China forces underground pastor from Beijing: paper

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese police have removed a prominent Beijing-based pastor and his wife from the capital as it steps up efforts to control dissidents in the run-up to the Olympics, the South China Morning Post reported on Sunday.

Zhang Mingxuan, president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, told the Hong Kong newspaper he and his ailing wife, Xie Fenglan, had been whisked off to neighboring Hebei province on Friday night after a week of harassment.

Police told the church figure, who has often met foreign officials visiting China, that they do not want him in Beijing during next month's Olympics to prevent him from meeting foreigners, the article quoted Zhang as saying.

Beijing police, reached by Reuters by telephone, declined to comment.

China's ruling Communist Party is wary of religious and other groups that could challenge its grip, including unregistered Christian "house churches", and regularly detains pastors and priests.

China has about 40 million active Christians, with their numbers evenly divided between state-run and underground churches, according to expert estimates.

The newspaper quoted Zhang as saying around seven plainclothes officers on Friday raided a guesthouse they had been staying in and told them to leave.

Zhang and his wife had rejected repeated demands during the week by police from various districts to leave Beijing, it said, adding that the couple had to move from guesthouse to guesthouse six times during the week.

The newspaper said Zhang was placed under house arrest after meeting U.S. congressmen Frank Wolf and Christopher Smith last month, and was also detained for 31 hours last month while he and his interpreter were on their way to meet Bastiaan Belder, of the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson)