Sina Delenda Est

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Calls China’s Communist Party ‘Central Threat of Our Times’
By Marc Santora

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, in London on Wednesday with the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab.

LONDON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the Chinese Communist Party “the central threat of our times” on Thursday, even as he sought to talk up the prospects of a United States trade deal with Britain, which rebuffed American pressure to ban a Chinese company from future telecommunications infrastructure.
The scathing criticism of the Chinese government was the strongest language Mr. Pompeo has used as the Trump administration seeks to convince American allies of the risks posed by using equipment from Huawei, a Chinese technology giant.
At the same time, Mr. Pompeo sought to reassure British officials that even though the two countries saw the issue differently, it would not undermine the strong bond between them.
Mr. Pompeo’s reassurances come at a delicate moment for the British government as it begins the process of forging new stand-alone trade deals after it formally leaves the European Union on Friday.
Speaking at an appearance with the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, Mr. Pompeo referred derisively to a 2016 warning from President Barack Obama that Brexit would place Britain at the “back of the queue” in any trade negotiations.
“We intend to put the United Kingdom at the front of the line,” Mr. Pompeo said.
Still, while Britain’s security and economy depend on a close relationship with Washington, China is a significant investor in the country and a growing buyer of British goods.
That was reflected in Britain’s decision this week to allow Huawei to play a limited role in its systems for the next generation of high-speed mobile internet, known as 5G.
With Washington pressing governments across Europe and elsewhere to ban Huawei equipment from new 5G networks, leaders have had to walk a fine line, trying not to antagonize either economic giant while not falling behind in the race to build the next generation of information technology.

Huawei’s main U.K. offices in Reading, west of London.

Mr. Pompeo said that the concerns of the United States were not about any one company, but rather, the Chinese system.
“When you allow the information of your citizens or the national security information of your citizens to transit a network that the Chinese Communist Party has a legal mandate to obtain, it creates risk,” he said.
“While we still have to be enormously vigilant about terror, there are still challenges all across the world, the Chinese Communist Party presents the central threat of our times,” he said.
While Mr. Pompeo was particularly blunt in his criticism of the Chinese government on Thursday, it was in keeping with his warnings to European leaders as he has sought to persuade them to keep Huawei out of their new networks.
“China has inroads too on this continent that demand our attention,” he told reporters in June during a trip to The Hague, in the Netherlands. 

“China wants to be the dominant economic and military power of the world, spreading its authoritarian vision for society and its corrupt practices worldwide.”
Mr. Pompeo said he was disappointed by the British decision, but said the two countries would work through the issue and reaffirmed Britain’s vital role in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance with the United States.
Still, he cautioned it could still affect the way information was shared.
“We will never permit American national security information to go across a network we do not have trust and confidence in,” he said.
Mr. Pompeo also mentions Iran regularly as a threat, but not using language as strong as what he applied to China today.
London was Mr. Pompeo’s first stop on a five-nation tour that includes Ukraine, where he will become the first United States cabinet member to visit the country since Trump’s July phone call with the newly elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
That call, during which Trump urged Mr. Zelensky to look into issues related to the 2016 election in the United States and to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden, provoked a whistle-blower complaint and led to Trump’s impeachment and his trial in the Senate.
Mr. Pompeo’s trip was originally scheduled to take place just after the new year, but was delayed because of concerns about escalating tensions with Iran.
In addition to the United Kingdom and Ukraine, Mr. Pompeo is scheduled to make stops in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Mr. Pompeo left the United States trailed by controversy after the State Department barred National Public Radio’s diplomatic correspondent from the trip. 

It came after a dust-up with a veteran reporter from the organization, Mary Louise Kelly, who questioned him about the Trump administration’s firing of the United States ambassador to Ukraine.
In an extraordinary statement, Mr. Pompeo lashed out at Ms. Kelly, and said the news media was “unhinged.”
And the decision by Britain to allow Huawei to provide some of the equipment in its 5G network, coming just days before Mr. Pompeo arrived, was a bitter disappointment.British officials sought to convince the Americans that in limiting the role of Huawei, they would keep their critical infrastructure safe.
Without naming Huawei, the British guidelines noted the dangers posed by “high-risk” vendors and said they would be limited to parts of the country’s wireless infrastructure, such as antennas and base stations, that were not seen as critical to the integrity of the entire system.
Mr. Pompeo said that while the Trump administration disagreed with that assessment, the issue would not undermine the deep bond shared between the two countries.
“The truth is it is your best friends you call up and say ‘What the heck are you doing?’” he said.
Mr. Pompeo then went on to Downing Street for a meeting with Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, which he summed up as “fantastic.”

