This Chinese Christian Was Charged With Trying to Subvert the State

By Ian Johnson

Wang Yi and his wife, Jiang Rong, at their home in Chengdu, China, last year. They have been detained since December.

BEIJING — In 2006, three Chinese Christians traveled to Washington to ask President George W. Bush for his support in their fight for religious freedom.

One of them had converted to the faith only a few months earlier: Wang Yi, a 33-year-old lawyer from the southwestern city of Chengdu.
But Mr. Wang had already become such a prominent Christian that organizers made sure he went to the White House. 

A nationally known essayist and civil rights lawyer, he would soon found a 500-member church that was independent of government control, along with a seminary, an elementary school and even a group to aid the families of political prisoners — all illegal but which he accomplished by sheer force of will.
Today, Mr. Wang, now 45, is back in the spotlight, this time at the center of an intense crackdown on Christianity. 

His Early Rain Covenant Church and others like it are popular among China’s growing middle class and have resisted government control, testing the ruling Communist Party’s resolve to bring China’s churches to heel.
“He saw an inevitable fight with the government because of it trying to control the churches,” said Enoch Wang, a pastor based in the United States who has met Wang Yi many times. 

“He knows that sooner or later they’ll come for you and so there’s no point in trying to hide.”
That was one reason Wang Yi has in recent years become a vocal critic of Xi Jinping’s moves toward authoritarianism.
Last December, he and 100 church members were detained. 

Although most have been released, Mr. Wang, his wife and 11 others are still being held incommunicado without access to a lawyer.
The charges against Mr. Wang and his wife — inciting to subvert state power — typically result in lengthy prison sentences. 

The same charge was used to sentence Liu Xiaobo, a dissident, to 11 years in prison in 2009. 

He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and died in custody in 2017.
According to church members who were detained and subsequently released, the police are also investigating Mr. Wang and two junior pastors for economic crimes such as whether they broke Chinese law by publishing books and DVDs without government approval.
Many congregants who have been released have lost their jobs and housing over their church membership. 

Others have been sent back to their hometowns or had their bank accounts frozen. 

Mr. Wang’s 11-year-old son now lives with his 74-year-old grandmother.
The crackdown is part of a broader effort to subdue China’s fast-growing religious groups. 

This includes detaining a million minority Muslims in internment camps in China’s far west, a drive that has drawn international condemnation.
But while Islam is practiced by about 20 million non-Chinese minorities in largely far-off provinces, Protestant Christianity is followed by about 60 million ethnic Chinese in China’s economic heartland. About half worship in churches that raise their own money and run their own affairs.
In the past, many of these were called underground churches, but over the past decade, some have become public megachurches. 

Run by well-educated white-collar professionals in China’s biggest cities, the churches own property and have nationwide alliances — something anathema to the party, which tightly restricts nongovernmental organizations.
Also targeted in the crackdown were the 1,500-member Zion Church in Beijing, which was closed in September, and the Rongguili Church in Guangzhou, which attracted thousands of worshipers each week.
Unlike the old underground churches, these independent churches wanted to be public.
“They want to be the city on the hill,” said Fredrik Fallman, a professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden who studies contemporary Chinese Christianity. 

“But this is the basic fear of the Communist Party — people organized independent of the party in a structured way.”

Pastor Wang, second from right, met President George W. Bush at the White House in 2006 with other prominent Christian activists.

Since Xi took power in 2012, the party has ramped up efforts to promote ideas such as the glory of traditional China and respect for authority.
Christians like Mr. Wang have challenged this top-down ideology. 

Many are interested in socially engaged models of Christianity, especially the Protestant denomination of Calvinism.
“Traditionally, Christians in China were mainly concerned with saving people’s souls,” said Yu Jie, an exiled essayist who helped convert Mr. Wang in 2005. 

“But Wang Yi and others like us, we don’t think the world is hopelessly corrupt. We want to improve it, and so there’s an emphasis on issues like public service and justice.”
Born in 1973, Mr. Wang grew up in the rural Chinese county of Santai. 

He met his wife in elementary school — and wrote in an essay that he was immediately infatuated with her.
He was 16 when the government crushed pro-democracy protesters near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. 

That event shaped his life, pushing him to a career in law and an interest in justice.
All of this meant his church was unusually active in sensitive areas.
It set up a group that helped the families of political prisoners by regularly visiting them and paying their children’s college tuition. 

The church also helped fund a homeless shelter and protested the ubiquitous use of abortion in Chinese family planning.
Mr. Wang, a pastor, also held prayer services for the victims of the June 4, 1989, massacre of the Tiananmen protesters. 

In one widely circulated photo, he is wearing his pastor’s collar and holding a sign that says, “June 4. Pray for the Country.”
He also became a sharp critic of  Xi, especially after presidential term limits were lifted last year, allowing him to serve a third term and to potentially rule for life.
In response, Mr. Wang circulated a message calling Xi a “usurper” who was “not amending the Constitution but destroying it.”
Some in his congregation objected to his overtly political message. 

Two years ago, another pastor left Early Rain to start his own church, criticizing some of Mr. Wang’s statements as stunts. 

But others in the church thought they were necessary.
Mr. Wang’s bluntness made him one of the most polarizing figures in Chinese Christianity. 

When the government began reducing the public face of Christianity in one province by tearing crosses off the steeples of even government-run churches, Mr. Wang expressed no sympathy for the churches affected. 

Instead, he said their pastors were wrong for serving in churches controlled by the government.
Mr. Yu, the writer, said he wondered if his old friend was wise in confronting the government so openly.
“As a pastor, you do have a responsibility to protect your members,” Mr. Yu said. 

“Given the conditions in China, it’s something one can consider.”
But Mr. Wang had long anticipated his detention over the question of state control.

