USCIRF Report Condemns China on Religious Freedom

The Bitter Winter website, which regularly publishes information on religious freedom in China, welcomes this report. It points out that the USCIRF is an independent commission of the US federal government, created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA). Its commissioners are appointed by the President and the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress.

Bitter Winter reports: “Dated September 2024, its report ‘Sinicization of Religion: China’s Coercive Religious Policy’ is one of the most comprehensive documents to-date on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ‘Sinicizes’ all religions, which does not mean making them more Chinese but compelling them to become mere mouthpieces for the regime.”

A Brief History

The report recalls that “China is officially an atheist state and its government has historically viewed religion as a negative influence on society. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, authorities sought the total eradication of religion, destroying thousands of houses of worship and imprisoning, torturing, and killing religious leaders and laypersons.”

The text estimates that there are 350 to 850 million believers in a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants. In 2021, according to American sources, Buddhists represented 18% of the population, including Tibetans, 5% Christians—mainly Catholics—and 2% Muslims.

State Control Over Religions

“Chinese authorities,” the report says, “attempt to exert total control over religion through an extensive, complicated web of state laws, regulations, and policies that the CCP and various government agencies enforce. At the center of the CCP’s institutional control of religion are seven state-controlled national religious organizations, often referred to as ‘patriotic religious associations,’ and their local branches. [...]

“The CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) and the government’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) oversee the state-controlled religious organizations, which are responsible for managing the religious affairs of the five officially recognized religions— Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism, and Taoism.

“Religious groups that belong to one of these five religions must register with the government in order to practice legally and submit to the intrusive supervision and control of the state-controlled religious organizations, the government, and ultimately the CCP.”

The CCP, the report also explains, has sought to eradicate other religious groups such as Falun Gong and the Church of Almighty God, which are not recognized. “Through the CCP-linked China Anti-Cult Association (CACA), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and the use of the anti-cult provision (Article 300) of China’s Criminal Law, the Chinese government has carried out campaigns to eliminate these religious groups, resulting in their mass arrests and imprisonment,” the report continues.

The Theory of Sinicization

The report defines Sinicization as “a political indoctrination process that embeds the CCP and its political ideology into every aspect of religious life, from the religious beliefs themselves to the physical structure of places of worship. [...]

“The goal of sinicization is to turn religious adherents and institutions into perfect vessels of the CCP, root out all perceived non-CCP influences— which the government often disparages as ‘foreign’—and subdue ethnic minority communities through forced assimilation.”

The recently introduced religion laws and the new “Five-Year Sinicization Work Plans” (2023-2027) pursue this objective with regard to authorized religions. “These ideological principles guide the state’s approach to enforcing sinicization, resulting in severe repression and gross religious freedom violations for religious groups and individuals who neither espouse nor embody CCP ideology.”

The Practice of Sinicization

The report notes that CCP “Authorities target Catholic and Protestant Christians for sinicization. The government has ordered the removal of crosses from churches, replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi, required the display of CCP slogans at the entrances of churches, censored religious texts, imposed CCP-approved religious materials, and instructed clergy to preach CCP ideology.

“While the state-controlled Christian religious organizations”—such as the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association—“have pushed and enforced the state’s restrictions on religion, tens of millions of Christians have opted not to join these organizations and instead worship independently.”

The Bitter Winter website concludes its review of the report: “We hope that the document will be widely read—including in the Vatican, where a somewhat over-optimistic idea of the situation of Catholicism in China seems to prevail recently, as attested by Pope Francis’ declarations during his return trip from Singapore on September 13 [...]”