One scholar, Daniel Bays, writes,
The 'Local Church', which is sometimes called by its adherents 'churches in the Lord's recovery', is a movement partially derived from the ideas of Watchman Nee (Ni Tuoshen, 1903-72) and his movement, called by some the Little Flock. A cardinal principle of Nee from the 1920s on was the desire to supersede denominationalism, which he despised as a pernicious Western creation, and to have just one church - the 'local church' - in each city or locality. When Nee was imprisoned in the 1950s, the legacy of his movement was elaborated by his followers, including a former lieutenant, Witness Lee (Li Changshou), in Taiwan and then in North America.
The Little Flock remnants in China which had survived the years of persecution linked up around 1980 with missionary representatives of the Local Church movement based outside China. The result was a spectrum of groups, to greater or lesser degrees standing in the tradition of Nee's old movement, mixed with the newer doctrines of Witness Lee. In the 1980s, some of the groups, especially those in Zhejiang province, engaged in loud verbal behaviours during worship, and were dubbed the 'shouters'
(huhanpai). Several cases of violent disruption among Protestants were associated with their activities in the 1980s. These elements, rightly or wrongly, were denounced by the government and by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement as sectarian and illegitimate, and have been persecuted on and off ever since. In the early 2000s, the 'shouters' were still on the list of 'evil cults' pursued by the authorities.
During 2002, some foreign representatives of the Local Church reportedly announced an end to the relationships with the 'shouters'. Thus the links between them are uncertain at the present.
(in, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, Davis E, ed. Routledge 2005)
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Originally Posted by aron
Seems like they began to formally end relations in 2002? Yet LC leaders privately admit affiliation with ~1,500 assemblies, ten years later, per Theresa Zimmerman-Liu?
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