In a 2017 sermon, he asked his congregation what he should do if the government demanded even limited control over their church: Should he agree and avoid persecution, or resist?

He joked that some people might ask him if he couldn’t make a few compromises.
“We’ve got an 80-year-old grandma at home and we just had a child!” he said, anticipating the argument.
But then Mr. Wang argued against this sort of accommodation.
“In this world, in this crooked, depraved and perverse world, how do we demonstrate that we are a group of people who trust in Jesus?” he said. 

“It is through bodily submission, through bodily suffering, that we demonstrate the freedom of our souls.”

‘The Chinese Government is at War With Faith.’

U.S. Official Denounces Religious Crackdown in China
BY AMY GUNIA

Former US Senator Samuel Dale Brownback (R-KS) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing to be ambassador at large for international religious freedom, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Oct. 4, 2017.

U.S. diplomat Samuel Brownback denounced China’s treatment of the Uighur minority during a teleconference call Tuesday.

Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, make up roughly 40% of the population of the northwestern colony of East Turkestan.

According to the U.N., an estimated 1 million Uighurs are being held in concentration camps in East Turkestan.
“We have been putting out very clearly that this is a horrific situation that’s taking place in East Turkestan,” said Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom.
Brownback was speaking Tuesday from Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, where he is leading a regional conference on religious freedom to raise awareness of the issue.
In response to a question submitted by TIME, Brownback said that international pressure on China over their treatment of Uighurs is causing Beijing to change their approach.
“Initially they didn’t respond. Then they denied that it was taking place and then finally more recently settled on this idea that this is "vocational training". They haven’t said that it’s involuntary vocational training,” he said. 

“All of these are completely unsatisfactory answers,” he added.
“It is past time in the year 2019 for the Chinese government to answer what it’s doing to its own people,” he continued. 

The ambassador said families of hundreds of people who have gone missing in the detainment camps have contacted him.
Brownback called for China to allow international observers to visit East Turkestan and for the release of individuals being held there. 

He mentioned that if China does not comply, the U.S. could invoke sanctions or enact the Global Magnitsky Act, legislation that allows the U.S. (as well as other countries, including Canada and E.U. member states) to put sanctions on individuals or organizations who are complicit in human rights abuses.
“The administration is serious about religious freedom matters and deeply concerned about what is taking place in China,” he said. 

U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly called for the Trump Administration to take firm action against China over its treatment of Muslims.
The conference in Taipei came after Brownback visited Hong Kong, where he gave a speech addressing wider religious repression by the Chinese government.
“Over the last few years, we have seen increasing Chinese government persecution of religious believers from many faiths and from all parts of the mainland,” he said at Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents Club on Friday, referring to growing religious repression against not just Muslims, but also Buddhists, Christians and the Falun Gong.
Referring to China’s claims that the East Turkestan camps help prevent terrorism, he said the “magnitude of these detentions is completely out of proportion to any real threat China faces from extremism.”
“Based on testimonies of survivors, it is clear that China’s misguided and cruel policies in East Turkestan are creating resentment, hatred, division, poverty and anger,” he added.
Concerning Buddhists in Tibet, Brownback said in the same speech that China is “likely to interfere with the selection of the next Dalai Lama” but that Tibetans “should be able to select, educate, and venerate their religious leaders without government interference”
He also addressed persecution of Christians in China, denouncing the government’s 2018 ban on online sales of the Bible. 

He also discussed the crackdown on underground churches and the detention of Christian religious leaders.
China is officially atheist but its constitution guarantees its citizens “freedom of religious belief” and protection or “normal religious activities.” 

The Chinese government officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism.
Since 1999, the U.S. government has designated China a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

Turkey urges China to respect religious freedom in East Turkestan

China must respect human rights of Muslims, including freedom of religion, Turkish FM says.

al jazeera
China must learn to distinguish between terrorists and innocent people, Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has voiced concern over China's mistreatment of Uighur and other Muslims in its East Turkestan colony and called on Beijing to protect freedom of religion there.
The United Nations Human Rights Council opened its annual four-week session on Monday as Western countries are looking to Turkey and other members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to spotlight what China calls "re-education and training" facilities in East Turkestan.
UN experts and activists say the camps hold one million Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language, and other Muslim minorities. 

China has denied accusations of mistreatment and deems criticism within the UN council to be interference in its sovereignty.
In his remarks, Cavusoglu did not specifically mention mass detention camps in the remote western colony of China.
However, he told the Geneva forum that reports of human rights violations against Uighurs and other Muslims in East Turkestan were serious cause for concern.

'Distinction needed'
A distinction should be made between "terrorists and innocent people", Cavusoglu said.
"We encourage Chinese authorities and expect that universal human rights, including freedom of religion, are respected and full protection of the cultural identities of the Uighurs and other Muslims is ensured," Cavusoglu said.
China, a member of the 47-member Human Rights Council, did not immediately respond to the Turkish foreign minister's remarks, but delegations will be free to reply later in the session.
East Turkestan has been enveloped in a suffocating blanket of security for years, particularly since a deadly anti-government riot broke out in the regional capital, Urumqi, in 2009.
The roughly 10 million Uighurs make up a tiny proportion of China's almost 1.4 billion people and there has never been an uprising that could challenge the central government's overwhelming might.

President Trump vs. Evil Empire

Religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, and it's resonating with Christian leaders.

By NAHAL TOOSI

Vice President Mike Pence infuriated Beijing when he gave a speech in October warning that China had become a dangerous rival to the United States. 

