China’s New Policy Will Lead to More Persecution
(Morning Star News)
China Aid’s 2016 Annual Persecution Report details a seismic shift in the Chinese government’s approach to religious policy that is expected to lead to further persecution.
During the National Conference of Religious Work held in April 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of religions “persistently following the path of Sinicization.”
Despite China’s insistence that Sinicization is an integral ingredient in the harmonization between church and state, the policy pivots on the government’s assumption that other countries are using religions based abroad to undermine its authority.
This forces religious practitioners, especially Christians, to choose between compromising their deeply-held beliefs and risking being treated as violators of the law.
In addition to this attempt to tailor Christianity, China has continued to persecute individual Christians at a frequency unseen since the Cultural Revolution.
The data gathered by China Aid illustrates China’s alarming regression into a more Maoist regime, and conditions are expected to worsen this year as the new regulations seek to further limit religious activity and indicate a catastrophic potential to place more Christians behind bars.