Chinese Families Seek Christian Education in Southeast Asia

In the past seven years, Chinese house church leaders Owen Jiao and Ella Jiang have sought to provide their children with a Christian education, a difficult journey that caused them to run afoul of the Chinese government, ostracized them from their fellow church members, and forced them to move three times—twice outside the country. It stretched their faith, their finances, and their relationship. When Jiao and Jiang’s daughter was 2, a Christian friend told them about classical Christian education, and the ministers then living in Luoyang, Henan Province, were intrigued. Yet in China, the government requires parents to enroll their children in either the public school system—known for its long hours, high pressure, and pro-Communist curriculum—or expensive private schools that most families can’t afford. Leaving the system for alternative educational models is illegal, as China mandates nine years of compulsory education. While there are avenues for students to return to public schools, students who stay outside the system until higher grades can’t test into Chinese universities. For Christian families, it’s a weighty decision to make: Stay in the public schools and risk a child leaving the faith. Exit the system and risk one educational decision shaping a child’s entire life. The couple’s beliefs framed their educational choices. Jiao encouraged Jiang to step out in faith and teach their daughter: “If the Bible is true, then let’s first bring her out of the public school system, then figure out our next steps.” They began homeschooling their daughter—and later their son—with the classical concepts of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), using an English-language curriculum, supplemented with Chinese lessons and Bible reading. But fellow church members thought their actions were too extreme. “We were so lonely,” Jiang said of that time. “Every time we brought this up, there would be conflicts.” Through classmates in Jiao’s online seminary class, he learned about a church in Guangzhou that had started a classical Christian school. The couple could teach at the school and serve in the church while giving their kids the education and community they needed. So they moved 900 miles south to Guangzhou and enrolled their kids in the 60-student school. Jiang taught elementary grades while Jiao taught high-school-level math and theology. Yet the school faced intense government pressure due to its illegal status. Police raided the school, following close behind it even as it moved locations. In September 2023, the school closed for good. Then the couple heard that a Chinese church had opened a classical Christian school in the South Pacific island of Fiji. Again, the family sold their furniture, packed their belongings, and moved—this time almost 5,000 miles away from home. Yet their first Sunday at the Chinese church in Fiji, the leaders announced the church was splitting, a fact no one had told them beforehand. “We were so hurt,” Jiang said. “We couldn’t understand God. … I thought, I was following you. I’m not seeking worldly things like other people. … How come I came here and this happened?” After a few months, the family returned to China, disappointed and discouraged. Jiang resumed homeschooling but felt the shame of having ended up back where they started. When a friend told them about a Beijing house church that had planted a new church in Jakarta, Indonesia—along with a seminary, a coffee shop chain, and a classical Christian school—they had no desire to go. But under the strict religious rules in China, Jiao and Jiang felt constrained in their ministry and opportunities for their children. Jiao agreed to visit Jakarta’s Hora Academy and Meicun Church in August 2025 for a week to ensure they didn’t repeat a situation like Fiji. During that visit, he was impressed by the church’s focus on missions, the teachings at the school and seminary, and how its lead pastor humbly led by example. He returned to tell Jiang, “I felt God was there.” So once more, the family packed up their belongings and in October moved to Jakarta, again several thousand miles away, enrolling their daughter in fifth grade and their son in second grade. Jiao and Jiang are part of a growing number of Chinese Christian families moving to Southeast Asia. In countries like Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, international Christian schools are seeing an influx of Chinese students, while Chinese Christians are also starting their own schools like Hora Academy. Southeast Asia is attractive due to its easy travel accessibility from China, its low cost of living, and its greater religious freedoms. Many Southeast Asian countries also have large Chinese diaspora communities and easy visa access for Chinese citizens. Yet sending children to schools in Southeast Asia comes at a high cost. Often, people must leave elderly parents and church communities, quit their jobs and sell their homes, struggle with language barriers and unfamiliar foods, and settle in countries with a lower standard of living. For some, the move also requires temporarily breaking up their family as one parent moves with the child to Southeast Asia while the other stays behind to continue providing for the family or doing ministry. Some send their children alone to board at their new school. Despite these challenges, many parents can’t bear the alternative of remaining within the Chinese school system. By high school, many students are at school from 7:30 a.m. until after evening self-study ends at 10 p.m. Christian parents and pastors told CT that by middle or high school, many children have left the faith because they have no time for church and spend nearly all their waking hours in an anti- Christian environment. CT spoke with families who sent their kids to schools in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Fiji for Christian education, as well as teachers, school administrators, pastors, and a university dean to better understand this trend and how far parents are willing to go to ensure their children have a Christian education that fulfills the command to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Prov. 22:6, ESV). In doing this, the influx of Chinese Christians in these countries has led to the expansion of China’s mission movement in the region. Educational pressures in China have led to less sleep, frequent burnout, and higher rates of depression and anxiety among students. But for Christian parents, academic demands play second fiddle to their concerns around what is taught in the classroom. State-mandated curricula teach that God does not exist and view religion as superstitious belief. Nationalist education has increased in the past decade under President Xi Jinping. The 2024 Patriotic Education Law mandates that teachers incorporate the love of the Chinese Communist Party into all school subjects and teaching material. Chinese Christians have been starting their own small church schools since around 2000. By 2017, about 800 unregistered schools existed in the country. They met in homes or rented office space, finding Christian teachers willing to take a salary cut and often purchasing American Christian curriculum for their students to use. The quality of the schools varied, as many struggled to find qualified instructors, make enough money to be sustainable, and stay off the government’s radar. Some school leaders built friendships with local officials who turned a blind eye to their schools.