While he focused on familiar issues such as China’s trade policies and cyber espionage, Pence also denounced the country’s “avowedly atheist Communist Party.”
Citing a crackdown on organized religion in the country, Pence noted that Chinese authorities “are tearing down crosses, burning Bibles and imprisoning believers.”
“For China’s Christians,” Pence said, “these are desperate times.”
Pence’s remarks, which also addressed the repression of Chinese Buddhists and Muslims, illustrated how religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, which some foreign policy insiders warn could develop into a new Cold War.
It is a subject that resonates in the U.S. heartland, some Christian leaders say — parts of which, including rural areas, are disproportionately at risk of fallout from Trump’s trade fight with the Asian giant.
The issue has gained new resonance with Beijing’s arrest this month of a prominent Christian pastor and more than 100 members of his congregation.
The arrests have drawn close coverage from evangelical outlets such as Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), whose website published an open letter by the jailed pastor, Wang Yi, declaring his “anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime.”
Days after the arrests, Trump’s ambassador for international religious freedom, former Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, decried the crackdown and said that in the weeks since Pence’s speech, religious freedom concerns “have only grown.”
While China’s religious persecution draws less media attention than issues like soybean tariffs and cyber espionage, it is closely tracked by conservative Christian activists and outlets like CBN, where a typical headline recently reported: “Chinese Government Destroys Christian Church, Bills Pastor for Demolition.”
In September, Providence Magazine, which covers U.S. foreign policy from a Christian perspective, wrote that in 2018 China’s religious repression has reached “a sustained intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized China on such grounds.
In a report on international religious freedom released earlier this year, the State Department noted that throughout China there were reports of “deaths in detention of religious adherents as well as reports the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices.“
Religious activists note that Pence, Brownback, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top Trump aides are people of faith with genuine concerns about religious freedom. 

But even they acknowledge the subject happens to be a potent political message for religious conservatives and may help rally them behind Trump’s confrontational China policy.
Some religious leaders even hear an echo of history: Cold War-era denunciations of godless Soviet communism by past U.S. presidents, notably Ronald Reagan.

“In the great heartland of America, where there tend to be higher levels of people who care about faith, reminding people that a regime — whether then the Soviet Union or today’s communist China — rejects God and has an official policy of atheism is helpful in getting them to understand why our government is taking certain actions in the foreign policy area,” said Gary Bauer, a longtime conservative Christian leader whom President Trump appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“Evil empire” was the famous label then-President Reagan applied to the Soviet Union in 1983. 

Less remembered is the fact that Reagan was addressing the National Association of Evangelicals.
Reagan vowed at the time that the Soviets “must be made to understand: … We will never abandon our belief in God.”
President Trump himself rarely addresses religious freedom or human rights, and when it comes to China he focuses mainly on Beijing’s trade practices. 

But his administration — backed by an evangelical base that stood for President Trump in 2016 and continues to support him enthusiastically — has strongly emphasized international religious freedom.

Earlier this year, for instance, the State Department hosted a first-ever gathering of foreign ministers devoted to the subject. (China was not invited and was targeted in a joint statement signed by a handful of countries, including the U.S.)
“This administration is putting this in the matrix of all of our policy,” said Tony Perkins, another prominent Christian conservative who serves on the religious freedom commission and is close to the White House. 

“It’s more than just the throwaway line.”
Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has also assailed Beijing for religious persecution, including at a September speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, an event affiliated with the Perkins-led Family Research Council.
During an appearance, Pompeo decried “an intense new government crackdown on Christians in China, which includes heinous actions like closing churches, burning Bibles, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith.”
Like Pence, Pompeo also dwelled on the plight of China’s Muslim population, particularly ethnic Uighurs from the Chinese colony of East Turkestan. 

A State Department official recently testified before lawmakers that up to 2 million Muslims are now confined to concentration camps in China.
“Their religious beliefs are decimated,” Pompeo told Values Voter Summit attendees.
The Chinese government, which often casts Uighur Muslims as potential "terrorists", says the camps are designed to teach vocational and life skills. 

But the State Department official, Scott Busby, said the goal is “forcing detainees to renounce Islam and embrace the Chinese Communist Party.”
While evangelical groups active in Washington tend to focus primarily on the persecution of Christians in China and elsewhere, some make sure to point out that they care about religious freedom for all faith groups, including Muslims. 

In a past interview with POLITICO, Brownback stressed that he also wants to protect people’s right to have “no religion at all.”
The Trump administration may unveil a set of human rights-related sanctions targeting officials in a range of countries in the coming weeks. 

Some China observers are hopeful the list will include Chen Quanguo, a top Communist Party official said to have orchestrated the anti-Muslim crackdown and to have had a role in repressing Tibetan Buddhists.
“It’s a critical moment,” said Bob Fu, a U.S.-based pastor and founder of ChinaAid, a group that advocates for religious freedom in China.
Brownback did not offer comment for this story, and a spokesman for Pompeo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A White House spokesperson said of Pence that “religious freedom throughout the world is a top priority for the vice president and the administration as a whole.”
Bauer predicted that evangelicals and other voters in the U.S. heartland will continue to support President Trump even if he expands his trade war with China. 

The administration, cognizant of the potential pain for its supporters, has taken some steps to cushion the blow, such as offering farming subsidies.
By retaliating against particular U.S. industries, such as soybean farmers, China is trying to pressure the administration. 

“I think China will fail in this effort and support for the Trump-Pence policies will remain strong,“ Bauer said.
When it comes to pleasing the religious right, the Trump administration has been willing to make some dicey moves.
This past summer, to the shock of the foreign policy establishment, Trump imposed economic sanctions on two Cabinet officials in Turkey — an important U.S. ally and fellow NATO member — due to the questionable imprisonment of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson.

