China’s Religious Persecution

Outside a “vocational skills education center” in Dabancheng, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, September 4, 2018 (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Religious Persecution in China Must Be Called Out
By Olivia Enos & Emilie Kao

On the matter of religion in China, Beijing has made one thing perfectly clear: “No religious group lies beyond the grasp of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”

Late last month, the Jamestown Foundation reported on a new CCP program of collectivization and reeducation in Tibet similar to the forced-labor campaign being carried out against “Uyghurs” in Xinjiang province. In 2020 alone, just under 600,000 rural Tibetans were subjected to this program of indoctrination and retraining for various forms of menial labor.

The military-style training program is accompanied by a labor-transfer program that redistributes workers to places other than their hometowns — often to places outside of Tibet. Rapid collectivization separates person from place, uprooting individuals from their heritage, replacing their native language with Mandarin, and reorienting and secularizing their religious traditions to conform with the tenets and goals of the CCP.

We have heard this story before. We will no doubt hear it again. Never does it have a happy ending.

In 2017 reports emerged that the CCP was collectivizing and interning Muslim Uyghurs in political reeducation facilities in China. Early estimates of a couple of hundred thousand having been placed in the camps were quickly revised to reflect the true picture: camps holding approximately 1.8 million Uyghurs.

The blessed few who have been released subsequently shared stories of hearing the screams of neighbors down the hall being tortured, of receiving forced injections that left them sterilized, and other horrors.

Like Tibetans, Uyghurs are also subject to forced labor. Among those not yet taken to political reeducation camps, well-educated Uyghurs are being forced out of their white-collar jobs and into blue-collar labor. And they, too, have been subject to systematic labor transfers.

The CCP’s coercive measures to restrict family size among Uyghurs have raised concerns that Beijing’s ultimate goal is to significantly limit, or perhaps altogether eliminate, the next generation. Its targeted policy of forced sterilization and forced implantation of IUD’s, combined with its brutal practice of forced abortions and infanticide, have already moved in that direction. There are also reports of Uyghur children being torn from their families and forced into state-run boarding schools. Coercive reproductive limits and the transfer of children from one group to another may constitute genocide or crimes against humanity.

The CCP has long viewed independent “religious practice” as a threat to its rule. While the Party doesn’t seek to eliminate religion, it does seek to supplant the place religion holds in the hearts and minds of its adherents. And if it cannot supplant it, it tries to co-opt it, at the very least.

Persecution of persons of faith has intensified under Xi Jinping’s policy of “Sinicization”, which aims to secularize religion to ensure that it advances the CCP’s goals. The policy accomplishes this, in part, through setting up state-sanctioned religious institutions that moderate and even modify the ways in which people of all religions practice their faith.

Under “Sinicization”, regulation of and outright interference with religious practice have intensified. Christians have seen crosses torn down from atop churches, church buildings demolished, and pastors, like Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church, imprisoned.

Chinese Catholics watched their leaders strike a deal with Beijing two years ago, giving the CCP a say on the appointment of bishops in China. And just recently, it was reported that government-issued high-school textbooks altering a Bible story to turn one of Jesus’s key teachings on its head: “After inducing others not to cast stones at a woman who has sinned, Jesus himself stones her.”

Other religious movements have fared no better. Reports abound that members of “Falun Gong”, a spiritual movement founded in the 1990s, were subjected to “organ harvesting and extrajudicial imprisonment.”

Although not persecuted as severely as the Uyghur Muslims, Hui Muslims have not escaped unscathed. They, too, have seen their mosques closed and religious practices curtailed.

While the CCP may target each group for unique reasons, what motivates its anti-religious actions in general is the threat it believes religion poses to its authority. It thus views “religious persecution” as being essential to its internal stability.

Recognizing the importance the CCP places on restricting religious practice should inform the responses of the U.S. government and the international community.

China is one of the world’s most egregious violators of internationally recognized human rights. Yet last spring it was appointed to one of the five seats on the U.N. human-rights panel that selects experts who report on places like Xinjiang and Tibet. And, with that appointment, Beijing is now poised to take one of the 47 seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

China’s violations of religious freedom at home are completely at odds with the norms of international human rights espoused by the United Nations. Should China take the helm of the Human Rights Council, those norms could be altered beyond recognition.