Chinese Subversion

A secret government report uncovered China's attempts to influence all levels of politics in Australia
By Tara Francis Chan
Australia's red menace

A secret report commissioned by Australia's prime minister found attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence all levels of government.
The report found the CCP's interference attempts have been going on for a decade, and described China as the country that is most concerning to Australia.
The inquiry was led by a former government adviser who spoke to the US Armed Services Committee about China's growing political interference earlier this year.
A classified government report uncovered attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to influence all levels of politics in Australia.
The report was commissioned by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2016, and used the resources of both the prime minister's office and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO).
According to the Australian news outlet 9News, and later confirmed by Fairfax Media, the yearlong inquiry found the CCP has tried to influence policy and gain access to all levels of government for a decade. 

The report also described China as the most concerning country to Australia.
It was the work of this inquiry, which also looked into China's influence attempts on the media and academia, that led Turnbull to propose new laws targeting espionage, foreign political donations and foreign interference in December 2017.
At the time of the announcement, Turnbull confirmed the existence of the report, but did not indicate its findings.
"When I initiated a report into this in August last year, through my department, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) had made significant investigative breakthroughs and delivered a series of very grave warnings," said Turnbull. 

"But our agencies lacked the legislative tools they needed to act. And it's fair to say that our system as a whole had not grasped the nature and the magnitude of the threat.'
He added: "The findings of the report are necessarily classified. But I can say the reasons for initiating this work were justified and the outcomes have galvanized us to take action."
It has now been revealed that the inquiry, which also reportedly looked into political donors linked to China, was headed by John Garnaut, a former senior adviser to Turnbull and a former China news correspondent.
In March, Garnaut spoke to the US House Armed Services Committee about China's interference operations within Australia, describing the CCP as "very good at it" particularly compared to Russia.
"Unlike Russia, which seems to be as much for a good time rather than a long time, the Chinese are strategic, patient, and they set down foundations of organizations and very consistent narratives over a long period of time," Garnaut told the committee.
"They put an enormous amount of effort into making sure we don't talk about what it's doing," he said, adding that countries have "failed to recognize a lot of the activity that has been going on."
Garnaut's comments were echoed last week by the head of ASIO, though he did not explicitly mention China.
"Foreign actors covertly attempt to influence and shape the views of members of the Australian public, the Australian media and officials in the Australian government, as well as members of the diaspora communities here in Australia," Duncan Lewis told an Australian Senate estimates hearing. "Clandestine interference is designed to advance the objectives of the foreign actor to the detriment of Australia and to our national interests."
Relations have become strained between China and Australia ever since Turnbull proposed the new legislation last year.

Chinese Peril

Interview: ‘Australia is a Very Valuable Prize For The CCP’
By Kurban Niyaz

Author Clive Hamilton in an undated photo.

Australian author and professor of public ethics Clive Hamilton’s new book, Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, was initially turned down by three publishers citing fears of reprisals from Beijing. 

Finally published in February 2018, Silent Invasion investigates the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence and interference operations in Australia, the structure of the party’s overseas influence network, and the techniques it uses. 

In the book, Hamilton asserts that Australia’s elites, and parts of the country’s large Chinese-Australian diaspora, have been mobilized by Beijing to gain access to politicians, limit academic freedom, intimidate critics, gather information for Chinese intelligence agencies, and organize protests against Australian government policy. 

He recently spoke with RFA’s Uyghur Service about what he believes are China’s sharp power goals in Australia.

RFA: Why did you choose the word “invasion” for your title?
Clive Hamilton: I'm really talking about an invasion of the influence of the CCP into Australia and throughout Australia's political and social institutions. 

