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Xia Baolong (1952–)

Two stretches of Xia Baolong's career drew sustained international attention. As Party Secretary of Zhejiang (2012–2017), he presided over the "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" campaign that stripped crosses from hundreds of churches, razed Wenzhou's Sanjiang Church, and saw resisting pastors jailed and a defense lawyer secretly detained. In February 2020 he took over the State Council's Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, becoming the senior Beijing official steering implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the "patriots governing Hong Kong" overhaul — for which the United States sanctioned him. Early in his career he served as deputy to Xi Jinping in Zhejiang, a connection that runs through both chapters.

Birth

December 2, 1952, Tianjin

Career

Vice Mayor of Tianjin → Deputy Party Secretary of Zhejiang (2003, serving under Party Secretary Xi Jinping) → Governor of Zhejiang (August 2011 – December 2012) → Party Secretary of Zhejiang (December 18, 2012 – April 26, 2017) → deputy chair of the NPC Environment and Resources Committee (2017) → Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the CPPCC (March 2018 – March 2023; Secretary-General to May 2020) → Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office (February 13, 2020 – present; after the 2023 institutional reform, director of the CCP Central Hong Kong and Macao Work Office)

Signature events

Zhejiang's "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" church and cross demolition campaign (2013–2016); total demolition of Wenzhou's Sanjiang Church (April 28, 2014); Pastor Huang Yizi sentenced to prison (2015); Beijing lawyer Zhang Kai seized in Wenzhou and held in secret detention (August 2015); Chongyi Church pastor Gu Yuese removed and arrested (2016); appointed to run Hong Kong affairs amid a purge of the Hong Kong policy apparatus (February 2020); Beijing-side coordination of the Hong Kong National Security Law (from June 2020); keynote "patriots governing Hong Kong" speech (February 22, 2021); Hong Kong electoral overhaul (2021)

Main responsibility

As Zhejiang Party Secretary he bore overall responsibility for the provincial cross-removal campaign, which multiple outlets reported began after he complained on an inspection tour that Wenzhou's crosses were too conspicuous; the scale of demolition and the arrest and imprisonment of resisters all occurred on his watch. As HKMAO director he was Beijing's top executive official for Hong Kong policy, setting the discourse of National Security Law implementation, the "patriots" principle, and the 2021 electoral redesign

Sanctions

United States: designated by the Treasury's OFAC under Executive Order 13936 on August 7, 2020 (assets under U.S. jurisdiction frozen, U.S. persons barred from dealings); named again in the State Department's Hong Kong Autonomy Act Section 5(a) report of October 14, 2020. As of this page's verification date, the EU, UK, Canada and Australia have imposed no personal sanctions on Xia Baolong

Current status

His CPPCC vice-chairmanship ended in March 2023, but he did not step down from Hong Kong affairs: following the March 2023 party institutional reform he continued as director of the (renamed) Central Hong Kong and Macao Work Office / HKMAO, making official inspection visits to Hong Kong in April 2023 and February 2024

1. Tianjin beginnings: Xi Jinping's deputy in Zhejiang

Xia Baolong was born in Tianjin in December 1952. He worked as an elementary and secondary school teacher in Hebei and Tianjin, then rose through Communist Youth League and district posts to become Party chief of Tianjin's Hexi District and later a vice mayor of Tianjin. In November 2003 he was transferred to Zhejiang as deputy provincial Party secretary. The provincial Party secretary at the time was Xi Jinping, and Xia served as his deputy for nearly four years. After Xi left Zhejiang in 2007, Xia remained in the deputy post, became Governor of Zhejiang in August 2011, and on December 18, 2012 succeeded to the top job: Party Secretary of Zhejiang.

That history was later cited constantly: Xia was among the earliest of Xi Jinping's former subordinates to run a province in his own right. Zhejiang was China's most dynamic private-economy province, and expectations focused on economics. Few anticipated that the deepest mark of his Zhejiang years would be a campaign against churches.

Sources: Wikipedia entry on Xia Baolong; Reuters, February 13, 2020, on the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office appointment.