Brunson, whose cause was championed by evangelicals, was eventually freed and the sanctions lifted.
How far the administration will push Beijing on religious freedom could come down to the president himself and what China is willing to do to assuage his concerns on trade.
Trump, after all, has been willing to drop talk of human rights issues when it seems he’s making progress on other fronts — that's what has happened in his dealings with North Korea.
The Chinese in particular are highly sensitive to their global image, and, like the Soviet Union, China cannot be ignored.

The Manchurian Pope

A Catholic bishop and his rural Chinese parish worry about a deal between Beijing and the Vatican
By Emily Rauhala

Catholics from nearby villages pray and chant in Bobei Catholic Church in Guangdong province, China, on the morning of March 4, 2018. 
LUOTIANBA, China — The bishop can’t really talk about religion right now.
His unofficial church is caught in a fight over the future of the Roman Catholic faith here, a struggle for control between the Vatican and the Communist Party that will determine the fate of the estimated 10 million Catholics in China and shape the legacy of Pope Francis.
Bishop Zhuang Jianjian, 88, under watch and already in trouble, knows it is not safe to speak out. But he can still deliver a sermon.
Just before 7 a.m. on a recent Sunday, he walked to the front of a small, white church in the green hills of Guangdong province and told the story of how God tested Abraham and Abraham kept faith.
In half-empty pews, grandmothers in quilted jackets traced their fingers across the creased pages of their Chinese prayer books. 

Farmers, arriving late, made the sign of the cross. 

For them, and for millions of others, these are testing times.
For decades, the Vatican and the Communist Party have been at odds over Catholicism in China, particularly on the question of who appoints clergy — the Holy See or Beijing.
Vatican-appointed bishops like Zhuang operate underground, which means they are under surveillance and are never totally safe. 

The government-backed Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association chooses leaders for churches of its own.
Now, a deal is in the works. 

The plan would give Francis a say in how bishops are appointed in the People’s Republic. 

In return, the pope would recognize seven bishops who were ordained without Vatican approval.
It is being pitched as a way to restore ties between the Vatican and Beijing and bolster the church at a time when Xi Jinping is cracking down on religion, and Catholicism is losing ground to other faiths.

Villagers farm on their small piece of land in Guangdong province, China, on March 3, 2018. Luotianba Catholic Church stands in the background.

A Mary statue stands in the courtyard of Luotianba Church, which was built in 1840 by a French missionary
It is catastrophic sellout that would put party cadres in charge of communities that have long fought to worship without government control. 

They want the pope to reconsider.
“To join the Patriotic Association is to deny our faith,” said Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong and the deal’s most vocal critic. 

“If the government is managing the church, it is not the Catholic Church anymore.”
In an interview with The Washington Post in Hong Kong, where the church operates relatively freely, Zen confirmed the story that Zhuang could not relate.
In December, the elderly bishop was escorted from Guangdong to Beijing, where a papal delegation asked him to retire to make way for Huang Bingzhang, an excommunicated bishop who also happens to be a member of China’s National People’s Congress.
Zhuang refused. 

Keeping faith
Sitting in the seventh row that morning was a 71-year-old farmer with white hair and worn hands. 

He asked to be identified only by his family name, Cai, for fear of persecution.
On Sundays, Cai walks through fields of cabbage and sweet potato to attend Zhuang’s service. 

Most other evenings, he hosts neighbors in a makeshift chapel on the ground floor of his home.
Cai, like many here, traces his family’s Catholic roots back generations — “five or six, to the time of the Qing dynasty,” he said — when Catholicism established itself in this part of China under French influence in the mid-19th century.
He has seen faith tested. 

And he has seen it survive. 

“You cannot get rid of the Catholic Church,” he said. 

“Catholics are like seeds.”

Old photos of Bobei Catholic Church are framed and hung inside the church in Guangdong province, China.

That, of course, is what China’s leaders fear. 

The Patriotic Association, which was created in 1957, aims to channel Catholics into churches where faith in party, not faith in God, comes first.
While many Catholics in China have joined, millions of others have held out, unwilling to compromise on the primacy of the pope. 

Now, it is the pope who hopes to "unite" them.
The Vatican seems to be betting that regularizing religious practice will revitalize the faith. Catholicism is rooted in China’s countryside, and that has posed an ever larger problem. 

As young people move to the cities, small towns and villages empty out — and so, too, do churches.
At Zhuang’s service, there were perhaps two dozen parishioners: elderly farmers, two teenage girls and one fidgety altar boy who arrived, then zoomed away, on a muddy motorbike.
The villagers of Luotianba spoke carefully, and mostly off the record, to avoid criticizing the government or the church. 

Some said it didn’t matter who the bishop was. 

Others thought it did.

Small Catholic statues are on the shelf of a shop in Bobei village, in Guangdong province, China. About 800 people in the community are Catholic. 
Few seemed pleased about the prospect of change. 

Zhuang, their bishop, was born in this area and, like them, speaks Hakka, a language that is unintelligible to many Chinese. 

The bishop set to replace him, Huang, won’t understand them, Cai worried.
“We don't even know if he’s a bishop at all,” he said. 

“He wasn’t appointed by the church, he was appointed by the government. It will be very difficult for people who truly believe in God to accept this.”
And if the deal goes through? 

Recalling that morning’s service, Cai summoned the sermon on Abraham: “The message is to stick to your beliefs.”

Cutting a deal
Closer to the halls of power, the debate over a deal has been accompanied by secret meetings, open letters and dramatic, last-minute flights to Rome.
That Zen, and other church leaders, are willing to speak so openly is striking — and presents a challenge to the pope.
Efforts at rapprochement did not start with Francis, but he has given the issue greater attention. 

He has taken several chances to send greetings to Xi. 

In a 2016 interview, he wished the Chinese president a happy new year and expounded on the “greatness of the Chinese people.”
Negotiations appeared stuck until earlier this year, when news broke that Zhuang and a second Vatican-appointed bishop had been asked to step down.
Zhuang wrote a letter appealing to the pope and sent it to Zen. 

