Xi’an pastor Tang Bingyi faces fraud trial as Light of Zion case moves to pretrial

ChinaAid, Rights Movement (chinahrc), and Minsheng Guancha reported on September 14, 2026, that Pastor Tang Bingyi of Xi’an’s Light of Zion Church was due for a September 15 pretrial conference on a fraud charge. This is the Xi’an congregation, not Beijing Zion Church’s Beihai “Zion 8” case. Rights Movement said police at Xi’an’s Xingqing Road station in Beilin District detained Tang and other Light of Zion workers on May 17, 2025, the day after Pastor Gao Quanfu was taken, and that eight of those detained were later released on bail while Tang and Gao remained held. Authorities first cited suspected use of superstition to commit a crime, then changed the count to fraud when the Beilin procuratorate approved arrest, the same accounts said. In January 2026 the cases of Gao, his wife Pang Yu, and Tang were sent to the Beilin court together and later split into three files, Rights Movement reported. Tang is held at the Beilin detention house, that dispatch said.

Family members and counsel plan a not-guilty defense, ChinaAid and Minsheng Guancha said. ChinaAid, citing a September 13 family prayer letter, said lawyers Zeng Yue and Luo Tao intend to argue Tang is not guilty. Rights groups and the family treat the fraud count as tracking voluntary church offerings — Minsheng Guancha described that offerings-as-fraud framing in the related Gao charging papers — not as an independent audit of the files. Gao’s own pretrial conference was held August 10, Minsheng Guancha said. This brief records the pretrial listing and attributed defense plans. It does not report a verdict, and it does not treat an unverified September 16 lawyer-clash account as filed fact.