; Whereas Chinese authorities have banned children and students from attending church services; Whereas, in January 2018, Chinese authorities destroyed the 50,000-member Linfen Golden Lampstand Church; Whereas Chinese authorities have attempted to remove crosses and replace them with the Chinese flag and slogans praising the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping; Whereas state-sanctioned Protestant churches have also faced property destruction, cross removal, and closure by Chinese authorities; Whereas according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, more than 5,000 Christians and 1,000 church leaders were arrested in 2018 because of their faith or religious practices; Whereas Chinese authorities torture lawyers, human rights defenders, and other prisoners of conscience of all faiths; Whereas, according to the Department of State, the Chinese government has imprisoned thousands of individuals of all faiths for practicing their religious beliefs and often labels them as cults ; Whereas, as part of its crackdown, the Chinese government arbitrarily detained Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church along with numerous church members, and blocked worshippers from entering the building; Whereas many Early Rain Covenant Church members were forced to renounce their faith and tortured in order to give confessions accusing Pastor Yi of making statements against the Chinese Communist Party; Whereas Pastor John Cao, a United States permanent resident from Greensboro, North Carolina, has been detained in a Chinese prison since March 2017 for his humanitarian and missionary work in Burma under contrived charges of organizing illegal border crossings; Whereas, since 1999, the Department of State has designated China as a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act