Article 36 of China’s 1982 constitution (revised in 2018) states that the “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion.”
The same article says that the state protects “normal religious activities.” Without providing any definition of what is “normal”, it clearly prohibits the use of religion for activities that “disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state.” Likewise, religious organisations and activities must not be “subject to any foreign domination.”
In practice, Article 36 protects only the five officially recognised religious traditions - Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism - and only those governed by seven state-sanctioned “patriotic” associations. Religious practice and expression outside the state-controlled apparatus is illegal and has been met, to varying degrees over the past seventy years, with punishment, repression and persecution.
On 1st February 2018, China adopted more restrictive Regulations on Religious Affairs, updating those of 2005. The new rules confine believers to registered sites, and “further tighten control over religious activities.” These aim to ensure that “religious groups, religious schools, and religious activity sites and religious affairs are not […] controlled by foreign forces.” The rules also stipulate that religion must not endanger national security, and impose further restrictions on the communication of religious content, religious schools and charity work.
Since March 2018, religion has been under the direction of the United Front Work Department, an agency of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), thus taking over the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA). As a result, the CCP has direct control over religious affairs.
In April 2018, the Chinese government issued a new White Paper titled “China’s Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief”. The document states that “active guidance” will be provided to religious organisations to help them “adapt to the socialist society”. It goes further, noting that foreigners can only engage in religious activity that is “authorised”.
Article 27 of China’s National Security Law also relates to freedom of religion or belief. This law has been criticised by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, for its “extraordinarily broad scope” and vague terminology, which, he argues, leaves “the door wide open to further restrictions of the rights and freedoms of Chinese citizens, and to even tighter control of civil society.”
Other regulations that may impact freedom of religion or belief include Document No. 9, i.e., the Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere, from the Central Committee of the CCP’s General Office, issued in April 2013, and a new law on foreign Non-Governmental Organisations, adopted in 2016. Document No. 9 presents “Western” values, Western constitutional democracy and Western-style free media as in conflict with the Chinese Communist Party’s values and states that petitions and letters calling for protection of human rights are the work of “Western anti-China forces”. The new NGO law, which came into force in January 2017, gives the authorities power to restrict the work of foreign groups in the country, and to limit the ability of local groups to receive foreign funding and work with foreign organisations. Foreign NGOs must be sponsored by a Chinese government organisation, be registered with the police, and be under the supervision of the Public Security Bureau. Foreigners or members of foreign organisations deemed to be involved in activities aimed at “splitting the state, damaging national unity or subverting state power” can be detained, barred from leaving the country, or deported.
In April 2016, China’s President Xi Jinping addressed senior Communist Party officials at a meeting on religion. In his speech, he said that “religious groups … must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party.” Party members must be “unyielding Marxist atheists” who “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means.” This followed a speech by the director of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs, who told a seminar on the Sinicization of Christianity that “Chinese Christian theology should be compatible with the country’s path of socialism.”
In September 2018, the Vatican reached a provisional agreement with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops, valid for two years. As a provisional agreement rather than a formal treaty, the text of the agreement remains secret, but it is understood that it gives the Chinese government the right to recommend candidates to be appointed as bishops, who are then confirmed by the Vatican. The Vatican and the Chinese government renewed the agreement in September 2020.
Over the period under review, the Chinese authorities have significantly intensified their crackdown on all religious minorities. On 10th November 2020, the Pew Research Center released its annual report tracking global patterns in restrictions on religion. Out of all the 198 countries and territories researched in the study, China registered the highest score on the Government Restrictions Index (GRI).
Anti-religious repression in China takes many forms and targets many groups. The most egregious violations of religious freedom are against the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where the atrocities have reached such a scale that a growing number of experts describe them as genocide. The clampdown includes the incarceration of between 900,000 and 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and members of other Muslim groups in more than 1,300 concentration camps. Civilians have been arrested and sent to camps for outward expressions of religious piety, such as wearing long beards, refusing to drink alcohol, or engaging in behaviours the authorities define as signs of “religious extremism”. Reports of widespread and systematic torture, abysmal conditions, sexual violence and forced labour have emerged, and a campaign of forced sterilisation of Uyghur women has been conducted in parts of the XUAR. Chinese authorities have also destroyed, damaged or closed thousands of mosques, Muslim cemeteries and Islamic educational institutions.