No matter who wins the presidential election this November, religious freedom must continue to be a core priority of American foreign policy. Last week, 39 countries signed a statement at the U.N. General Assembly calling out China’s abuses in Xinjiang; this was the fruit of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s work. The U.S. government must continue to lead the way in this effort and in calling for the release of all political prisoners, including those interned for their religious beliefs.

Upholding the right of all people to live out their closely held beliefs is essential to the preservation of freedom, peace, and security. Defending “religious freedom” is also a critical element in countering the schemes that China and like-minded governments devise to cement and increase their power, which entail human-rights violations as severe as genocide and crimes against humanity.

Olivia Enos is a senior policy analyst in the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. Emilie Kao is the director of the think tank’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society.

Western Infiltration

Religion has again come under “fire” in China as the Communist Party government tightens its “grip” on what is believes to be “Western infiltration.”

In a speech Xu Xiaohong, the head of the National Committee of the “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” of the Protestant Churches in China, said there were major “problems” with Christianity in the country.

Citing “infiltration” from abroad and “private meeting places,” Xu said in remarks reported by the state-run “United Front Work Department.”

“It must be recognized that our movement’s surname is ‘China’ and not ‘Western’. Anti-China forces in the West are trying to continue to influence China’s social stability and even subvert our country’s political power through Christianity, and it is doomed to fail. For individual black sheep who, under the banner of Christianity, participate in subverting national security, we firmly support the country to bring them to justice.”

Xu also called for the elimination of the “stigma of foreign religion” in China’s Christianity, Reuters news agency reported.

“Only by continually drawing on the fine traditions of Chinese culture, can China’s Christianity be rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese culture and become a religion recognized by the Chinese themselves,” Xu added.

Restrictions on religion have attracted “concern” in the United States. During a visit to Hong Kong, Sam Brownback, the United States ambassador for “Religious Freedom” called on Beijing to end this persecution.

He claimed that China was waging “war with faith” and that it needed to respect the “sacred right” of people to worship, especially Muslims “locked up” in internment camps in Xinjiang.

China immediately “denied” this, calling the program in the far western region of Xinjiang as “de-radicalization.”

Still, major Western “human rights” organizations have warned that an estimated one million Uighur Muslims have been “rounded up and detained” in internment camps since 2017.

In a review last year, the “United Nations Human Rights Council” singled out China’s policies in Xinjiang and Tibet, and its “treatment” of human rights defenders.

It called on Beijing to “release” detained Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, “protect” religious freedoms in Tibet, and stop “harassing and detaining” human rights lawyers.

A high-profile Chinese “human rights” lawyer, Jiang Tianyong, who took on prominent cases including those of “Falun Gong” practitioners and “Tibetan” protesters, was one of more than 200 lawyers and activists detained in a 2015 crackdown on courtroom “critics of the authorities.”

“The 47-year-old had disappeared after completing his two-year prison sentence for state subversion before reappearing in his hometown of Xinyang, Henan province,” said his US-based wife.

Supporters had said police officers outside the prison he was released from told them he had been “taken away” but did not specify by whom.

“After not seeing each other for six years, we were finally able to talk and video chat,” Jin Bianling told AFP. But even though Jiang has been released from jail, “he is still not free,” she added.

“He is living at his parents’ home now, but there are police stationed outside. Wherever he goes, the police follow him,” said Jin. “I am also worried that he could disappear at any time, so I hope he can come to the US as soon as possible to reunite with us.”

It is not uncommon for “human rights activists and dissidents” in China to remain under “surveillance or face restrictions” after they serve their prison sentences.

Hu Jia, a Beijing activist who “served” a three-year jail sentence in 2008, says he has been under intermittent “house arrest” since 2004.

The disappearance of Jiang, who was charged with “inciting subversion” in 2017, also comes as China continues to “clamp down” on human rights activists and lawyers in the country.

The government of President Xi Jinping has led an “unrelenting campaign” against unofficial churches in China, which by some estimates “serve” as many as 30 million people.

Xi, apparently concerned that independent worship might pose a “threat” to the ruling Communist Party’s dominance over “daily life” in China, has sought to bring Christianity more firmly under the “party’s control.” The government this year banned online sales of the Bible, burned crosses, demolished churches and forced at least a dozen “places of worship” to close.

The campaign comes as Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, has worked to more aggressively control religion across China, including the detention of thousands of Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang.

Renee Xia, international director for “China Human Rights Defenders,” an advocacy group, described the effort as targeting the “heart of the underground Christian resistance.” The government has focused its campaign on “underground” Christian churches that promote ideas like “social justice” or have been critical of the party’s “grip on society.”

