Chinese Christians Investigated American Claims that China “Rewrote” Bible

From 2020 to 2023, multiple American and Western sources made an allegation that China rewrote the bible to portray Jesus as a sinner. This has been debunked by Chinese Christians who have been ignored by the same American and Western sources.

In 2020, a report was made by the American media that China’s government was “rewriting the Bible” — that in China, a textbook on professionalism and ethics contained a distorted Bible passage of Jesus “throwing a rock at an adulterer and murdering her.”

This, of course, is a huge blasphemy; in Christian theology, Jesus forgave the woman, never sinned, and lived a sin-free life. Subsequently, this story was republished by many Western media outlets, and many American politicians also began to point their fingers at China, alleging that Christianity was being persecuted.

Then four days ago, On May 27, 2024, the Chinese Christian Community newspaper, the “China Christian Daily” published a news article and fully debunked this as a misinformation or fake news. According to China Christian Daily, the initial report of there being a Chinese schoolbook falsifying the biblical account of John 8:3–11 circulated on the Chinese social media platform Wechat, during the COVID pandemic in September 2020. Images of the cover of the textbook and the passage in question were uploaded on to the internet. This was then reported by a Chinese Catholic parishioner and then picked up by the media company UCA News, a Catholic newspaper. At that time, a reporter for UCA News interviewed a man claiming to be a Christian teacher named Matthew Wang, who identified the textbook as the title “Professional Ethics and Law.”

To investigate, the reporter of China Christian Daily contacted UCA News, but UCA told the China Christian Daily that the UCA author who had originally published the article, had left the news outlet and couldn’t be reached. So, China Christian Daily instead went to the publishing company: Sichuan’s “University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Press” to verify the content of the book.

The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Press denied that the textbook with the distorted passage was printed by them, because the cover of the textbook with the distorted Bible passage posted on the internet was different from their official copy of “Professional Ethics and Law” (ISBN: 978–7–5647–5606–2). Futhermore, the publisher claimed that they never placed such religious content in the official textbook. The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Press also had issued an official statement in 2020 that the book in question with the distorted Bible passage was a counterfeit.

(Left) The pirated book with the distorted Bible passage which was circulating around the Western media (right) the real book published by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Press.

In the 2020 statement, the publisher declared that, “To protect the interests of our readers and our legitimate rights, we have reported the matter to the local public security authorities. We will pursue legal action against any institutions or individuals who print, distribute, or cannot provide a legitimate source for the books without our authorization. We will reward anyone who provides verified information about such infringing activities.”

The China Christian Daily noted that piracy of textbooks is a major problem in China. Since China is such an education-focused society, selling fake textbooks is a profitable criminal scam. Xinhua News Agency once reported that nearly 29 million pirated publications were destroyed in April 2013.