In 2019, The New York Times published leaked documents called the Xinjiang Papers which indicated that “Xi Jinping himself laid the groundwork for the use of harsh tactics in the region, instructing officials in a series of private speeches to show ‘absolutely no mercy.’”
In Tibet, Buddhism continues to be targeted and suppressed. Laws have been introduced to control the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and other eminent Tibetan lamas. Monks and nuns who refuse to denounce the Dalai Lama have been expelled from their monasteries, imprisoned and tortured. Displaying images of the Dalai Lama remains a crime and is punished with increasing severity; religious festivals are monitored and restricted. In 2019, as many as 6,000 Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns were displaced when the authorities destroyed their residences at the Yachen Gar Tibetan Buddhist Centre in Sichuan province. In April 2019, the Larung Gar Buddhist Academy was forced to stop enrolling new students.
Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have not been spared, facing grave violations of religious freedom. Thousands of crosses have been torn down, many churches destroyed or closed, and Christian clergy jailed. In November 2019, 500 house church leaders signed a declaration stating, “authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending.”
In state-controlled Churches authorities have forced Christians to display Communist Party banners alongside, and sometimes in lieu of religious symbols, or to hang portraits of Xi Jinping alongside, and sometimes instead of images of Christ and the Virgin Mary. CCTV cameras have been mounted outside and inside churches recording the worshippers.
In December 2018, the authorities arrested over a hundred members of the Early Rain Church in Chengdu, and accused Pastor Wang Yi and his wife Jiang Rong of “inciting subversion”. Pastor Wang was tried in secret on 26th December 2019 and sentenced to nine years in prison. He described the regime’s campaign as a “war against the soul”.
As Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong stated: “The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions” […] “President Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. [The government] aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.”
In November 2019, Chinese authorities announced plans for a “comprehensive evaluation of the existing religious classics aiming at contents which do not conform to the progress of the times.” This means retranslating the Bible and the Qur‘an to “reflect socialist values”. The decision followed a meeting of the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, under its chairman, Wang Yang.
In a January 2019 The Guardian article, Dr. Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London stated: “One of the goals of a government work plan for ‘promoting Chinese Christianity’ between 2018 and 2022 is ‘thought reform’. The plan calls for ‘retranslating and annotating’ the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a ‘correct understanding’ of the text. Ten years ago, we used to be able to say the party was not really interested in what people believed internally. Xi Jinping’s response is much more invasive and it is in some ways returning to Mao-era attempts to control hearts and minds.”
On 22nd September 2018, the Vatican signed the Provisional Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China, and extended it for another two years in October 2020. The diplomatic effort, primarily understood as a pastoral one dealing with the need to regularise relations with Beijing on the appointment of Bishops, clearly specified its limitations. According to the first communiqué, the agreement, “does not cover direct diplomatic relations between the Holy See and China, the juridical status of the Catholic Chinese Church, or the relations between the clergy and the country’s authorities. The Provisional Agreement exclusively treats the process for the appointment of bishops.”
Within this framework, it has, according to Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, brought some fruits. “The fact we have managed to get all the bishops of China in communion with the Holy Father for the first time since the 1950s, and that the Chinese authorities allow the pope a modest say in the appointment of bishops but ultimately the final word, is quite remarkable.”
Notwithstanding the agreement’s limited scope and pastoral fruits, concerns remain to the application of the treaty on the ground, as well as to the shadow thrown over it by the wider context - the rapidly deteriorating conditions of religious freedom in the country.
In the two years following the signature of the Provisional Agreement, the underground clergy were encouraged to join the state controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA). Many refused, however, “citing doctrinal conflicts between Church teaching and CPCA rules” - and suffered the consequences. On 1st September 2020, for example, priests who refused to join the CPCA in Jiangxi province were put under house arrest and banned from “engaging in any religious activity in the capacity of the clergy.” In recognition of the problem, the Vatican accepted that some clergy may choose not to join the CPCA for reasons of conscience.
Catholic hierarchy also continue to suffer harassment and arrest.
Bishop James Su Zhimin of Baoding has spent a total of 40 years in prison, and has not been seen since 2003. At present, his whereabouts are still unknown. In July 2020, Congressman Chris Smith held a hearing in the United States Congress titled: “Where is Bishop Su?”
On 9th November 2018, Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou was arrested for the fifth time in two years. He was released on 23rd November, but continues to face harassment. Father Zhang Guilin and Father Wang Zhong of Chongli-Xiwanzi diocese were detained in late 2018 and their whereabouts are still unknown.