And it's a silent invasion because it has been done secretly, covertly, underneath the radar. 

And that's why it's so insidious ... the influence of the Chinese Communist Party has been secretive and subtle.

RFA: China’s emergence as a new economic power comes amid the expansion of its influence as a “sharp power.” How does sharp power help China to silence overseas dissidents and criticism of the CCP?
Clive Hamilton: Beijing's objective is to ... pacify criticism of Beijing's actions and Beijing's policies. 

If it succeeds in doing that through this campaign of influence in Australia, it will essentially make Australia not so much a client state, but a country which is unwilling to resist whatever Beijing does—for example, in the South China Sea—and essentially succumbs to Beijing's demands. 

And we've already seen some of that happening in the business community and in the political arena. 

Beijing already exerts a great deal of influence in our major political parties, especially the Labor Party. 

So that is what I was drawing attention to in the book.
I think for many years the first objective of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia was to silence dissenting and critical voices in the Chinese-Australian community and from groups like those calling for Tibetan and Uyghur autonomy, and of course Falun Gong, and they have been extremely successful over the last 15 or 20 years in silencing those groups and marginalizing them from the mainstream of political discussion in Australia. 

But then I realized that was only part of the story or the first phase, that the CCP ... wanted to not only silence those critical voices—whether it be Uyghurs or Tibetans or pro-democracy activists in Australia—it wanted to build on that, especially making use of the Chinese-Australian community to build its political influence in the mainstream of Australian society, and that is why it targeted the main political parties and intellectuals and the media in Australia and has made some considerable inroads. 

Although in recent months, many people in Australia are starting to wake up to what is happening and there are significant moves to push back against Beijing's intrusions into this country.

RFA: In 2009, a documentary telling the life story of Uyghur exile leader Rebiya Kadeer was screened at the Melbourne Film Festival, despite strong objections from the Chinese government. People are worried about these kinds of objections leading to self-censorship in Australia. How do you link this kind of behavior with the ongoing Chinese “invasion” of Australia?
Clive Hamilton: I think sometimes successful attempts by the Chinese government to restrict what Australians see at the movies, or read in books or newspapers is outrageous. 

It fundamentally goes against the democratic principles which Australia is built on. 

And it distresses me enormously that sometimes Beijing succeeds in its attempts in Australia and it distresses me even more when governments in Australia go along with that. 

I think that there is a growing awareness among the population in Australia that this is really intolerable. 

And I think that it will become increasingly difficult for governments to turn a blind eye to Beijing's attempts to influence what we in Australia see at the movies or read in newspapers or in books.

RFA: Some scholars argue that you mischaracterize a culture clash as an “invasion” in Australia. How do you respond to this assertion?
Clive Hamilton: My book has been welcomed very strongly and enthusiastically by many Chinese-Australians in this country, because they ... are the biggest victims of Beijing's influence and intrusion in this country. 

So I think that any Chinese scholars who say that Beijing's influence is really a spread of Chinese culture, that's something we can welcome ... 

But not if it's Chinese Communist Party culture and not if it's the political power of the Communist Party that's being veiled behind so-called "Chinese culture" as a way of manipulating this country and the way that Beijing tries to manipulate other countries. 

Many China scholars in Australia have come out and endorsed, in an open letter, exactly the kinds of claims that I am making in my book.

RFA: What might be China’s final goal or motivation in Australia?
Clive Hamilton: I think the Communist Party and especially now under Xi Jinping sees China as a hegemonic power that wants to dominate Asia and that includes Australia. 

Australia is a very valuable prize for the CCP because we are an advanced Western nation allied to the United States at the end of the Southeast Asian region. 

So if Beijing can control Australia, they've won an enormous strategic advantage against the United States. 

That's why they've put so much effort into trying to influence Australia.

RFA: China’s government is increasing its investments in Australia. What role do you see trade and the economy playing in an expansion of China’s “invasion” of the country?
Clive Hamilton: The Chinese Communist Party is a master at using economic blackmail to gain political and security goals in other countries. 

And, of course, we've seen that kind of blackmail exerted particularly strongly on South Korea and Taiwan and Japan. 