On the night of Jan. 9, Zen, not trusting Vatican diplomats to deliver his mail, decided to fly from Hong Kong to Rome, he said.
The next day, he arrived late to an audience where cardinals and bishops may kiss the pope’s hands. He handed Francis a translation of Zhuang’s letter, plus a letter of his own.

Catholics from nearby villages pray and chant in Bobei Catholic Church in Guangdong province, China, on the morning of March 4, 2018. 
Prayer books left on the bench of Luotianba Church in Guangdong province, China. 

A man walks into Bobei Church before a prayer in Guangdong province, China, on March 4, 2018. 

On the evening of Jan. 12, the pope received him and he made his case. 

“I was rather disorderly in my talking, but I think I succeeded to convey to the Holy Father the worries of his faithful children in China,” he wrote.
Zen called the deal a betrayal of underground Catholics who had kept faith under tough conditions. “With the deal, you are pushing people who are outside the cage, into the cage — that’s incredible,” he said.
Sister Beatrice Leung, a professor at Taiwan’s Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages and an expert on Catholicism in China, said she reserved judgment, but worried that the Vatican lacked expertise when it came to dealing with China’s government and risked getting “trapped.”
“The Vatican has made a great deal of concessions. I haven’t seen any concession from the Chinese government. That’s why in the outside world, in the free world, there is a lot of opposition,” she said.
An open letter written by a group of influential Catholics argued that the Communist Party had a history of breaking promises when it comes to protecting religious freedom.
“The agreement would not only fail to guarantee the limited freedom desired by the Church,” they wrote, “but also damage the Church’s holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity, and deal a blow to the Church’s moral power.”
In Luotianba village, the anxiety about what comes next is palpable — even when it goes unsaid.
“It’s not convenient to talk, forgive me,” Zhuang said that Sunday morning.
“But I will keep my faith.”

Rosary beads left on the bench in Luotianba Church, in Guangdong province, China, on March 4, 2018.

Vatican's Crypto-Communism

THE VATICAN’S CHINA WHITEWASH

By Daniel Mark

Like many others, I received with skepticism the news of a possible deal to resolve the long-standing dispute between China and the Vatican concerning the appointment of bishops and other ecclesial matters. 

I recognize the need for measured dissent, since none of us can say definitively what approach will, in the long run, be best for the Catholic Church in China. 

But cautious deference to the insiders’ greater experience in diplomacy and knowledge of the deal’s particulars does not lessen my dismay and bewilderment at recent remarks by Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. 

Speaking to Vatican Insider, Sorondo opined: “Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.”
Sorondo’s comments throughout the interview range from naïve to ludicrous, and they verge on an apology for one of the world’s most repressive regimes. 

The bishop lauds China for its lack of shantytowns, as though the country’s widespread poverty were a secret. 

The absence of drug use among China’s young, which the bishop cites, is about as plausible as the absence of homosexuals in Iran claimed by that country’s former president. 

And in praising China’s implementation of Laudato Si’ and defense of the Paris Climate Accord, Sorondo seems oblivious to Beijing’s famously awful smog. 

“What people don’t realize,” the bishop muses, “is that the central value in China is work, work, work.” 

What the bishop doesn’t realize is that China is a totalitarian state.
There is no end to what could be said about China’s atrocious record on human rights, from the forced repatriation of North Korean refugees to the detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo, who died in custody in July without adequate treatment for his liver cancer. 

But let me leave aside the restrictions on political and economic liberty and stick with a subject I follow closely—religious freedom—which should be of special concern to the Church (and to all people who affirm the moral principles of Dignitatis Humanae).
The recent Communist Party conference in China entrenched the incumbent leader and his eponymous ideology, Xi Jinping Thought. 

This ideology entails the “sinicization” of religion, a process of manipulating and subduing faith so as to render it compatible with the state’s totalitarian aims. 

The brand-new Regulations on Religious Affairs strike at believers by tying religion to extremism, including separatism and terrorism, thereby providing the pretext for suppressing almost any religious activity. 

Practitioners of Falun Gong, like some other groups labeled “cults,” are already familiary with this tactic. 

They are victims of some of Beijing’s worst abuses, having long been subjected to the evil of organ harvesting. (A Chinese representative participated prominently in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ February Summit on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism—to some protests.)-
Uyghur Muslims in China’s west are banned from fasting during Ramadan, attending mosque if they are under age eighteen, growing beards deemed “abnormal,” and even giving certain Muslim names to their children. 

The government confiscates their Korans and prayer mats and even places minders in their homes, to ensure that they do not pray or fast. 

China’s war on Tibetan Buddhists is well known. 

The government uses its influence internationally against the Dalai Lama. 

The Panchem Lama was detained by authorities at age six, more than twenty years ago, and his whereabouts remain unknown. 

This past summer, officials demolished much of Larung Gar, the main center of Tibetan Buddhist learning, leaving thousands of monks and nuns homeless. 

Similar destruction then took place at the Yachen Gar center.
Christians in China have likewise faced persecution, not least from the government’s assault on affiliation with underground churches. 

In January, the government razed a megachurch serving fifty thousand worshipers. 

In Zhejiang Province, authorities have waged a long campaign to remove crosses from the tops of churches, with the “decapitations” numbering around two thousand. 

In early 2017, the pastor of the unregistered Living Stone Church was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for “divulging state secrets,” and a former deacon was sentenced to five years for “illegal business operations.” 

In May, the government detained underground Catholic Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of Wenzhou—his fourth detention since the previous September. 

Even for state-approved entities, surveillance, harassment, and violence complement the government’s usual regimen of registration and regulation of all church activity. 