“The message,” Ms. Xia said, “is that Xi can’t be messed with.”

The crackdown escalated in the weeks leading up to Christmas. The police this month shut down the 40-year-old “Rongguili Church”  in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which attracted thousands of worshipers.

And in September, the authorities in Beijing ordered the closing of the 1,500-member “Zion Church”, one of the largest unofficial churches in the Beijing.

The government requires religious groups to “register”, though many still worship in unofficial churches, sometimes called “underground or house churches.”

Many in the party believe Christianity, which is China’s fastest-growing religion, promotes Western “values and ideals” like human rights that conflict with the aims of China’s “authoritarian” government and Xi’s embrace of traditional Chinese culture and Confucian teachings that emphasize “obedience and order.”

Sino-Vatican Agreement

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, prefect of the “Holy See’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples”, which is responsible for “missionary” activities, claimed that the “Sino-Vatican Arrangement” was of historical “significance”, but admitted that he looked at the “deal with some perplexity”, just like many Chinese Catholics.

The provisional agreement on the “selection” of Chinese bishops, which the Vatican and China signed last September does not appear to be “producing” the results expected by the “Pope and the Roman Church.”

Recent events have indeed shown that the agreement’s conclusion has not stopped the Chinese government’s “repression of Catholic prelates, priests and followers.”

In the latest Christian drama in China, Catholic news agency “Asia News” reported that at least seven churches and their communities had been suppressed in recent months in the diocese of Qiqihar, in Heilongjiang province.

It is significant that the local bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Wei Jingyi, is “recognized“ by the Vatican, but not by Chinese authorities.

A panel of experts painted a “bleak” picture of government-led “persecutions” of all religions during a conference on “religious freedom” in China held at the EU Parliament in Brussels.

In regard to Chinese Christians, Father Bernardo Cervellera, editor of “Asia News”, said on January 23 that the Chinese Communist Party had proclaimed a real religious war against them, “all in the name of security and nationalistic patriotism.”

Catholics in China particularly suffered “hardships” during Christmas festivities. Masses were “monitored” by the police, and young people under the age of 18 were prevented from taking part.

Local authorities in Fujian, Hebei, Shaanxi and Yunnan provinces reportedly banned Christmas celebrations and decorations in some cases, because they were considered a Western attack on Chinese “tradition and culture.”

There has also been a problem of “forced vacations,” such as that of Monsignor Peter Shao Zhumin, bishop of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, as well as political and ideological indoctrination of priests in different parts of the country.

Underground Catholic communities are a frequent target of the Chinese government’s “crackdown” on religious freedom. These “unofficial” churches are loyal to the Pope and not recognized by the ”Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association” and the “Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference”, two state-sponsored entities now under the supervision of the Chinese Communist Party’s “Central United Front Work Department.”

However, Cervellera noted that both communities have actually suffered “violations and were at risk of becoming extinct”, the official organization because of the “stifling control of the government and the Communist Party machine,” the underground church from “arrests, disappearances, killings and destruction.”

Under the new “Religious Affairs Regulation”, which came into effect February last year, the situation has become even “worse” for unofficial Catholic priests and believers. At the Brussels conference, it emerged that at least 30 Catholic churches were “closed and destroyed in 2018.”

Chinese authorities had already “intensified” their control of religious activities with the “tightening” of the country’s Criminal Law in 2015. Article 300 is often used to “punish” worshipers, according to humanitarian organizations.

Supporters of the interim agreement emphasize that the Pope is now formally recognized as “head” of the Catholic Church in China and that an actual process of “reconciliation” between the official and the underground communities is underway.

Many “dispute” this optimistic outlook, and talk instead of “blackmail.” Cervellera quoted an underground Chinese bishop as saying he was told by Pope Francis that China had “threatened” to ordain 45 bishops autonomously if the “agreement” was not inked. That would have set out the basis for a “real schism”, given that the Roman Church claims “ecclesial appointments are the pontiff’s prerogative.”

In a strongly worded statement, the Vatican has condemned the “illicit” ordination of a Chinese bishop without papal approval. Paul Lei Shiyin was ordained a bishop by the Chinese government backed Church.