In January 2020, Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of Mindong, Fujian Province, who had already been demoted to the position of auxiliary bishop to make way for a Beijing-appointed bishop, was forced by the authorities to leave his residence, which was closed. The 61 year-old prelate ended up sleeping in the doorway of his church office. Only after an international outcry was he permitted to return to his apartment, but with the utilities cut off. On 4th October 2020, Bishop Guo announced his resignation.
In June 2020, 70 year-old Augustine Cui Tai, Coadjutor Bishop of the underground church in Xuanhua, was arrested again having already endured 13 years in detention.
Even in Hong Kong where religious freedom was respected up until recently, it is now endangered. On 30th June 2020, a new National Security Law was imposed on the city by China’s National People’s Congress - “voted unanimously in just 15 minutes by the 162-member committee.” The parameters of the new security law are broad. According to AsiaNews, “The law prevents and punishes acts and activities of secession, subversion, terrorism and collaboration with foreign forces that endanger national security.” Amnesty International stated the law was, “The greatest betrayal of human rights in the recent history of the city.”
Effectively abolishing Hong Kong’s basic freedoms, the security law is already impacting religious freedom. Cardinal John Tong, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Hong Kong, issued instructions to all priests to “watch your language” in homilies and avoid making politically provocative comments.
In December 2020, the police raided the (Protestant) Good Neighbour North District Church with authorities freezing the Church’s bank account as well as those of its pastor, Reverend Roy Chan, and his wife. The Church had provided humanitarian assistance to protesters during demonstrations in 2019 against a proposed extradition law.
With the enforcement of the new security law, “Catholic journalists, political activists, and businessmen have been arrested on charges of sedition.” Several jailed prominent pro-democracy activists are Christian, most notably media tycoon Jimmy Lai and former student leader Agnes Chow, both Catholics, and Joshua Wong, a Protestant. A member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Johnnie Moore, announced he was adopting Jimmy Lai as a Religious Prisoner of Conscience.
Perhaps the largest spiritual group in China facing severe persecution is Falun Gong, a movement that draws on Buddhist tradition. Described as “xie jiao” (heterodox teachings or evil cults), Falun Gong is banned. In 2019, thousands of practitioners were arrested for practising the meditation exercises.
In 2019, an independent inquiry into allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, chaired by British barrister Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, concluded “beyond reasonable doubt” that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale … and Falun Gong practitioners have been one - and probably the main - source of organ supply.”
A collateral effect of the Chinese government’s crackdown on human rights, including religious rights, is the repression of human rights defenders, particularly lawyers, many of whom are either Christian or have been hired to defend people arrested in cases involving religious freedom. In 2015, authorities launched a major crackdown, which led to “over 300 human rights lawyers and activists, and their colleagues and family members” being “interrogated, detained and in some cases imprisoned or disappeared.” Still today, most remain either in some form of detention, or have been disbarred from practising law.
Perhaps one of the most significant areas of concern for religious freedom in China is the pervasive expansion of highly sophisticated security cameras equipped with facial recognition technology intended for population surveillance. Though first introduced in China’s restive Xinjiang province as a means of policing its mostly Muslim Uyghur population, elements of China’s surveillance state are rapidly being introduced across the entire nation of 1.4 billion.
The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in early 2020 has not helped matters; its impact on human rights in China, including freedom of religion or belief, has been significant, especially with regard to the use of technology. Indeed, “much of the facial recognition technology used in the fight against the coronavirus is already being used to monitor church and mosque attendance, and new apps have collected even more data on the everyday lives of China’s citizens. There is particular concern that the ‘traffic light system’ which assigns individuals a colour corresponding to their perceived risk of spreading COVID-19, and in turn indicates whether they are allowed to travel freely, could be used to restrict the free movement of individuals deemed ‘sensitive’ by the government, such as religious adherents or human rights defenders.”
Freedom of religion in China is currently subjected to the most serious crackdown since the Cultural Revolution. Policy-making is more centralised, repression is more intense and widespread, and technology is being refined for the creation of a surveillance state. Under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, the prospects for religious freedom - and human rights more broadly - are becoming ever-more bleak. With no meaningful political liberalisation in sight, repression and persecution will continue and, with the tools of modern technology, become even more intrusive and pervasive.
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