2. "Three Rectifications and One Demolition": a campaign in the name of building codes

In February 2013 the Zhejiang provincial government launched the "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" campaign — renovating old residential districts, old factory districts and urban villages, and demolishing illegal structures — with a province-wide target of one hundred million square metres of illegal construction over three years. The machinery was classic campaign governance: demolition quotas passed down through province, city and county, progress rankings circulated, and officials' evaluations tied to square metres demolished.

The problem appeared quickly. As targets were ratcheted up at each level, churches — and above all their tall rooftop crosses — became the most visible targets. The New York Times and other outlets reported that during an inspection tour of Wenzhou in the second half of 2013, Xia expressed displeasure that the city's church crosses were numerous and conspicuous; enforcement against churches accelerated sharply afterward. A senior provincial religious-affairs official wrote publicly that Christianity in Zhejiang had grown "too fast and too hot" and needed to be guided. Wenzhou, with one of the highest concentrations of Christians in China and a nickname of "China's Jerusalem," had both a large state-registered "Three-Self" church network and a vigorous unregistered house-church scene. The storm formed there first, then spread province-wide.

The methods varied: some churches lost only their crosses; some had annexes demolished for exceeding approved height or floor area; the most severe cases lost the entire building. The official line never changed — what was demolished was illegal construction, not religion. Believers noted that other illegal structures rarely received comparable attention, while crosses were ordered down even where the building itself was lawful, because they were "too conspicuous." By 2015 the model had spread: cross removals were later reported in Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces. Zhejiang was the source.

Sources: The New York Times reporting on Sanjiang Church and the cross campaign (2014); World Watch Monitor analysis, September 2015; Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, February 2020.

3. Sanjiang Church: April 28, 2014

Sanjiang Church stood in Yongjia County, Wenzhou. It belonged to the official, registered church system, cost tens of millions of yuan to build, and could seat several thousand worshippers. In late 2013 the authorities ordered the church to remove its cross and cut back its floor area. The congregation refused, and the confrontation escalated. A scholarly case study published in the journal Religions in 2018 traced the chain: the church's protective mobilization was reported upward through the "610 Office," and a directive bearing the provincial Party secretary's endorsement triggered a full investigation of Sanjiang's "illegal construction."

From March 2014, officials demanded the church take down its own cross; believers began standing guard day and night. In early April the authorities issued a demolition deadline. On April 7 the two sides appeared to reach a compromise: the main building would be preserved, and two floors of the annex would be removed. The compromise was never carried out. In late April thousands of believers again gathered to guard the church, some church leaders were taken away, and on April 25 the church was warned that if it did not evacuate, the Sanjiang incident would be treated as an assault on the government and the entire pastoral district would be suppressed.

At 5 a.m. on April 28, 2014, more than a thousand armed police and security guards sealed the surrounding roads, cut communications, and began demolition work that continued until 8:35 that evening. The entire church was flattened. Photographs and video of a state-approved church being razed after weeks of vigils travelled worldwide and became the emblem of the campaign. In March 2015, eight Sanjiang believers were convicted of offences including "illegally occupying farmland" and "gathering a crowd to disturb public order," receiving sentences from several months to three years, some suspended.

Sources: Christian Solidarity Worldwide briefing, April 29, 2015; Lin, "Religious Regulation and Churches' Responses," Religions (MDPI), 2018; contemporary April 2014 reporting.

4. How many crosses? The competing counts

No official provincial total for churches and crosses was ever published. The main estimates are:

Sources: ChinaAid annual reports; CSW briefing (2015); World Watch Monitor analysis, September 2015.

5. Resistance and its price: Huang Yizi, Zhang Kai, Gu Yuese

Huang Yizi, the first pastor jailed. Huang pastored the Fengwo Church in Pingyang County, Wenzhou. In July 2014, when enforcement teams moved on the cross of Pingyang's Salvation Church, guards beat more than fifty believers who had been keeping vigil; Huang led parishioners to the county government to demand an explanation. He was arrested in August, and Salvation Church's cross was toppled days later. In March 2015 the Pingyang County court sentenced him to one year in prison for "gathering a crowd to disturb social order" — the first pastor imprisoned in the cross campaign. On the day of his trial more than five hundred Christians from across the Wenzhou area stood outside the courthouse in support. His defense lawyer was a Beijing attorney named Zhang Kai.