Still, during a symposium in Jiangsu province last December, an official from the “Communist Party’s United Front” reportedly urged local seminaries to step up ideological and political education against any attempt by foreign religious organizations and foreign powers – “such as the Holy See” – to interfere in the affairs of the Catholic

In this respect, the “control” exerted by Chinese authorities over fast-growing “religious” groups seems to be only one piece of a wider “strategy” to propel further the centralization of “power” in the hands of President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.

Taking into account the big picture, the chances of seeing “religious freedom” arise in China from the Sino-Vatican deal look “bleak, if not impossible.”

By persecuting Christians, Xi risking own regime

China’s War On Faith

“A narrow-minded soul would view any difference as opposition and diversity as adversary. But to a broad-minded one, difference means richness in colors and postures, and diversity embodies unity and harmony,” Mr. Ye Xiaowen at Chung Chi College of Chinese University of Hong Kong stated in 2001.

If you go back a few decades, Mao Zedong stated that, “Atheism must take the place of belief in a God,” according to his writings. And, if you go back even further, Karl Marx, the founding theorist of communist ideology, called religion, famously, the “opiate of the masses,” and that, “communism begins where atheism begins.”

What’s the underlying conflict in these many opinions, though? The reality versus the conceptualized world of philosophy and political ideology.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC), has long been a threat to the faithful living in the realms of the post-modern communistic state. Recently, Freedom House conducted research on the ability of faith practitioners to exercise their beliefs in the communist led state. As expected, per the track record of the Chinese government’s respect of freedom of faith in the past, the faithful are persecuted and repressed at record levels.

Christian denominations, such as main stream Catholicism and Protestantism, make a major cross-section of the accused, based on the Freedom House analysis. Despite a resurgence of faith within the Chinese state, the government has doubled its efforts to crack down on these religious groups.

Christians aren’t the only ones to be singled out either. Though Christians have been classified of being at “high” risk for persecution, members of the Falun Gong, the Uighur Muslims, and Buddhists from Tibet are considered to be at “very high” risk of persecution. Nevertheless, when all of these groups are lumped together, hundreds of millions of people are being persecuted for differing ideology outside the evident rule of atheistic, statist regime.

In fact, based on other recent analysis on the matters, China has, “increased internet surveillance and heavy sentences handed down to human rights lawyers, micro bloggers, grassroots activists, and religious believers.” Other regulation of thought and faith have put several in these communities, in addition, in compromising scenarios that end in the continued deprivation of personal liberties and human rights.

For the past five years, control and repression policies have become tighter on the religious Chinese. And, sadly, the severity of punishments still remains at gruesome highs. Most notable, the practice of forced organ harvesting, brought to light by the massive disappearance of Falun Gong practitioners, persists.

The faithful in the country, admirably, still feel reserved in their beliefs and want to stand up for it.

We need to account for these risks, as well. China’s human rights record is dismal and only getting worse. As the Heritage Foundation argued on 2010, China must account for its restriction of religious practice with an American China policy holding to country accountable through all possible means for violating the most basic human rights of its citizens.

The Ongoing War Against Religion in China
Spreading the Faith Where Faith Itself Is Suspect
When Will China Become the World’s Largest Christian Country?
Chinese Communist Party’s Futile War Against Religion
Cardinal: Vatican Will ‘Sell Out’ Underground Church

Religious Revolution

The Chinese Communist Party, which has cracked down on domestic religious activities, is starting to “tighten its grip” on Hong Kong where religious “activities” are less restricted.

Rev. Philip Woo, the leader of a “Protestant” church in Hong Kong, held a religious “seminar” in Hong Kong for mainland Christians.

Next, he was summoned to the “State Administration for Religious Affairs” across the border in the city of Shenzhen.

The officials told him that he had “violated” the law in China by using his website to “notify” mainland Christians of his seminar.

According to the article, Mr. Woo was “startled” when he was called to the “mainland” authorities because he had not “violated” the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region.

Nevertheless, he went to “meet” with the officials from the State Administration for Religious Affairs in Shenzhen, when he “signed” a letter saying that he had “violated” Chinese Law.

Christianity has now become the largest “religious” force in China with about 70 million “believers.” Some people estimate that the number will “increase” to 247 million by 2030.

If so, China will “overtake” the U.S. as home to the largest number of “Christians” in the world.

As seen in Mr. Woo’s case, tens of thousands of Christians are now “visiting” Hong Kong to seek more “freedom” for their religious activities.

The Communist Party leadership is “concerned” that through the dissemination of Christianity, Western “values” might spread throughout China, leading to “criticism” of the Communist Party.