In Australia, it's been the threat of it, rather than actual attempts at blackmail, so far, but Australian politicians and businesspeople are very, very afraid of what Beijing might do if we take any measure that displeases it. 

Because people know that Beijing is capable of causing a great deal of economic pain to other countries when they are acting ways it doesn't like, Australian decision-makers are very wary and constrain their own actions in ways that satisfy Beijing because they see what Beijing might do. 

It's a very effective way of exerting influence.

How China Accidentally Turned THAAD into a Political Weapon

THAAD is not about missile defense anymore; it’s about a Chinese veto over South Korean foreign policy.
By Robert E Kelly

The South Korean decision to install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system has prompted a major Chinese reaction. 

The Chinese government has used a wide range of economic pressure against South Korea to reverse its decision. 

It has severely restricted tourist travel to the country, cancelled cultural events, pursued fatuous regulatory action against the company (Lotte), which sold the land to the South Korean government on which THAAD will be stationed, and, in a move worthy of the “freedom fries” of yore, staged a public bulldozing of bottles of the Korean national alcohol soju.
This effort is simultaneously ridiculous and clever, campy and serious. 

On the one hand, it is preposterously obvious that these “protests” are staged. 

Once again, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated how woefully out of touch it is with modern democratic opinion. 

The same apparatchiks who mistake “praise” of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in the Onion as the real thing are those who think that a video of a bulldozer driving over soju bottles might somehow appear authentic. 

If China’s increasing bullying of South Korea over THAAD were not so serious, these hijinks would be comedy material. 

Indeed, my students here in South Korea laugh over this in discussion even as they worry about it.
On the other hand, this a wise way to pressure South Korea if the CCP is absolutely dead set against a THAAD emplacement in South Korea, which it appears to be. 

South Korea is a midsize economy with a few very large exporters selling to a few very large markets. 

This makes it highly sensitive to the politics of its biggest export markets, of which China is one. Japan, too, has been targeted in this way by China, but it is more economically diversified than South Korea and has more flexibility to ride out Chinese displeasure. 

China has also used these tactics in Southeast Asia.
The CCP also retains plausible deniability by routing this pressure obliquely through nongovernmental actors. 

There has been little overt, “Track 1” pressure, likely because Beijing is hoping South Korea will back down without an open breach. 

But the mercantilist-dictatorial state can “encourage” patriotic action in an economy where about 80 percent of firms have some amount of state ownership.
Countries with an open media can surely see through this charade of independent action. 

But in China itself, this can be marketed as the outrage of the Chinese people, rising up against encirclement by the Americans and their lackeys. 

And in global public opinion, there is surely enough hostility to the United States in places like Russia or the Middle East that this will sound somewhat plausible, or at least be marketed that way by anti-American elites.

Now South Korea Cannot Give In
In South Korea, the recent impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye has opened the door for the left to take power in the upcoming special election on May 9. 

The left has broadly opposed THAAD. 

In the wake of Park’s final approval of it last year, several opposition parliamentarians jetted off to China to express their discontent (or appease) as the conservative press howled. 

The likely winner on May 9, Moon Jae-in, has previously expressed skepticism over THAAD. 

The other left-wing candidates—there are no serious right-wing candidates given how badly the Park scandal has discredited the right—have been even more hostile.
I am very doubtful that Moon or any of the candidates, barring the least likely winner on the far left, will remove THAAD. 

Indeed, there is still a debate over THAAD’s technical merits. 

While I believe the case for THAAD is solid, and South Korean opinion generally supports it now given the sheer velocity of North Korean missile testing, there remain coherent arguments in opposition. 

For example, one argument is that THAAD is merely symbolic given that North Korea could use other weapons to devastate South Korea, or that the missile defense system might simply encourage North Korea to build even more missiles to overwhelm it.
But such technical issues are increasingly irrelevant. 

The time to debate that issue was a year or two ago. 

Back then, the United States and South Korea had made extensive Track 1, Track 1.5 and Track 2 outreaches to China on THAAD, to explain its capabilities and consider China’s concerns. 

All were rebuffed. 

Instead, China has dug in its heels rather deeply. 