Zhang Kai, the lawyer who defended a hundred churches — and vanished. Zhang, a Christian human rights lawyer from Beijing, spent 2015 providing legal services to roughly one hundred Zhejiang churches facing demolition, organising litigation teams to resist through administrative lawsuits. On the night of August 25, 2015, police seized him at Xialing Church in Wenzhou — on the eve of a scheduled meeting with the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Wenzhou police notified his family that he was suspected of "gathering a crowd to disturb public order" and of stealing and illegally providing state secrets, and placed him under residential surveillance at a designated location — secret, incommunicado detention. On February 25, 2016, he appeared on Zhejiang television delivering a "confession" that he had taken foreign direction to disturb social order; those who knew him broadly regarded it as coerced. On March 23, 2016, after nearly seven months of secret detention and without trial, Zhang was released to his home in Inner Mongolia.

Gu Yuese, the fate of an official church leader. Gu Yuese (Joseph Gu) was chairman of the Zhejiang Christian Council and senior pastor of Hangzhou's Chongyi Church — China's largest state-run church, seating 5,500, built entirely from believers' donations. Gu had published an essay opposing the forced removal of crosses. On January 18, 2016, the provincial Christian bodies abruptly removed him as Chongyi's senior pastor. On January 28 he was placed under residential surveillance at a designated location; within days it emerged he was accused of embezzling ten million yuan of church funds. He was released on bail on March 31, 2016, but on January 7, 2017 his family received a formal arrest notice on the same charge and he was held in the Hangzhou detention centre. On December 24, 2017, church circles reported that Gu had come home on Christmas Eve and prosecutors had dropped the case — a result never formally confirmed by any official announcement, and he never returned to Chongyi's pulpit. ChinaAid described him as the highest-profile Christian leader targeted since the Cultural Revolution.

Beyond these three, Amnesty International counted more than 230 protesters detained during the 2015 phase of the campaign, and ChinaAid and church media reported that between July and September 2015 more than 250 lawyers, pastors and activists were taken away, detained or summoned in connection with resistance to the demolitions. Believers also resisted in quieter ways — re-erecting crosses, wearing and carrying cross symbols, keeping night vigils. Against the machinery of the state, the outcomes were mostly those recorded in the three cases above.

Sources: The New York Times on Huang Yizi's sentencing (March 2015); Christianity Today on Zhang Kai's release (March 2016); ChinaAid on Gu Yuese's arrest (January 2017) and China Christian Daily on his reported release (December 27, 2017); Amnesty International figures as cited in press reporting.

6. Leaving Zhejiang: the CPPCC years

On April 26, 2017, Xia stepped down as Zhejiang Party Secretary, succeeded by Che Jun. He was first moved to a deputy chairmanship of the National People's Congress Environment and Resources Committee — a post usually read as semi-retirement — and observers wondered whether the international controversy over the crosses had stalled his career. In March 2018, however, he was elected a Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, entering the ranks of "party and state leaders." By then the framing had shifted: at the April 2016 national religious work conference, Xi Jinping had set "Sinicization" of religion as the direction of policy, and Zhejiang's cross campaign came to look less like a liability than a pilot. The mass cross removals later carried out in Henan and elsewhere were widely read as the Zhejiang model going national.

Sources: Wikipedia entry on Xia Baolong; International Christian Concern, March 2018, on Xia's CPPCC promotion.

7. February 2020: handed Hong Kong at a moment of crisis

In 2019 Hong Kong was convulsed by the anti-extradition-bill movement, which ran for over half a year. Beijing's dissatisfaction with its Hong Kong apparatus was open: pro-establishment candidates were routed in the November 2019 District Council elections. On January 4, 2020, Liaison Office director Wang Zhimin was removed and replaced by Luo Huining (see this archive's Luo Huining entry). On February 13, 2020, the State Council announced that Xia Baolong would concurrently serve as director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, while the incumbent, Zhang Xiaoming, was demoted to deputy director in charge of day-to-day work — the most senior official to fall over the Hong Kong crisis.

Because Xia held the state-leader rank of CPPCC Vice Chairman while taking the HKMAO directorship, the office's effective status was raised. Reuters quoted Hong Kong Baptist University scholar Jean-Pierre Cabestan calling Xia no moderate, pointing to his heavy-handed Zhejiang church campaign, and predicting more of the same. Catholic and Protestant media and religious-freedom organisations responded to the appointment with a common warning: the man who tore down the crosses was coming to run Hong Kong.