With China’s autocrats deeply fearful of the spread of Christianity in their country, these are just a few examples of the repression they perpetrate.
A friend of mine who is an astute commentator on Church affairs speculated that Bishop Sorondo’s words were intended to burnish China’s image and thereby put the pending deal in a better light. 

If that’s the case, then the Vatican is taking the wrong approach to its messaging. 

If Church leaders wish to defend a rapprochement, they should first acknowledge that the communist dictatorship’s treatment of believers is harsh and unpredictable, and then argue that, under the circumstances, this is the best way to move forward: A deal will increase the Vatican’s control over the Church in China, open the door to further normalization of relations with China and regularization of the Church there, and bring some much-needed relief to the faithful. 

This argument might prove unpersuasive, but at least the bishops would not be peddling what I will understatedly call a whitewash.
As Hadley Arkes taught us thirty years ago in the book that became this magazine’s namesake, in politics the critical thing is the character of the regime. 

To deny the brutal, authoritarian character of the Chinese regime can only serve to blind the Vatican’s diplomats to the real nature of their interlocutors and, thereby, vastly increase the risk of error. 

The Church should stand as a witness against an ideology that claims the whole of human life for itself—that demands that all be rendered unto Caesar. 

At least it should not flatter Caesar unduly.

Xi Jinping's Pope

Francis’s Capitulation To Communist China Betrays His People And Faith
Far from making life easier for Chinese Catholics, accepting Communist control of their bishops disheartens and oppresses them further.
By Maureen Mullarkey

Is Francis a naive crypto-communist?

Nothing better reveals the moral compass of the current pontificate than its mania for smiling relations with a Leninist dictatorship. 

Francis is not the first modern pope to wish for better relations with the People’s Republic of China. But he is the first to acquiesce in the regime’s goal of absolute dominion over religions, particularly the Catholic Church. 

His predecessors were more lucid. 

And more principled
The Vatican is poised to surrender control of the long-suffering Roman Catholic Church in mainland China to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CPC). 

Short of full diplomatic recognition, the deal abandons Chinese faithful to their persecutors.
Validly ordained bishops are being asked to step down to make way for government-approved ones, including several who have been excommunicated. (Excommunication is the penalty for accepting ordination without papal approval.) 

Faithful priests already selected as valid successors to retiring bishops have been ordered to forego ordination to avoid offending the Chinese regime.
Far from making life easier for Chinese Catholics, this disheartens and oppresses them further. 

The reward for their heroic decades-long endurance is a garland of tears over betrayal by the papacy they honored at cost to themselves. 

No wonder Cardinal Joseph Zen, the Shanghai-born bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, calls it “a bad deal.” 

A lion of a man, and a persistent advocate for human rights and democratic liberties, Zen has been an obstacle to Vatican appeasement of Beijing.

What China’s Rulers Want, and Are Getting
On January 18, the cardinal posted an open letter on his blog—reposted by AsiaNews—warning against the consequence of accommodation: “The Communist government is making new, harsher regulations limiting religious freedom. They are now strictly enforcing regulations which, up to now, were practically only on paper. From the 1st of February, 2018, attendance to Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated.”
Mass in the underground will no longer be tolerated. 

In other words, the emboldened regime need no longer keep up appearances for public relations. 

With the Vatican’s blessing, it can openly enforce prohibition of the valid Mass for which close to three generations of Chinese faithful have suffered.
Going forward, all bishops will be “democratically” selected by the government-led Council of Bishops, to which the Vatican has already ceded authority. 

Names will be sent to Rome for rubber stamping, a sellout that appears to have been in the works for some time.
In a significant but overlooked 2015 article in AsiaNews, editor Bernardo Cervellera explained Beijing’s bedrock position in “negotiations” with Vatican sympathizers. 

Then as now, any mention of imprisoned bishops was off the table. 

Then as now, Beijing’s proposal consisted exclusively on complete recognition by the Holy See for all Communist Party-approved bishops. 

Moreover: “The Holy See must approve the Council’s appointment and has a weak veto only in ‘severe’ cases, which must be justified if used. If the Holy See’s justifications are considered ‘insufficient,’ the Council of Bishops may decide to proceed anyway.”
Cervella continued: “The increased controls have only one purpose: to preserve the monopoly of power of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and remove or crush any person who might challenge it or its very existence.”
The Vatican has already quietly accepted certain Communist-appointed bishops. 

But even circumspection no longer applies. 

On January 29, AsiaNews quoted Zen again: “ Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”

‘Manipulate Catholics to Submit to the Communist Party’
Francis’ bow to Beijing is not an internal matter for Catholics only. 

The concession is a rag bag of geopolitical ramifications, an ominous move in a larger global power struggle in which the Chinese Catholics are so much collateral damage. 

The omelet matters more than broken eggs.
Judged solely by low Machiavellian standards of statesmanship, the capitulation is a political coup. But for whom? 

For China, thawed relations with the Vatican enhance its global image and deflect attention from its militarism, duplicity, and depravity regarding human rights. 

Plus, the regime earns a diplomatic victory over Taiwan. 

The Vatican can tout the close of a seven-decade breach between the underground “Church of the Catacombs,” loyal to the Holy See, and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, a creature of Beijing.
The Patriotic Association, founded in 1957 as the CPC’s counter-church, is a nationalist stand-in for the ancient repository of thought and worship in communion with Rome. 

Twenty years ago, Matthias Lu, a noted translator of the church fathers, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas into Chinese, summarized its aims. 

They have not changed: “Its [the Association’s] commitment is to manipulate the mass of the Catholic population in order to integrate them into the Socialist revolutionary movement by submitting them to the leadership of the Communist Party in all things.”
Vatican press trumpets this pact with the devil as an historic halt to impending schism. 

