Freedom of Religion

A U.S.-based NGO has obtained a copy of a secret Communist Party Document entitled “Notice on Further Strengthening Marxist Atheism Research, Propaganda, and Education." The original Chinese-language document itself can be seen at this location.

Christianity Today editor and founder Mark Galli interviewed Ji Jianhong, who heads the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement, during a September visit to Shanghai. Ji spoke of his youth in the Little Flock movement, which was persecuted when it refused to register with the government in the 1950s. He also commented on government officials who obstruct church policies. Ji also criticized underground Christians and foreign Protestant groups, however. He refused to acknowledge that religious persecution exists in China, arguing that Christians are not arrested for their faith but because they have broken some specific law.

According to AsiaNews, Ji Wenyuan, Deputy Director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), has said that in any reform of laws regulating religion, priority must be given to social stability. Speaking at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Ji said that China would not enact Western-style laws because its circumstances are different. Ji's speech appeared to have the purpose of lowering expectations recently created by a speech given by Zhang Xunmou, director of the SARA's Policy and Legal Department, which announced that the government is studying ways to remove tight control over religions, curb arbitrary interference, and give religious groups greater autonomy.

According to AsiaNews, Zhang Zunmou, Director of the Policy and Legal Department of the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) said at an October conference that the Chinese government is studying ways to remove tight control over religions, curb arbitrary interference, and give religious groups greater autonomy. Zhang did not say when such steps might be taken, and did not address other questions, such as religious freedom as a human right and the future of the state-organized Patriotic Associations.

According to AsiaNews, observers in Hong Kong who follow religious affairs in China consider the announcement as a maneuver to blunt international criticism of China's poor religious freedom record. But the fact that a SARA official made the announcement may be significant, since many analysts believe that SARA has long been chief bureaucratic opponent of loosening government control over religious organizations and practice in China.

Forum 18 reports that it observed a list of banned activities that Chinese authorities ordered local Imam Musu Ma to hang in his office in the Dungan Mosque in the town of Burqin, Xinjiang. According to the report, the list of banned activities included the following:

• teaching religion "privately";
• allowing children under 18 to attend a mosque; and
• allowing Islam to influence family life and birth planning behaviour.

Musu Ma reported that similar displays hang in the offices of virtually all the imams of Xinjiang's mosques.

The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor issued its annual report on international religious freedom, as required under U.S. law. The report, released on September 15, includes a section on China that provides an overview of the repressive environment for religion throughout China, despite a guarantee of religious freedom in China's Constitution. A subsection focuses on the situation in Tibetan areas of China. The publication sets out trends and developments, and provides details on cases of repression against Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims in China, as well as practitioners in spiritual groups like Falun Gong.