It has been signaling to South Korea for more than a year not to deploy THAAD, threatening all sorts of retaliation. 

This has increasingly turned THAAD from a technical-functional issue of missile defense to an expression of South Korean national security sovereignty: does South Korea have the right to make national-security decisions without China’s approval? 

The South Korean media, even on the center and left, are increasingly framing the tussle this way.
Hence, this is the curious—but deserved—outcome for Beijing. 

Just as a South Korean government, which agrees with China on THAAD, is likely coming to power, Chinese bullying has painted the country into such a tight corner that a leftist president would likely retain missile defense system. 

At this point, THAAD is not about THAAD anymore; it is about whether China has a veto over South Korean foreign policy. 

No South Korean president can assent to that.

Five Ways China Has Become More Repressive Under Xi Jinping

According to the 2016 report by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, there has been a broad corrosion of freedoms
By Charlie Campbell / Beijing 

Respect for human-rights and rule of law have deteriorated markedly during the term of  Xi Jinping, according to a new U.S. government report, which blames an ideological tightening within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a slowing economy brings the legitimacy of its rule into focus.

The almost 80,000-word bipartisan U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) 2016 report, released Thursday morning, raises long-festering issues such as repression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as the erosion of autonomy in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong.
However, the CECC notes a broader corrosion of freedoms, encompassing a social and political reinforcement of the supremacy of the CCP under Xi’s leadership, with deleterious consequences for civil society, media freedom, labor rights and judicial due process.
“Xi has overseen a deterioration in human-rights and rule of law conditions in China marked by greater consolidation of his own power — leading some analysts to draw comparisons to Mao Zedong — through forced ideological conformity and the systematic persecution of human rights lawyers and defenders,” says the CECC report.
Here are five areas the CECC deems to be of particular concern.

1. Rule of Law
When China joined the World Trade Organization 15 years ago, it made commitments regarding enshrining financial fair play and judicial independence. 

However, the CECC report says that China has failed to implement substantive legal reforms, and instead of “rule of law” has become “rule by law — that is, using the law as a means to expand control over Chinese society while disregarding the law when it does not accommodate Party imperatives or advance Party objectives.”
Late last year, the U.N. Committee against Torture concluded that China had failed to eliminate torture, enforced disappearances, deaths in custody, and numerous other forms of ill-treatment in detention. 

The CECC says the Chinese authorities continue to use “black jails” and other forms extrajudicial detention to suppress individuals such as petitioners, rights activists and members of the banned socio-religious group Falun Gong.
Xi’s “tigers and flies” anti-corruption campaign has also seen accusations of torture and coerced confessions and even a spate of suicides by those in line for CCP disciplinary investigations.
“Xi is also looking to promote allies ahead of a major leadership transition next year,” Meredith Sumpter, Asia director of Eurasia Group think-tank, tells TIME. 

“His efforts to ensure that he will be able to fill the five available positions on the Politburo Standing Committee have included making political rivals targets of anti-graft probes.”

2. Civil Society
“Rule by law” has also increasingly been used to quash civil society, and groups and individuals working in what were previously acceptable areas are finding that they are under siege.
Much of this stems from Document No. 9, the internal CCP directive issued just as Xi came to power, which pointed to China’s flourishing civil society as a risk to the Party’s hold over society. “Advocates of civil society want to squeeze the Party out of leadership of the masses at the local level, even setting the Party against the masses, to the point that their advocacy is becoming a serious form of political opposition,” says the document.
To cite just one, sadly typical example, the Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling and Service Center was shuttered in February 2016, despite more than two decades advocating for anti-domestic violence litigation and the protection of land rights for rural women.
The party is “determined to clamp down on any civil society that they deem to be a threat,” says William Nee, Hong Kong researcher for Amnesty International. 

“But what they consider to be a threat is really open to interpretation.”
China’s new foreign NGO and domestic Charity Laws are designed to interpret that “threat” pretty broadly, drastically limiting the ability for civil society to operate outside government sponsorship.

3. Labor Rights
Over the last three decades, CCP legitimacy has been inextricably linked to economic growth and raising the living standards of the Chinese people. 

But that legitimacy is facing unprecedented challenges as economic growth slows to the weakest annual rate in 25 years and economic liberalization flounders. 