The spin is worthy of the CPC’s Central Publicity Department. 

Francis has merely flattered the regime by normalizing an existing schism dating from the 1950s when the Catholic Church was outlawed, its properties confiscated (later transferred to the Patriotic Association), and Catholics arrested en masse. 

The winning side in this new order belongs to Xi Jinping.

Communism Is Not Reconcilable with Christianity
In May, 2015, Xi Jinping spoke with the United Front, led by the Central Committee. 

He repeated what Communist Party leasers have affirmed since Mao denounced the Vatican as “the stray dog of capitalism.” 

In sum, he insisted on “Sinicization of religion,” including independence from “foreign influences,” as the only way the Catholic Church will be permitted to survive in China.
Xi’s Sinification is not the dialogue with Chinese culture (inculturation) that has characterized the church in China since the sixteenth century. 

Instead, it is a political power grab that reduces Christianity to an offshoot of socialist doctrine. Churches can continue to function as charitable organizations or non-governmental organizations, but the hierarchy become bureaucrats in the party apparatus.
Autonomy from Rome teems with implication for the Catholic Church’s social doctrines. 

The bureaucrats of collectivism have their own dogmas, infallibilities, and absolutes. 

These are in radical contradiction to traditional Christian reflection on morality, especially those relating to life issues.
Implicit in Francis’ conciliation is permission to ignore a range of moral matters that define a Christian conscience. 

The Catholic Church’s philosophical arguments defending the inviolable dignity of human life and the primacy of the individual cannot be asserted in pulpits. 

Silence is assured on labor camps, on the execution of prisoners to feed the lucrative organ trade, and on “family planning” policies. 

A comfortably Sinicized church can keep a good conscience while disregarding forced abortions, forced sterilizations, or forced migration (e.g., the massive Three Gorges Dam project unhoused 1.4 million peasants and submerged some 900 towns and villages).
In all, the Bergolian pontificate is set to achieve what the Communists have not: strangulating the Catholic Church as a living witness to the gospels and their demands.

Academic Prostitution, Harvard Style

China’s $360 million gift to Harvard
By Bill Gertz

A rower paddles down the Charles River near the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, March 7, 2017. 

China is providing Harvard University with $360 million that a former military intelligence analyst says appears to be part of an effort to influence one of America’s most important educational institutions.
Anders Corr, a former government analyst who specializes in foreign influence operations, stated in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence that a Chinese military-linked company, JT Capital, gave $10 million to Harvard in 2014, the same year the family of Ronnie Chan, a Hong Kong real estate mogul with ties to China, announced it is giving $350 million to the university. 

Both donations were “relatively opaque” and raise questions about the purpose of the funds, he said.
Mr. Corr, who received an international relations doctorate from Harvard in 2008, said the Chinese donations appear to be an attempt to introduce biases among the university’s professors in a bid to influence U.S. policy or public opinion in China’s favor.
“Allowing such donations does not appear to be in U.S. national security interests, and it does not appear to be necessary for Harvard’s research and teaching (it already has an endowment of $36.7 billion),” he said. 

“Perhaps there should be legislation against Chinese-linked money in U.S. politics, including think tanks and universities.”
Harvard professors also give paid speeches in China, are paid for publishing work in China and enjoy all-expenses-paid travel to China, Mr. Corr stated in his letter.
“These are all potential avenues of influence upon professors, who do not usually broadcast these pecuniary benefits as they could diminish the perception of their impartiality,” he said.
The U.S. government gave Harvard $600 million in 2016, and over the years has provided billions of dollars for research and education, he noted.
Mr. Corr then asked the vice president, who met recently with Harvard President Drew Faust, to look into whether the China-linked donations violate U.S. foreign agents’ registration laws, and whether Harvard may be providing valuable U.S. technology to China in exchange. 

The $350 million donation also should be examined by the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS.
“Harvard is not unique in being a soft but influential voice on China that has a conflict of interest because of China-linked pecuniary interests,” Mr. Corr stated.
“The way in which China-linked pecuniary interests percolate through elite-level U.S. policy discussions on China on both sides of the aisle, and in supposedly bipartisan think tanks and universities, should be a concern to all U.S. citizens who depend on places like Harvard for unbiased political analysis.”
Mr. Corr said that given the substantial government support for Harvard, American taxpayers deserve greater transparency.
“Harvard is but one example, I think, of a much bigger problem of bias in U.S.-China policy analysis,” he said. 

“I hope the problem can be addressed by the enforcement of existing law, new law or at least someone with sufficient stature to improve transparency of China-linked donations and get some answers.”

A spokesman for Mr. Pence said the vice president was traveling and had no comment.

Report on China’s religious abuses
The State Department this week outlined the death, torture and abuse of religious adherents in China as part of an annual report on religious freedom.
“Throughout the country, there continued to be reports of deaths, in detention and otherwise, of religious adherents and that the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices,” the report states.
The report states that among China’s 1.4 billion people, there are an estimated 657 million believers — far more than the official Chinese government estimate of 200 million. 

The faith community includes 250 million Buddhists, 70 million Christians, 25 million Muslims, 301 million observers of folk religions and 10 million observers of other faiths, including Taoism. Jews number around 2,500.
China’s constitution contains a provision ensuring “freedom of religious belief” for citizens. 

But in practice religious activities are suppressed through government controls on officially approved groups and harsh repression of unofficial groups.
The report notes that members of the ruling Communist Party of China and its People’s Liberation Army “are required to be atheists” and banned from practicing any religious faith. 

“Members who are found to belong to religious organizations are subject to expulsion, although these rules are not universally enforced,” the report said.
Chinese authorities continued the practice of bulldozing unofficial “house churches.” 

The government also continued its yearslong crackdown on the Falun Gong movement, estimated to number at least 70 million. 