Sources: Reuters, February 13, 2020; Catholic News Service, February 14, 2020; Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, February 2020.

8. The National Security Law era: discourse, personnel, institutional redesign

Just over four months after Xia took the job, in May 2020 the National People's Congress decided to write a national security law for Hong Kong directly; on June 30, 2020, the Hong Kong National Security Law was promulgated and took effect, bypassing Hong Kong's legislature entirely. The HKMAO is Beijing's coordinating organ for Hong Kong policy and Xia was its chief on the Beijing end of the new architecture: a central national security office in Hong Kong, an empowered Liaison Office, and a National Security Advisor sitting on the Hong Kong government's own security committee. Over the following three years Hong Kong's politics were remade on a timetable, and Xia delivered the keynote framing at each stage.

"Patriots governing Hong Kong." On February 22, 2021, Xia delivered a long speech at a seminar on the theme, laying down the doctrine that governing power must rest with "staunch patriots" and listing exclusion criteria — "anti-China, destabilising" figures, advocates of Hong Kong independence, and those who colluded with foreign forces were to be kept out of the governing structure. The speech fired the starting gun for the electoral overhaul. On March 11, 2021, the NPC adopted its Decision on improving Hong Kong's electoral system; on March 30 the NPC Standing Committee rewrote Annexes I and II of the Basic Law: the Election Committee grew to 1,500 members with a new Candidate Eligibility Review Committee vetting all candidates, and of the Legislative Council's 90 seats only 20 remained for direct election, down from 35 geographical seats, with 70 seats allocated to functional constituencies and the Election Committee. The first Legislative Council election under the new system, on December 19, 2021, drew a geographical-constituency turnout of 30.2 percent, the lowest since 1997; traditional pro-democracy parties fielded no candidates and the chamber filled almost entirely with pro-establishment members.

Personnel. On Xia's watch Beijing completed the restaffing of Hong Kong's government: in June 2021 former police officer John Lee became Chief Secretary, with Chris Tang succeeding him as Secretary for Security; on May 8, 2022, Lee was elected Chief Executive with 1,416 votes, the first police officer to hold the job. In January 2023 Zheng Yanxiong replaced Luo Huining as Liaison Office director. Personnel is policy: security officials occupying the top two rungs of the Hong Kong government is what "patriots governing Hong Kong" looks like in staffing terms.

District councils and Article 23. In 2023 Hong Kong's District Councils were restructured: 470 seats in total, of which only 88 — about a fifth — remained directly elected, the rest appointed or indirectly chosen. Turnout in the December 10, 2023 district election was 27.54 percent, another record low. In March 2024 the Legislative Council unanimously passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, the local Article 23 legislation, a process overseen throughout by Xia's Hong Kong affairs system. Xia himself made a six-day inspection visit to Hong Kong on April 13–18, 2023, including the National Security Education Day ceremony, and returned for a seven-day visit in February 2024. The itinerary was itself a signal: national security, the rule-of-law apparatus, and the disciplined services were fixed items on every visit.

Sources: Xinhua and Hong Kong government releases on Xia's February 22, 2021 speech and his April 2023 and February 2024 Hong Kong visits; NPC Decision of March 11, 2021; Hong Kong Registration and Electoral Office turnout figures for the 2021 Legislative Council and 2023 District Council elections.

9. Sanctions: the U.S. list and the responses

On August 7, 2020, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, acting under Executive Order 13936 of July 14, 2020 ("Hong Kong Normalization"), sanctioned eleven Chinese and Hong Kong officials for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy. Xia Baolong was among them. The Treasury described him as a leader or official of an entity that had engaged in actions or policies threatening the peace, security, stability or autonomy of Hong Kong, in his capacity as HKMAO director. Designated alongside him were Zhang Xiaoming, Luo Huining and Zheng Yanxiong, and Hong Kong officials including Chief Executive Carrie Lam and Secretary for Security John Lee (see the related entries in this archive). The measures froze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction and barred U.S. persons from transacting with him, with associated visa restrictions. On October 14, 2020, the State Department's first report under Section 5(a) of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act named Xia again among ten officials found to have materially contributed to China's failure to meet its obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, and warned foreign financial institutions that significant transactions with the named persons could trigger secondary sanctions.

