Communist Party Principles

President Xi Jinping of China. Noel Celis. Pool / Getty Images

Churches throughout China have been forced to remove displays of the Ten Commandments and religious imagery and replace them with quotes and portraits of President Xi Jinping.

New draconian rules for religious groups are set to go into place in China requiring that they “spread Communist Party principles.”

China’s totalitarian government promulgated new rules on December 30 that will place virtually all aspects of religious life under the control of the Communist Party. The “administrative measures” consist of six chapters and 41 articles governing the “organization, functions, supervision and management of religious groups,” which would include religious doctrine, annual and daily activities, and rallies.

The new rules go into force on February 1 and come as part of a growing crackdown by Chinese communists on religion. For example, about 1 million Muslim Uighur people are being kept in re-education camps, where some have been subjected to torture. Christian churches have been razed by authorities, who have curtailed the independence of Christian ministers. Two million Christians and Buddhist are being kept in detention. Jewish communities have also been harassed.

In concert with the government’s policy of “sinicization,” which is intended to underscore Chinese culture and socialist polity, the new rules reinforce policies announced in 2017 to reinterpret Christian teachings according to socialist doctrine. Besides its persecution of Christian and Muslim believers for supposedly foreign doctrines in its war on religion, China has mercilessly pursued members of the native-born spiritualist Falun Gong movement for more than 20 years.

According to Radio Free Asia, churches in Hunan province were forced last year to remove displays of the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes of President Xi Jinping. Likewise, churches in Jiangxi province were ordered to remove biblical paintings and crosses and replace them with portraits of the president. In some areas, all public displays of Christmas decorations have been banned. In addition, party officials have been told that celebrating the feast is contrary to CCP teachings.

In December, Christians belonging to “house churches” not recognized by the government were ordered to refrain from publicly celebrating Christmas. A Protestant pastor in Shandong, where previous celebrations had drawn thousands of worshipers, said, “We are afraid to meet in public because such meetings have been designated illegal gatherings.” Identified solely as John, the pastor said, “We can’t do Christmas this year. We can’t have any activities on Christmas.”

Under the new rules, all religious organizations will be required to obey and promote Communist Party values and China’s President Xi Jinping.

Churches will be expected to “spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party” and indoctrinate all “religious staff and religious citizens to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”

According to Asia News a Chinese Catholic priest observed: “In practice, your religion no longer matters, if you are Buddhist, or Taoist, or Muslim or Christian: the only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese Communist Party.”

According to the new rules, all churches and religious organizations must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party and “to the directives on religions in China, implementing the values of socialism.”

Article 17 directs: “Religious organizations must spread the principles and policies of the CCP, as well as national laws, regulations, rules to religious personnel and religious citizens, educating religious personnel and religious citizens to support the leadership of the CCP, supporting the socialist system, adhering to and following the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Religious organizations must submit all decisions for approval by Communist Party officials. According to the rules, local religious affairs offices serve as the “administrative bodies” for all religious organizations, controlling them through “guidance and supervision.”

China is home to a growing community of 68 million Protestants. There are also approximately 3.3 million Catholics, with another 5.7 million who consider themselves Catholics but belong to the schismatic state-sponsored “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association” (CPCA).

The CPCA is not in communion with the papacy and has operated in parallel with the so-called “underground” Church, which consists of clergy and laity who have remained loyal to the pope and the worldwide church despite decades of persecution, summary arrests, torture, and death.

In 2018, the Vatican reached a secret provisional agreement with Beijing, having long sought to normalize ties between the Catholic Church and China’s government. The accord allows the communists to play a role in appointing bishops. Under a previous arrangement, Vatican diplomats dealt with members of the government in order to iron out disagreements. Under the new accord, they will deal with Communist Party cadres.

Despite the agreement, persecution of the Church has increased in China. At least one bishop and several priests have refused to register with the Chinese government despite being allowed by the Vatican. Bishop Vincent Guo of Mindong province fled his official captors last year rather than register with the government. Bishop Guo remains in hiding.

Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, members of the U.S. Commission on Human Rights, and prominent Christians have called on Pope Francis to repudiate the secret agreement or, at the very least, make it public so it can be scrutinized and reveal whether or not it requires all Catholics to register with the CPCA per the government’s claims.

In December, Cardinal Zen said he fears that the Pope is legitimizing schism within the Catholic Church in China through the controversial agreement.

Saying the current pope’s diplomacy toward China has been “disastrous,” Cardinal Zen said Pope Francis is effectively “shutting down” the legacy of popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI in their relations with China’s government and Chinese Catholics.

Chinese Church Crackdowns

Priests and parishioners have “barricaded” themselves in a Catholic church in the Chinese province of Hebei.

According to reports, the Catholics are attempting to “prevent” the Chinese government from “tearing” down the Church.

The protest began at 6am morning at the church in “Wu Gao Zhang”, part of the Guantao district of Hebei, on the coast of northern China. Officials have ordered that the church be “destroyed” even though it is fully recognized and approved by the government. Local authorities said the building lacks “appropriate” permits.

In September 2017, China enacted strict new regulations concerning religion. Since then, authorities have been vigilant in enforcing “permit” requirements. Churches that are not found to be in compliance are destroyed.

Many Chinese Catholics say that last September’s “Sino-Vatican” Agreement has served to embolden the government to take “punitive” action against Catholics who did not belong to “state-approved” churches.

Officials have reportedly claimed that the “Vatican supports us” and have ordered an additional “40 churches” be destroyed.

For decades, the Church in China was split between the “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association,” a state-run Church under the control of Chinese Communist Party, and the “Underground Church” that was in full communion with the Holy See.

The 2018 agreement, the details of which have not been “released” was intended to unify the two ecclesiastical communities, although multiple reports out of China have indicated that priests and laity who “refuse” to worship at government-run churches are have faced increased “persecution.”

In the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian in eastern China, priests who refused to sign agreements binding them to regulations government have been forced out of their homes, and their churches have been closed. The Chinese government has forbidden non-compliant priests from traveling, and many have been forced to go into hiding.

In July and August, at least five Catholic churches in the Yujiang diocese were forcibly “shut down” by the government, due to their refusal to join the CPCA. In mid-August, government officials threatened to arrest an underground priest and revoke basic government subsidies to all Catholics in the city of Yingtan after their parish refused to join the state-sponsored Church.

“The government places spies in CPCA churches to specially monitor what priests say in their sermons and what activities they hold,” a priest from Yujiang reported. The Chinese government monitors the everyday activity of CPCA priests and their travel. “Basically, the state knows everything about the priests,” he added.

In September, reports emerged that churches belonging to the Chinese state-run “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” Protestant denomination have been ordered to “replace” displays of the Ten Commandments with sayings of Chinese president Xi Jinping.

The directive reportedly came after “Three-Self Churches” were initially told to remove the First Commandment, “You shall have no gods before me,” as Jinping disagreed with it.

Reports indicate that those who have refused to remove any or all of the “Ten Commandments” have been imprisoned, with leaders and worshippers “harassed” even in churches that complied with the instruction.

Underground Catholic Church

The “2018 Vatican-China” deal continues to be a matter of “contention.”

The CCP “interprets” it to the effect that priests and bishops of the “Underground Catholic Church” should join the “Patriotic Catholic Church”, or else.

The Vatican has denied that this is a correct “interpretation” of the agreement, but in China those who “refuse” to join the Patriotic Church continue being “persecuted.”

A Catholic priest from the Diocese of Yujiang in the southeast Chinese province of Jiangxi was asked to assess the situation. His name is not mentioned for security reasons. He said that a look at the early history of “Catholicism in China” under CCP rule is needed in order to “understand” the most recent events.

