China's Unrelenting Efforts to Abolish Christianity Continue with Surveillance of Clergy to Ensure Loyalty

A report issued by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) outlines strict measures being taken by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which aims to oppress religious minorities.

The measures, which went into effect on May 1, are a part of a series of newly issued regulations that add to the revised 2018 Regulations on Religious Affairs (RRA). 

Clergy members from all of China's five state-sanctioned religious groups -- Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association -- will be subjected to rigorous monitoring and surveillance by CCP. 

"Article 3 of the Measures requires clergy — among other demands — to support the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rule, the Chinese socialist political system, and the CCP's 'sinicization of religion' policy, effectively imposing a political test to ensure clergies' loyalty to the CCP," the USCIRF report reads.

The new regulations also ban government-sanctioned churches from interfering in any concerns with education or the daily activities of citizens. 

USCIRF points out that Articles 6 and 12 forbid clergy from taking part in "illegal religious activities" and "foreign infiltration using religion."

"These vague provisions could be used as a broad pretext to crack down on independent religious groups, ethnoreligious minority groups, and religious groups with perceived foreign connections," USCIRF stated. 

CBN News reported last year that the Chinese government announced plans to rewrite the Bible and the Quran to "reflect socialist values." 

New editions of the two books will not contain any content that goes against the beliefs of the Communist Party, according to The Daily Mail. Anything found to be wrong by party officials will be changed or re-translated.  

Preventive Education

The CCP has even gone as far as trying to indoctrinate children as young as 3 into believing that Christianity is an illegal religion.

Bitter Winter, a magazine of religious liberty and human rights, reported that nearly 100 kindergartners in the district of Jiaocheng were taken on a tour of a science museum last month. 

The trip started out to be fun as they learned how to drive a train and ride in a helicopter. Then the 3 to 6-year-olds were subjected to a program about "preventive education" and were cautioned that Christianity is a "Xie jiao" or evil cult.

The children were given illustrated booklets and then forced to watch cartoons that delivered a negative message about Christianity. In fact, one movie portrayed The Church of Almighty God as wicked. The characters in the video warned one another against its "superstition."

China is ranked 17th on Open Doors' 2021 World Watch List of countries where Christians suffer the most persecution.

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