GUIYANG, China — Pastor Su Tianfu slides into the back seat and tells the driver to hit it.

He looks over his shoulder: “Is there anybody following us?”

It is days before Christmas, but instead of working on his sermon, Su is giving his tail the slip.

The slight and soft-spoken Protestant preacher is no stranger to surveillance. Su has worked for years in China’s unregistered “house churches,” and he said he has been interrogated more times than he can count.

But even Su is surprised by what has happened in Guiyang this month: a crackdown that has led to the shuttering of the thriving Living Stone Church, the detention of a pastor on charges of “possessing state secrets” and the shadowing of dozens of churchgoers by police.

A local government directive leaked to China Aid, a Texas-based Christian group, and reviewed by The Washington Post advises local Communist Party cadres that shutting down the church is necessary to “maintain social stability” — a catchall phrase often used to justify sweeping clampdowns.

The Dec. 9 raid on the church in a relatively sleepy provincial capital is conspicuous because of the timing — about two weeks before Christmas — and because the government’s tactics were revealed.

But it also speaks to a broader pattern of religious repression that is playing out beyond China’s mountainous southwest, as the officially atheist Communist Party struggles to control the spread of religion amid a broader push to thwart dissent.

Read the article “Christians in China Feel Full Force of Authorities’ Repression” on washingtonpost.com.