[3] However, government restrictions and persecution forced the movement to go underground for decades, and its leader Simon Zhao spent 31 years in prison in Kashgar.
[2] Since 2003, the most vocal international proponent of "Back to Jerusalem" has been the exiled Chinese house church leader Liu Zhenying, also known as "Brother Yun".
Yun intended for "Back to Jerusalem" to evangelize fifty-one countries by sending a minimum of 100,000 missionaries along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route that winds from China to the Mediterranean Sea.
[4] The ongoing work of evangelism, both within China and beyond its borders, is done anonymously by Chinese church members, who make no appeals for money or seek any publicity for themselves.
He further sees as problematic the spirit of missionary martyrdom and its ethnocentric claim of China's role in bringing the gospel on its final leg.