Government Official Reaffirms State Controls Over Religion

Ye Xiaowen, Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, called for continued controls over religion to meet state goals in a March 13 interview in the Southern Weekend newspaper. (Translation cited here via Open Source Center, subscription required, April 10, 2008). "We should not expand religions," Ye said, "but strive to let existing religions do more for the motherland's reunification, national unity, economic development and social stability." The Chinese government currently recognizes only five religions for limited state protections and subjects these religious communities to stringent controls.

Although Ye stated that the government regulates only "religious affairs" touching on "social and public interests," rather than regulate "religions" or "religious belief," he stressed both here and in a 2006 interview the importance of government control over the internal practices of religious communities. In 2006 he said that government-led interpretations of religious doctrine would "convey positive and beneficial contents to worshippers and direct them to practice faiths rightly." In the 2008 interview, he stressed the importance of continued state controls over a variety of religious practices, such as Tibetan Buddhists' recognition of reincarnated Buddhist lamas and the appointment of Catholic bishops. Ye also called for blocking Chinese Protestants' interaction with foreign co-religionists and preventing the establishment of private Buddhist sites of worship.

Ye's comments follow a December 2007 study session in which Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao reaffirmed the Party's policies for controlling religion and called on religious communities to play a "positive role" in promoting state goals and to "closely unite" around the Party.

For more information on religion in China, see Section II--Freedom of Religion in the CECC 2007 Annual Report (via the Government Printing Office Web site).