the main one, why asylum is denied to refugees of the CAG the fact that in China those suspected of belonging to banned organizations, including those labeled as xie jiao such as the CAG, have their names and biometrical data included in the national police data base PoliceNet. This inclusion has the consequence that, if they apply for a passport, the application is denied. 


It is also argued that through facial recognition and other advanced techniques they would be identified during the severe border controls in the airports, and thus prevented from leaving China. That PoliceNet and the border controls are remarkably effective in China is asserted in several COI, which creates a severe burden of proof for asylum seekers called to explain how, if they were known to the authorities as CAG members, they were able to obtain a passport. On the other hand, if the applicants were not known to be CAG members in China, they must explain why they are at risk of being persecuted.


While international COI greatly improved in their assessment of the CAG and its persecution in China, some COI continue to depict PoliceNet and border controls as almost omniscient and infallible. This means that courts of law, to grant asylum to CAG refugees, should go beyond the COI on the issue of passports. The number of favorable decisions we reviewed confirms that some courts do just this, but by no means all. Some insist that affidavits by scholars, such as the late Italian academic PierLuigi Zoccatelli, co-author of a study of Chinese immigration, or by CAG members who once worked as police officers in China, are just private opinions, as such less reliable than published COI. Happily, a 2024 decision by the Court of Rome concluded the opposite, that the Zoccatelli affidavit and “Bitter Winter” articles are more reliable than other sources on the issue of passports.


PierLuigi Zoccatelli (1965–2024) introducing a roundtable on CAG at the Rome event “MondoReligioni,” April 6, 2019. Massimo Introvigne (right) was among the speakers.
PierLuigi Zoccatelli (1965–2024) introducing a roundtable on CAG at the Rome event “MondoReligioni,” April 6, 2019. Massimo Introvigne (right) was among the speakers.

This is a crucial point in refugee cases, and we will share some stories told to us by refugees (without mentioning their real names, although they are known to us), after a short general discussion. It is a fact that Chinese authorities constantly improve their surveillance systems, using mammoth data bases, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition. However, as some COI such as those produced by Canada in 2019 admit, these projects have been implemented gradually. Facial recognition systems were introduced in airports in 2017, and did not affect refugees who left China in previous years. The same Canadian COI quoted a technology executive working for the Chinese government, who told “The New York Times” that “the national database of individuals on the watch list includes 20 to 30 million people, which is ‘too many people for today’s facial recognition technology to parse.’” The Chinese facial recognition system is impressive, but is still far away from including data about all the 20 to 30 million citizen who were once convicted, or are suspected of illegal activities or dissent. Additionally, facial recognition was originally introduced in two airports in Beijing and one in Shanghai, not in other cities, and even in these airports only on “limited basis.”


Theoretically, all those who have been arrested as active in the CAG, or even just suspected of being CAG members, should have their names and biometrical data included in the national police data base, PoliceNet. In practice, however, this is not the case, as data bases exist at the city, county, province, and national levels, and such information does not travel from lower to upper levels in real time. The Canadian COI reported that, “Sources indicated that some individuals who have been placed on the provincial list were able to leave through an airport in another province,” meaning their names had not (yet) been included in the national list. Loopholes and mistakes also exist. CAG refugees often reported to courts that, before they applied for a passport, they checked through friends or relations (several decisions mention an “uncle,” a word that in China does not necessarily indicate a relative, and sometimes may refer to persons involved in a variety of illegal activities) about whether their names were indeed included in the local or national data bases. In several cases, they discovered they were not, sometimes to their surprise.


Perhaps more importantly, often the local police do not include the names of suspect CAG members, or of those who have been arrested but not prosecuted and sentenced, in any data base. They do not do this for humanitarian reasons. Including in the data bases too many names of suspects the local police have not been able to arrest is not good for their reputation and career. As for those arrested, if they are just fined and sent home rather than to a court of law for sentencing, the police have the attractive alternative of not recording their case in any data base and pocketing the fine.


This leads to the main point too many decisions fail to consider, i.e., corruption. All specialized sources indicate that corruption in China is widespread and massive: millions of officers take bribes, not just a few. It includes a flourishing market for passports, which explains why not only dissidents, but corrupted businesspersons and organized crime bosses are able to leave China with perfectly regular documents. Even if somebody has been in jail, or has been duly registered in the national PoliceNet data base as a suspect, a corrupted officer can always find ways to alter the record. Corruption beats even the most advanced technological systems, as we should never forget that technology is always ultimately controlled by human beings.


Our interviews show how the situation is more complicated than those who wrote some of the decisions we analyzed believe. Sister Linda (not her real name) told us she was in the provincial wanted list in Gansu Province because she had been identified as a CAG member. From the end of December 2012 to November 2016, she lived on the run. In 2016, she fled to Shaanxi Province. To avoid arrest, she considered escaping abroad. However, because she was on the wanted list in Gansu, she was afraid that the local police would arrest her once she applied for a passport. So, she started considering using somebody else’s identity to get a passport. It was difficult to find a suitable hukou (household registration certificate), which is always needed to obtain a passport. She tried in several provinces before she finally found an ideal one in Inner Mongolia. A co-religionist in Inner Mongolia had personal connections with the bureaucrat responsible for the Hukou Registration Section in a local public security bureau, and she told her that she could buy a hukou. In the public security bureau, the co-religionist gave 2,500 RMB (about 359 USD) to that bureaucrat, who agreed to help. The bureaucrat then turned on her computer, and started searching.