“In the early years of the CCP rule, the priest remembered, the authorities carried out violent suppression of the Underground Catholic Church by arresting Chinese priests and clergy personnel and forcibly repatriating all foreign missionaries, including the very popular Lazarists, as well as seizing church properties. However, not only did the CCP’s arrests fail to destroy the church, but on the contrary, this caused more and more people to believe in God.” 

In fact, the priest argued, “in just more than 10 years, the number of churchgoers grew exponentially. This is something that the CCP never expected. It also made them realize that just simply making arrests was useless.”

The priest said that in the early 1950’s, the Chinese government launched the “Patriotic Church” and tried to “force” Catholic believers to join it and leave the “leadership” of the Pope.

Meanwhile, members of the clergy like Peter Joseph Fan Xueyan (1907-1992), a Catholic bishop who was “imprisoned” for more than 30 years for his refusal to “break ties” with the Vatican, remained “loyal” to the pope.

Many Catholic believers and clerics followed Bishop Fan in “boycotting” the Patriotic Church, and were “arrested.”

To CCP’s annoyance, however, there were more bishops like Fan Xueyan. Bishop Thomas Zeng Jingmu (1920-2016), the late sixth bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Yujiang, was also “imprisoned” for about 30 years because he “refused” to join the CPCA. After his release from prison, he continuously remained under CCP “surveillance.”

Constantly “visited” by local officials and “monitored” at all times, the bishop was not allowed to move “freely or attend church events” as he wished. Friends and allies of the bishop tried repeatedly to “lose the surveillance” but were unsuccessful.

So, the priest said, “the authorities tried to prevent the emergence of another underground bishop with the same level of influence as Bishop Fan or Bishop Zeng.”

Now, the “strategy” has changed. Anxious about the church’s growth, the CCP has started to “implement” a new means of persecution: “to disintegrate the church from within.”

The priest explained: “CCP ideologists believe that religion is a kind of fanaticism: the harsher the persecution, the more powerful it becomes, and the more it grows. With respect to how religions are treated, only dis-integrative approaches can be adopted to break it up from the inside. The CCP is now using this disintegration method to break up our Diocese. This is scarier than being arrested, because there is simply no way to prevent such persecution.”

The priest said that there are three “primary methods” by which the CCP is seeking to “break up” the underground Catholic churches.

First, and the most significant, for the CCP is to place the bishops who refuse to join the Patriotic Church under surveillance.
Second, shut down underground seminaries and restrict the training of clergy.
Third, reduce the number of congregation venues and as a consequence of churchgoers. 

Chinese authorities are working hard to “influence” the underground clergy throughout the dioceses in China to “join” the Patriotic Church.

If “imprisonment, torture, bribes or material incentives” don’t work, bishops who “refuse” to join the Patriotic Church are placed under strict “surveillance” to prevent them from performing their duties and “deprive” the clergy of leadership. Today, even bishops in their 80’s and 90’s are monitored.

“The CCP has a lot of tricks: threatening people, using intimidation, arresting people, as well as financial inducement,” the interviewed priest said. “As long as someone agrees to join the Patriotic Church, they will be immediately promoted. They can also enjoy excellent benefits after retiring. The ways of the devil are sinister: he carefully explores people’s hearts and goes for the greatest weakness.”

The interviewed priest mentioned a case of a priest from the Diocese of Yujiang who was offered “hundreds of thousands of yuan” if he joined the Patriotic Church, but he “refused.”

With the “2018 Vatican-China” deal bishops should be “recognized” by the Pope. But, when the Vatican recognizes a bishop known for his “pro-CCP” positions, several devotees “refuse” to attend ceremonies presided by him. As a consequence, the Church becomes “divided.”

One informant even reported “rumors” that, to prevent this, the CCP keeps “secret” the fact that some former “underground” priests and bishops have “joined” the Patriotic Church. On the other hand, those who “stubbornly” refuse to join the Patriotic Church are “persecuted” and lose their parish positions.

The priest lamented, “The CCP is buying people off; it creates chaos at the church, causing the church to break up from the inside. This is a very sinister move!” 

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