(China Aid) The Christian Council of China and the Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China, both official government-sanctioned religious organizations, are using Chinese pinyin initials “JD” to replace Chinese characters for “Christ,” to circumvent China’s internet censorship.
Recently, “Tianfengshuyuan,” the official WeChat book store of the Christian Council of China and the Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China, updated titles and descriptions of all its books. The book store owners replaced all Chinese characters for “Christ” with Chinese pinyin initials “JD,” or even completely removed “Christ” from its books. As shown in the picture above, in the title of “Anthology of the Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China,” “Protestant Churches” has been replaced with “JD.” In the book title of “Walking with the mother country-patriotic stories of Chinese Christians,” “Christians” is covered with color blocks. In Chinese pinyin, “Christ” is spelled as “ji du.” The pinyin initials are “JD.” Probably that’s why they use “JD” in place of “Christ.” Fuzeng Xing, Dean of Chung Chi Seminary of Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote on his Facebook page: “In their official WeChat store, not only ‘Christ’ becomes ‘JD,’ ‘Jesus’ also becomes ‘YS,’ and ‘Bible’ becomes ‘SJ.’” Stores cover any occurrences of other religious terms like “God” and “Lord” with color blocks.