The Shouters, or more properly the Shouters sect (呼喊派), is a label attached by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to an amorphous group within China that was targeted by the government first as counterrevolutionaries and subsequently as a criminal cult after incidents in Dongyang and Yiwu counties in Zhejiang province in February 1982. "The Shouters sect" became the object of waves of arrests in 1983 and again in 1995. Several 1983 publications with ties to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) accused the late expatriate Chinese Christian teacher Witness Lee (Li Changshou) of being the leader of "the Shouters sect" and of instigating the disorders. In practice, however, the appellation "the Shouters sect" has been applied far more broadly to many groups that pray openly and audibly and/or do not register or otherwise cooperate with the TSPM. There is considerable reason to doubt the veracity of the reports which led to the condemnation of "the Shouters sect" and the association of them with Witness Lee or the local churches, and the local churches distance themselves from the Shouters.
Background
During the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, all public practice of religion in the People's Republic of China was suppressed as part of the attempt to eliminate the "Four Olds"—"old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas." Red Guard brigades assailed Christians in various parts of China. Religion was condemned as a corrupting factor in Chinese society, and many Christians were sent to labor camps and subjected to "re-education." Religious books, including Bibles and Christian literature, were destroyed. From 1973 the Christian faith began to spread rapidly in some parts of China. Because the TSPM had itself been disbanded in 1966, this spread took place entirely underground, that is, without government interference. Many "house churches" sprang up, as well as many home meetings associated with local churches organized along the lines of the teachings of Watchman Nee. However, in the absence of Bibles and other Christian literature, parts of China, especially more rural areas, became breeding grounds for the development of novel belief systems mixing elements of Christianity with Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and local folk beliefs and practices.
Following the death of Mao Zedong and the defeat of the Gang of Four, Deng Xiaoping became the de facto leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and of the government of the PRC. In 1978 the Fifth National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China adopted a new constitution, the third in the history of the PRC. As far back as the 1954 constitution, Article 88 guaranteed that "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief." Nevertheless, after the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, the affirmation in Article 46 of the new constitution that "citizens enjoy freedom to believe in religion and freedom not to believe in religion and to propagate atheism" led many to believe that a new era of religious freedom was dawning. However, the PRC has historically regulated the practice of religion.
The TSPM and the PRC's Regulation of Religion
In 1950 Zhou Enlai worked with Y. T. Wu to craft "The Christian Manifesto" declaring that Protestants in China would support the new government and reject foreign imperialism. Such initiatives led to the establishment of the TSPM which promoted the "three-self principles" of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. Shortly afterwards a widespread accusation/denouncement campaign began which led to the expulsion of foreign missionaries and to the arrest and imprisonment of many indigenous Chinese Christians as counterrevolutionaries, including prominent Christian teachers such as Watchman Nee and Wang Mingdao. The CCP had a deep mistrust of any leader or movement with a significant following, including religious ones, partly due to the prominent place of the religiously motivated Taiping Rebellion in China's relatively recent past. The CCP itself had first gained traction in China by mobilizing small groups of peasants in rural areas and had grown in strength until it was able to topple the Kuomintang from power.