Pastor John Cao freed after seven years in Chinese prison

Chinese authorities on Sunday released Pastor John Cao from prison in southern China after he finished his seven-year sentence, religious freedom advocacy group ChinaAid reported Tuesday. Authorities arrested Cao and his colleague, Jing Ruxia, in March 2017 and charged him with illegally crossing the border between Myanmar and China. Officials sentenced Cao to seven years in prison in March of 2018, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Why was Cao arrested? He had been serving as a missionary in Myanmar since 2013, according to the bi-partisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Myanmar, he built schools and regularly crossed the border between China and Myanmar to conduct humanitarian work with local communities, according to ChinaAid. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2019 determined that Cao was wrongfully detained and had been imprisoned because of his faith.

What about his family? Cao is married to an American citizen and has held legal permanent residency status in North Carolina since 1990. In 2018, members of Congress wrote a letter asking former Vice President Mike Pence to help secure Cao’s release, mentioning that he had pastored churches in North Carolina and raised children there. During his time in prison, Cao wrote poetry that ChinaAid collected and published as a book in 2021. 

Dig deeper: Read Jordan J. Ballor’s column in WORLD Opinions about religious freedom in China.