Other governments stopped at condemnation and policy measures: the United Kingdom opened the BNO visa route, the European Union issued statements and suspended some Hong Kong arrangements, and Canada and Australia suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong. But as of this page's verification date, none of the EU, the UK, Canada or Australia has placed Xia Baolong personally under sanctions. The only designation of him with legal force is America's. Beijing responded from 2021 onward with counter-sanctions on U.S. persons and entities and has repeatedly declared the U.S. measures illegal and void.

Sources: U.S. Treasury OFAC press release SM1088, August 7, 2020; Secretary of State Pompeo's statement of August 7, 2020; State Department Hong Kong Autonomy Act Section 5(a) report, October 14, 2020, as summarised by multiple law-firm client alerts and press reports.

10. Current status: still in post after 2023

It is often said that Xia Baolong stepped down as Hong Kong affairs chief in 2023. That is not accurate, and this archive corrects it here. What ended in March 2023 was his term as a Vice Chairman of the 13th CPPCC (March 14, 2018 – March 10, 2023). In the same month, the party's institutional reform created the Central Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the CCP Central Committee, operating as one institution with two nameplates alongside the State Council's HKMAO. Xia remained its director: Hong Kong government releases for his April 2023 inspection visit still carried the HKMAO director title, and his February 2024 visit was in the same capacity. As of this page's verification date (October 2026), no official announcement of his departure from the Hong Kong affairs system has been made. Born in 1952, he is well past the customary retirement age for senior Chinese officials, yet he has been kept in this post — itself a signal that Beijing's hard line on Hong Kong has neither changed hands nor wound down.

Sources: Wikipedia entry on Xia Baolong (director listed as incumbent); Hong Kong government press releases on Xia's April 2023 visit.

11. Responsibility analysis

Xia's two signature postings used a strikingly consistent method. In Zhejiang the instrument was "illegal construction" enforcement — a facially neutral body of administrative law, applied selectively and in campaign style to churches. In Hong Kong the instruments were national-security legislation and candidate vetting — arrangements framed in the language of security, used to exclude dissent from politics altogether. In neither case was he the original decision-maker at the very top: cross removal fitted Xi Jinping's general direction of "Sinicizing" religion, and the National Security Law was enacted by the NPC. But the intensity of a campaign, the pace of its rollout, and where its edges fall are decided at the level of the provincial Party secretary and the HKMAO director. Sanjiang Church had reached a compromise; it was razed anyway. Zhejiang believers' resistance was answered case by case with imprisonment, secret detention, removal and arrest. None of that followed inevitably from a single document in Beijing; it was the choice of the man running Zhejiang.

The same applies in Hong Kong. The February 2021 "patriots" speech came from Xia's mouth, and the thresholds of the overhaul — vetting machinery, seat ratios, personnel placements — were worked by the system he directed. His responsibility for both records is that of the executor, and also of the amplifier: the centre supplied the direction; he converted direction into non-negotiable reality.

Sources: Jamestown Foundation, China Brief, analyses; Reuters and SCMP reporting on the HKMAO's role.

12. Contested narratives

Beijing's account: The "Three Rectifications and One Demolition" campaign demolished illegal structures and had nothing to do with religious belief; the lawful rights of religious venues in Zhejiang were protected. Xia's Hong Kong appointment embodied the central government's comprehensive jurisdiction; the National Security Law and electoral changes took Hong Kong "from chaos to governance." U.S. sanctions are dismissed as hegemonic and unrecognised.

Religious-freedom and human-rights organisations: ChinaAid, CSW, International Christian Concern and others consistently describe the Zhejiang campaign as systematic suppression of Christianity, with Xia as its designer and the official responsible; his transfer to Hong Kong affairs was read as a signal that the same heavy hand would be applied to Hong Kong's civil society.

The U.S. government: Treasury and State Department designation documents list Xia among the officials responsible for undermining Hong Kong's autonomy; the Hong Kong Autonomy Act report found he materially contributed to China's failure to honour the Joint Declaration.

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