Although the official urban unemployment rate at the year’s end was a mite over 4%, economists caution that the true unemployment rate was most likely higher.
The Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin (CLB) recorded 2,773 strikes and protests in China in 2015, more than twice that of a year earlier. 

The CECC also documented growing labor unrest, especially in the construction and manufacturing industries, as well as a government crackdown on labor advocacy.
Labor NGOs have long been subjected to various forms of harassment, often when their actions chaff with the interests of venal individuals connected to the CCP, but labor rights advocates have reported a comprehensive upping of pressure from late 2014.
One such advocate He Xiaobo, of the Nan Fei Yan Social Work Services Center, was previously fêted and even received government funding for his work assisting migrant laborers. 

However, in December 2015 authorities detained He and charged him with “embezzlement.” 

He is now free on bail.
More than a dozen other labor rights advocates have been similarly targeted, including the government award-winning Zeng Feiyang, director of Panyu Migrant Workers Center, who last week received a suspended sentence for “disturbing public order.” 

This was despite court records showing that government officials had approved of the collective bargaining agreement that was the spur for the charges.
“With the economy slowing down, the government is nervous, as workers have shown their ability to not just organize, but organize and win,” says CLB researcher Keegan Elmer. 

“The NGOs are a crucial part of the broader worker struggles in the country, and this ruling and crackdown were directed just as much at their struggles as they were at civil society and international labor rights.”

4. Media
Freedom of the press has, of course, never been a strong point since the birth of the People’s Republic. 

This year, China ranked 176 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and was “the world’s worst jailer of the press” for the second year in a row, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In addition, for the first time since 2012, a foreign journalist, French reporter Ursula Gauthier, was effectively expelled from China, owing to her critical coverage of the government’s ethnic policies in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
According to analysis by Washington-based advocacy group Freedom House, of government directives in 2015, prohibited topic areas were “far broader than mere criticism of the regime, dissident activities, or perennially censored issues ” (typically Taiwan, the personal wealth of CCP bigwigs, Tibet and the Falun Gong).
In November 2015, a Criminal Law amendment came into force that placed journalists at risk of criminally charges for “fabricating false reports” when covering “hazards, epidemics, disasters, and situations involving police.”
Information on public health and safety, economic policy, official malfeasance, media censorship, civil society crackdowns, and the Party’s reputation are also increasingly forbidden, reports the CECC.
While attempting to report August’s stock market tumble, for example, Caijing Magazine journalist Wang Xiaolu was arrested for “suspected violations of colluding with others and fabricating and spreading fake information on securities and futures market,” according to state news wire Xinhua.
Sumpter says Xi has reigned in the growing autonomy that the media was enjoying under his predecessors, who allowed Chinese citizens — albeit with many restrictions — to connect with each other, access information and express views over the Internet.
“Xi thus came to power genuinely concerned about the legitimacy and long-term viability of the Party,” says Sumpter. 

“His primary pursuit as China’s leader has been to reform the Party and re-exert its influence and control over all aspects of the state.”

5. Nationalism
Increasingly, CCP directives exhibit a nationalist bent. 

The 13th Five-Year Plan, adopted this year, explicitly cites an intention to “spur a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in line with the “Chinese dream.”
Authorities in Tibetan and Xinjiang autonomous areas continue with policies that further threaten indigenous culture, religion and language, even labeling ordinary religious activities by Uighur Muslims as extremism and terrorism. 

Self-immolation protests in Tibetan communities have slowed — perhaps, the CECC speculates, due to the authorities imposing collective punishment on the family members of self-immolators.
Outside of restive regions, there has been a clampdown on religious organizations deemed to be not under state control. 

An estimated 1,500 crosses from the steeples of churches have been removed, even though the churches were state-sanctioned. 

Some 20 churches have been completely demolished. 

In the Kaifeng municipality of Henan province, the local Jewish community has reportedly begun to experience government restrictions on religious activity.
According to Nee, the Beijing authorities are drafting ever more laws with a “national security” focus: “It seems to be the default position of the government that the penetration of ‘foreign forces’ can have a negative effect on China.”