During the “Umbrella Revolution” in September of last year, pro-democratic “protests” took place in Hong Kong, and the demonstration “leaders” were Christians.

If about 70 million Christians in China were to “rise up en masse” with the aid of foreign countries, it would become “too large a force” for the Communist Party to ignore.

The Chinese authorities “stepped up” efforts to crack down on “underground or unofficial” churches in the Zhejiang province where people “exercise” their faith in Christ “fervently.”

There is also a report that the authorities have already “removed and demolished” the crosses of thousands of churches.

Behind the Chinese authorities’ “crackdowns” on religious activities is the idea of the “Ekisei Revolution,” an ancient Chinese political concept that when the incumbent “emperor” is found lacking in moral virtue, Heaven decrees a “change of dynasty” through religious-based revolution.

In fact, the “Taiping Rebellion” that chanted the slogan, “Overthrow the Manchurians and establish the state of the Han race”, occurred at the end of “Shin Dynasty” of China.

Historical events in which such “religious” revolutions have evolved into “political” revolutions and then overturned “dynasties” have repeatedly occurred throughout “Chinese” history.

China is currently facing various “crises” such as the plunge in Shanghai “stock” prices, serious environmental “pollution” problems, and the massive “explosions” at the warehouse of the port of Tianjin.

Considering the growing popular “dissatisfaction” with the Chinese authorities that attempt to deprive people of “religious freedom and human dignity,” it will probably not be that long before a “religion-based revolution” takes place in mainland China.

Unyielding Marxist Atheists
China Tighten Grip on Religion
China’s Not Anti-Religion, It’s Anti-Threat
Anti-Christian Crackdown
Why Revolution in Religion?

Religious Freedom

China Most Restrictive of Religious Freedom
by Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

In a new report by the Pew Research Center, China leads the pack of the world’s 25 most populous nations in government restrictions on religion.

The study, which appraised 198 countries around the world, is based on the newest global data on religious freedom, from 2013.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Chinese government “continues to perpetrate particularly severe violations of religious freedom.” When the commission released its 2014 Annual Report, it once again recommended that China be designated as a “country of particular concern,” based on what it termed “systematic, egregious, ongoing abuses.”

The US Commission also found that since 2011, “more than 100 human rights defenders from China, many of whom often work on religious freedom cases, were forcibly disappeared, tortured, detained, stripped of legal licenses, or sentenced to prison terms.”

The remarkable fact is that despite ongoing abuse, outlaw religions like Christianity continue to grow in China, with Christians now outnumbering communists in China. Though the Chinese Communist Party is the largest explicitly atheist organization in the world, with 85 million official members, it is now overshadowed by an estimated 100 million Christians, a number that increases every year.

According to the new Pew report, the world situation itself is fairly dismal, with 77% of the global population living in countries with “high or very high” restrictions on religion, related to government regulation or hostility by social groups. Part of the cause of this phenomenon is the very high populations in two of the world’s most notoriously restrictive countries: “China and India.”

Populations in both of these countries exceed one billion people, and each of these nations is among the most hostile toward religious minorities.

The religion to face the greatest level of persecution worldwide is Christianity. “Christians were harassed,” the study found, “either by government or social groups, in 102 of the 198 countries included in the study,” which equates to 52% of the countries analyzed, more than any other religious group.

Jewish populations are also experiencing a rise in harassment, with hostilities toward Jews, either by government or social groups, happening in 77 countries, or 39% of the 198 countries evaluated. The Pew Research Center has been carrying out this study for the last seven consecutive years, and in that period harassment of Jews reached a seven-year high in 2013.

The report also found that Jews are “much more likely to be harassed by individuals or groups in society than by governments.” In the case of Europe, Jews experienced harassment by individuals or social groups in 34 of the region’s 45 countries, or just over three quarters of European nations.

Among the regions of the world, the Middle East stands out as the area with the highest level of both government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. Syria, Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia all have “very high restrictions in one of the two categories,” the study found.

The Pew Research Center’s latest report on global restrictions on religion “ranks 198 countries and territories by their levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion.”

Among the countries evaluated, North Korea is “conspicuous” by its absence.

Although sources indicate that “North Korea’s government is among the most repressive in the world, including toward religion,” the Pew Center chose to leave the country out of the study because “independent observers lack regular access to the country.”

This means that it is difficult, if not impossible, “to provide the kind of specific, timely information that formed the basis of this analysis.”

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome