Legally registered churches are under attack while illegal house churches are being invited into official dialogue. Is China heading for another Mao-era persecution or opening up to religious freedom? With conflicting signals across a range of social, economic and political issues, nothing is certain. There is, however, reason for optimism: the gospel is alive and something must happen. Gu Yuese has served as the senior pastor at China’s largest government-approved Protestant church, a megachurch with ten thousand members. He has also held a leadership role in China’s state-approved denomination, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). In January the TSPM and China Christian Council forcibly removed Gu from his Church in a move to ‘move one step closer towards the proper self-construction and management of church locations’ and sort out the relationship between the province and the two municipal Christian organisations. Gu was arrested and sent to a ‘black’ jail (a facility falling outside the established penal system) where he is undergoing a criminal investigation.