Recent events in China demonstrate that the cross is continuing to cause offense to some in that country, nearly four centuries later. However, these days the offense is caused not by a misunderstanding of the significance of the cross in Christian theology. Instead, it seems to be causing offense to some in the ruling Communist Party because it represents an allegedly foreign ideology that is threatening the pre-eminent position of the Party.
According to media reports (like this), during the past few months numerous churches in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang have had crosses removed from their roofs or even been subject to demolition orders. The most dramatic example of this trend was the demolition of the Sanjiang Church in the city of Wenzhou by authorities, allegedly due to zoning violations. What was especially shocking about this incident was that, first, local authorities had originally authorized construction of the church, and second, that the Sanjiang Church was affiliated with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement--the government-sponsored Protestant church in China--not an "illegal" underground/house church.
Why would Chinese authorities seek to remove crosses from churches, or even destroy church buildings? After all, even though the People's Republic of China is officially an atheist state, its constitution supposedly protects (though with conditions) the right to religious belief. Moreover, both Protestant and Catholic Christianity are among the officially recognized religions of the country (the others are Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam). At the most fundamental level, the reason seems to be that the Communist Party fears the growth of Christianity.
In recent years Christianity has grown dramatically in China and it seems likely to continue to grow. In fact, Professor Yang Fenggang of Purdue University has predicted that by 2025 China will have approximately 160 million Christians, which would make China the world's largest Christian nation, displacing the U.S. (see here). This is quite astounding, considering that when the Communists came to power in 1949, there were only around one million Protestant Christians in China. Moreover, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), there was a major effort to eliminate Christianity (and other religions) from Chinese society. Eventually, the Communist Party abandoned the effort to eradicate Christianity and other faiths, and adopted a new policy of allowing religious activity, but under strict government control. Despite those controls, increasing numbers of Chinese have turned to Christianity, part of larger movement towards religion in a society which has largely abandoned belief in Communist ideology.
However, it would appear that many in the Communist Party fear the growth of Christianity in China because they view it as a threat to the continued rule of the Party. For one thing, some in the Party seem to believe that the rise of Christianity in China is part of a Western plot to overthrow the Party. Moreover, some Chinese Christians have concluded, based on their faith, that all human beings have certain God-given rights that cannot be taken away by the government--an idea that is anathema to the Communists because it could lead to opposition to one-party rule, as it did in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, some Party members associate Christianity with Western imperialism in China in the 19th century, as some Christian missionaries took advantage of the special legal status of foreigners in China at that time to carry out their work.
Finally, it is hard not to suppose that another reason for the current campaign to remove crosses from the roofs of Chinese churches is that those crosses represent a rebuke to the militant atheism of the Communists. Those crosses are a symbol of the failure of Communism (which, ironically, is also a "foreign import" in China, like Christianity) to win the hearts of many of the Chinese people. So, in a sense, the offense of the cross in China is that it exposes the inability of political ideology to meet the deepest spiritual needs of human beings. However, removing the outward symbol of the Christian faith from a building can never remove that faith from the hearts of believers, nor can it thwart the onward spread of the Gospel!
Image of Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou, China (under construction) by Zhang Yu from globaltimes.cn