The group reported that dozens of its members died in Chinese detention.
“A pastor of an unregistered church and his wife were reportedly buried alive while protesting the demolition of their church; the wife died while the pastor was able to escape,” the report said.
“There were also reports of the disappearance of a Catholic priest, and the death of a rights activist for Hui Muslim minorities and others that the government said was suicide.”

China vs. Islam: China bans religious names for Muslim babies

List of banned baby names released amid ongoing crackdown on religion that includes law against veils and beards
By Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

Uighur women in loose, full-length garments and headscarves associated with conservative Islam visit a market in the city of Aksu in East Turkestan.

Many couples fret over choosing the perfect name for their newborn, but for Muslims in western China that decision has now become even more fraught: pick the wrong name and your child will be denied education and government benefits.
Officials in the western region of Xinjiang (East Turkestan), home to roughly half of China’s 23 million Muslims, have released a list of banned baby names amid an ongoing crackdown on religion.

Chinese troops stage show of force in Xinjiang and vow to 'relentlessly beat' separatists

Names such as Islam, Quran, Saddam and Mecca, as well as references to the star and crescent moon symbol, are all unacceptable to the ruling Communist party and children with those names will be denied household registration, a crucial document that grants access to social services, healthcare and education.
A full list of names has not yet been published and it is unclear exactly what qualifies as a religious name.
China blames religious extremists for a slew of violent incidents in recent years that have left hundreds dead. 

It has launched a series of crackdowns in Xinjiang (East Turkestan), home to the Muslim Uighur minority and one of the most militarised regions in the country.
Uighur rights groups complain of severe restrictions on religion and freedom of expression, and say the attacks are isolated incidents caused by local grievances, not part of a wider coordinated campaign. 

Young men are banned from growing beards in Xinjiang and women are forbidden from wearing face veils.
Rights groups were quick to condemn the name ban, which applies to dozens of names deemed by Communist party officials to carry religious overtones.
“This is just the latest in a slew of new regulations restricting religious freedom in the name of countering ‘religious extremism,’” Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. 

“These policies are blatant violations of domestic and international protections on the rights to freedom of belief and expression.
“If the government is serious about bringing stability and harmony to the region as it claims, it should roll back – not double down on – repressive policies.”
Authorities in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) passed new legislation last month expanding a host of restrictions, including allowing staff at train stations and airports to deny entry to women wearing face veils and encouraging staff to report them to the police.
The new law also prohibits “abnormal beards” and “naming of children to exaggerate religious fervour”. 

Various cities in Xinjiang previously had rules banned women wear face veils and men with long beard from public transportation, but the new law applies to the entire region.
A Communist party village chief and ethnic Uighur was demoted last month for not having a “resolute political stance” after he refused to smoke in front of Muslim elders. 

The state-run Global Times newspaper quote another local official as saying cadres should push against religious convention to demonstrate “their commitment to secularisation”.

Cultural Genocide

U.N. Human Rights Experts Unite to Condemn China Over Expulsions of Tibetans
By EDWARD WONG

Buddhist monks at Larung Gar last year. A half-dozen United Nations experts have condemned the expulsions of monks and nuns from two Tibetan religious enclaves, Larung Gar and Yachen Gar.

A half-dozen United Nations experts who investigate human rights abuses have taken the rare step of banding together to condemn China for expulsions of monks and nuns from major religious enclaves in a Tibetan region.
In a sharply worded statement, the experts expressed alarm about “severe restrictions of religious freedom” in the area.
Most of the expulsions mentioned by the experts have taken place at Larung Gar, the world’s largest Buddhist institute and one of the most influential centers of learning in the Tibetan world. 

Officials have been demolishing some of the homes of the 20,000 monks and nuns living around the institute, in a high valley in Sichuan Province.
The statement also cited accusations of evictions at Yachen Gar, sometimes known as Yarchen Gar, an enclave largely of nuns that is also in Sichuan and has a population of about 10,000.
“While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, grave concern is expressed over the serious repression of the Buddhist Tibetans’ cultural and religious practices and learning in Larung Gar and Yachen Gar,” the statement said.
It was signed by six of the United Nations experts, or special rapporteurs, who come from various countries. 

They each specialize in a single aspect of human rights, including cultural rights, sustainable environment and peaceful assembly. 

It is unusual for so many of them to collaborate in this manner.
The statement was sent to the Chinese government in November, but was made public only in recent days, before the start of this year’s session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The session began Monday and is scheduled to end on March 24.
The United Nations experts have asked Beijing to address the reports of evictions and demolitions. The release of the statement before the session in Geneva puts more pressure on China to explain the actions taking place at the two Tibetan Buddhist institutions. 

China says matters related to Tibet are internal affairs, but Chinese officials in Beijing have privately expressed some concern over outside perceptions of the demolitions and evictions at Larung Gar and related Western news coverage.
Over the summer, Chinese officials began deporting monks and nuns living at Larung Gar who were not registered residents of Garze, the prefecture where the institution is. 

Since then, hundreds of clergy members have been forced out, and workers have demolished small homes clustered along the valley walls. 

One day last fall, I watched workers tearing and cutting apart wooden homes, sometimes using a chain saw.
Official reports have said the demolition is part of a project to improve safety in the area because people live in such tight quarters there. 

In 2014, a fire destroyed about 100 homes.
Residents said the government planned to bring the population down to 5,000 from 20,000 by next year. 

The government evicted many clergy members once before, in 2001, but people returned. 

The encampment was founded in 1980 near the town of Sertar by Jigme Phuntsok, a charismatic lama, and is now run by two abbots. 

The United Nations experts said in the statement that while they awaited China’s response, they “urge that all necessary interim measures be taken to halt the violations and prevent their reoccurrence.”