Christian kindergarten director released by Chinese authorities after 2-year imprisonment

The Christian director of a kindergarten school in China has finally been released after spending two years in prison.

According to a report by China Aid, Cheng Jie, who is the director of Hualin Foreign Language Experimental Kindergarten was released from prison on Wednesday. She was picked up by her husband and two sons.

Back in February 2014, Cheng was arrested by the authorities in Guangxi, and charged with "engaging in illegal business operations."

A few months later, the authorities crossed the boundaries of Guangxi and Guangdong to arrest Huang Qiurui, who is an elder of Guangzhou's Liangren Church, as well as Li Jiatao, a church member, and Fang Bin, the person who was contracted to print school textbooks.

The Liangren Church was the institution that founded the Hualin Kindergarten.

The officials said that they arrested the four individuals because they illegally printed character-education textbooks. The kindergarten even sold the textbooks, which supposedly should have been used only for internal purposes at the school.

As a result, they were all charged with participating in "illegal business operations."

Meanwhile, the defendants' lawyer argued that the kindergarten was selling the books at cost, or equal to the amount of money spent to print them. This was also the way for the school to break even with the printing costs.

The lawyer claims that the four defendants and the kindergarten were targeted by the authorities because they are affiliated with a Christian church.

Cheng, Huang, and Li were all charged for two years imprisonment, and required to pay 5,000 Yuan (U.S. $765) each as a fine for their actions.

As Fang was not directly involved but was only contracted, he served a shorter time in jail of one year and nine months.