A CAG member intercepted by the police while transporting CAG literature. Painting by an anonymous CAG artist.
A CAG member intercepted by the police while transporting CAG literature. Painting by an anonymous CAG artist.

The future refugee did not know until then that some public security bureaucrats would sell hukou for money. After a short while, the bureaucrat told her that she had just found a suitable hukou for her, of a girl who just looked like her. “The bureaucrat said to me,” she reported, “‘Oh child, you are so lucky. If you two did not look alike, I would not take the risk and give this hukou to you. It seems that this hukou is reserved for you. You’re indeed lucky.’


She then said to my church sister, ‘Do not use this account for illegal use. Or else I will be implicated, and I may lose my job. This is strictly forbidden by the state. Do not sell me out!’” Then, the bureaucrat took a photo of the CAG member and included her fingerprints in the system. “I got my new ID card, the story concluded. With the card and the hukou, I applied for a passport in another city’s Exit-Entry Administration Division and successfully fled to the United States.” In this case, the refugee took the risk of using a false name (but a real photograph and fingerprints), which may always be discovered when entering a foreign country. But in her case, it worked.


A surgeon from Hebei Province we would call Fred reported that in February 2013, he was arrested while proselyting on behalf of the CAG. He was released after one day of detention, but placed under residential surveillance for the following two and a half years. To evade surveillance and live a normal life, he planned to escape from China. One of his patients was a close friend of a police officer working at a customs office, and agreed to help him with the travel documents. “In China,” he explained, “connections are particularly important. The chief of the local public security bureau also consulted me about illnesses. To successfully get a passport, I often volunteered to treat police officers for free, and learned from them that I was not labeled as a high political risk and was still eligible for overseas trip. But I had to have the police station’s permit and tell my working unit that I would return to China. In this way, I got my passport. To resolve the doubts of the police and the leaders of my working unit, a first time I went to Thailand with my passport and went back to China. But the second time, I left China for good, and never returned.”


Brother “Joseph,” also from Henan, has been a CAG member for many years. He was arrested twice, in 2003 in Henan and in 2012 again in Tongren City, Guizhou Province. “But,” he explained, “I had relatives who are government officials. After giving some money to the police, I was released.” The officers in Tongren, however, asked him to go back home to Henan, and called their colleagues to have his name registered in the provincial database there. When he arrived home, he reported, “my second younger brother (a vice-chief of a government bureau) also came back home for a Spring Festival reunion. One officer was his school mate, and the police station chief was not there, so my case was not registered that day.” He left the village, and the local police were still considering whether to register him in the data base, when his cousin (a local village head) invited them to a meal and talked them into not doing it. 


“In August 2018,” Joseph said, “my village was listed by the Sanmenxia City government as a candidate for a ‘beautiful village’ award. One requirement was that all villagers should not have a religious faith. The local government wanted to get that honor, so they definitely did not want to register me. If they had an old registration of my 2003 arrest, they canceled it as well. Later, I used my connections to check the situation again and found that I was indeed not registered in any data base, so I applied for a passport and left China.”


Poster for one of the (not very successful) anti-corruption campaigns in China. From Weibo.
Poster for one of the (not very successful) anti-corruption campaigns in China. From Weibo.

Brother “Mike” was arrested in 2003, tried, and sentenced to two years in a labor camp. He was released but, after the 2014 McDonald’s murder, he heard that ex-convict CAG members were being re-arrested. He decided to escape abroad, and believed that since the place where he had been arrested in 2003 was far away from where he had his hukou registration, perhaps in the latter his arrest was not known. “To ensure that this was the case,” he said, “I used my connections to double-check that my local police station did not have any record of me, before applying for a passport and fleeing to South Korea.”


Brother “Billy” was first arrested in 1999, in Xinmi City, Henan. “One of my relatives,” he told us, “was a vice-chief of a public security bureau, so I was released that night and my name was not recorded.” At the end of 2011, he was arrested again in Luoyang City, also in Henan. He gave the police a false address in a different city, was detained in Luoyang Detention House, and released fifteen days later. In 2015, his mother was arrested, and he decided to leave China. Through his influential relative, he checked whether his name was included in any police database, and discovered it was not. He said that perhaps confusion about his addresses explained the lack of registration. But it is also true that, when he was arrested, the police seized church money valued at more than 200,000 RMB (about 28,700 USD). If they had registered him in a local or national database, the police should have deposited the money in a government’s account. By not registering his case, they had kept the money in the local police station and most probably pocketed it. At any rate, the fact that Billy was not registered allowed him to obtain a passport, and leave China.


We note that, in all these stories, the refugees reported that they checked whether their names were included in the PoliceNet data base or not before applying for a passport. This is important, as their stories do not imply that obtaining a passport is easy. Indeed, it is difficult, which explains why, while all CAG members are persecuted, only a small percentage of them manage to leave China.



Comments


bottom of page