China could soon have more Christians
than any other country.
But not if the Communist Party can help it.
China’s war on Christianity continues.
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
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The Chinese Communist Party is officially atheist.
In fact, if you want to be a Party member,
you need to give up your religious beliefs.
The Party has been fighting a war against religion
since the very beginning.
Nevertheless, a lot of people in China still want religion.
“By 2030, China's total Christian population,
including Catholics,
would exceed 247 million,
placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States
as the largest Christian congregation in the world.”
So the Chinese Communist Party is trying a new tactic.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!
Or, actually, make ’em join you!
And then beat ’em.
The Party officially recognizes five religions in China—
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Christianity.
And it wants to control these religions by making them sinicize.
For the Party, “Sinicize” doesn’t mean “make more Chinese”.
It means bring them under the Party’s control.
They just want it to seem like it’s about making things more Chinese,
because that sounds way better than Communize or Socialismify.
Even though that’s what it actually is.
For example, “One of the goals of a government work plan
for ‘promoting Chinese Christianity’
between 2018 and 2022 is ‘thought reform.’”
Authoritarian Communist States and thought reform
go together like peanut butter and jelly.
As one high ranking Chinese Politburo member said,
“[Religious] leaders must steer religions forward
with Chinese socialism.
Whatever your belief is,
you must first abide by law.”
And let’s just say,
the Communist Party is making the law
very unfriendly toward Christians in China.
Here are 10 ways.
Number 10
Surveillance
The first step in making sure Christians
are really following Chinese law
and sinicizing is being able to watch them at all times.
China’s Zhejiang Province is sometimes known as
China’s Jerusalem for having a large number of Christians.
And the local government there is forcing churches
to install surveillance equipment.
It’s to fight terrorism.
No seriously, that’s what local officials said.
Because nothing says fighting terrorism
like targeting innocent people,
and putting them under surveillance.
And if people protest the cameras,
the Party can always blame terrorism.
That they need to fight.
With even more cameras.
Number 9
Online Suppression
2018 saw a whole bunch of new regulations
aimed at curbing Christianity’s rise.
One proposed law targets online religious content,
restricting “images or even descriptions of religious activities—
from praying and chanting, to burning incense.”
Ok, I don’t know who goes online to describe burning incense,
or why, but how sinister could that possibly be?
Exceptions to online postings are made
for certain officially recognized organizations,
but it seems all individual posting would be banned.
According to China legal expert Jeremy Daum,
a founder of China Law Translate...
...the regulations were worded so broadly and vaguely
that technically even photos of a wedding would fall under them.
Unless you pick the right wedding venue.
Number 8
Limiting Donations
In 2017, the Communist Party updated
its rules regulating religions.
The new rules say donations from foreign groups
and individuals are banned—
and donations over 15 thousand dollars
need to be reported to authorities.
So for instance, as an American,
if you donate to a Chinese church
that’s helping with disaster relief—
the church will be punished if they accept it.
And even Chinese donors who want to contribute a lot
need to be reported to the authorities.
I imagine that’s because the authorities
want to give such generous people an award.
And that award is extra surveillance.
Congratulations!
Smile, you’re on camera.
Forever.
Number 7
Tearing down crosses.
In just two years, authorities in Zhejiang province
took down more than 1,000 crosses on churches.
Sometimes, they just accidentally burst into flames.
What a clear building code violation.
No wonder these fire traps have to be taken down.
And sometimes the problem is so serious,
the entire church has to go.
Here’s one example.
The Sanjiang Church.
Impressive, right?
It took 12 years
and 4.7 million dollars in donations to build.
Authorities demolished it overnight.
And guess what?
That was a state sanctioned church.
It had official approval from the local government,
who even lauded it as a marvel of engineering.
But what the Communist Party giveth,
it can take away..eth.
Number 6
Locking people up
The Chinese Communist Party decided
to celebrate Christmas last year the only way it knew how...
with the mass arrest of Christians.
To be fair,
they all belonged to the Early Rain Church,
which was known for extremist views.
What kind of extremist views?
“Every year the church commemorates victims
of the [Tiananmen Square Massacre] in 1989.”
Clearly that church requires thought reform.
Early Rain is an example of what’s known in China as house churches.
Those are churches that are not officially registered with the state.
Unlike the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement,
and the China Patriotic Catholic Association.
And yes that is seriously what they are called.
According to Bob Fu,
founder of the US-based Christian rights organization China Aid,
“There were more than 10,000 cases of detention of Christians” in 2018.
And what happens to these Christians held in detention?
I mean, at least Chinese officials
aren’t feeding them to the lions, right?
Of course not!
Even the Party knows that life is valuable.
And that’s why...
Number 5
They’re killing Christians for their organs
If you’ve been watching China Uncensored for a while,
you know the Chinese Communist Party
has been killing people for their organs,
and selling them to rich people who need transplants.
Now I’m not saying this happens to most Christians who are detained,
but according to this report,
...every year the Chinese Communist Party
harvests between 60 and 100 thousand organs
from unwilling prisoners of conscience.
It seems the majority are from Falun Gong practitioners.
But many still come from “Tibetan Buddhists,
Uighur Muslims and of course,
select House Christians.”
Yes, only select Christian organs.
Number 4
Targeting the children
You know, the Chinese Communist Party
always thinks of the children.
That’s why in Jiangxi Province,
children have been forbidden from attending church.
And apparently, if you’re on welfare,
you’ll get it taken away if you go to church.
In Zhejiang province, officials banned Sunday School.
Chinese children were absolutely devastated.
But don’t worry, kids.
Churches are getting around that order
by switching Sunday School to Saturday.
Brilliant.
These regulations focused on children
are actually a lot like the ones in China’s Xinjiang region,
home to ethnic Uighurs who are mostly Muslims.
People are supposed to report on their neighbors
if they see anyone luring children into religion.
Luring children into religion?
Maybe the Communist Party has confused religions
with unmarked white vans.
That would explain why they think religions are so dangerous.
Which is why they want people to...
Number 3
Renounce the faith
Last year,
Voice of America uncovered that Christians
were being forced to sign forms like this one.
It says, “I had limited understanding of Christianity.
Taking on Christianity as my belief
is also blindly following the trend.
Now I have a more comprehensive understanding
of religion and religious beliefs.
After further studying Christianity,
I have a clearer understanding of my spiritual needs.
I announce that I will not participate in
Christian religious activities from now on
and I will no longer believe in Christianity.”
Yeah, I think I’m getting a better idea
of the kind of thought reform the Party wants.
Number 2
Your own personal Xi Jinping
Christians often talk about helping the poor.
So I think actually a lot of Christians
must appreciate the Party’s recent directive:
If you want to escape poverty,
take down that picture of Jesus,
and put up a picture of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping!
That gem came from “a local government poverty-relief programme
that seeks to ‘transform believers in religion
into believers in the party.’”
And it worked so well!
After local officials made personal visits to Christian homes,
“more than 600 villagers ‘voluntarily’
got rid of the religious texts and paintings
they had in their homes,
and replaced them with 453 portraits of Xi” Jinping.
Really, I think they’d have done better to have one per person.
I mean, this is Communism.
Who wants to share?
And finally Number 1
Edits of biblical proportions
Burning bibles was so 2018.
Now, the Party is “‘retranslating and annotating’ the Bible,
to find commonalities with socialism and establish
a ‘correct understanding’ of the text.”
Finally, after thousands of years
of erroneous biblical interpretation,
the Communist Party is finally giving us
the correct understanding of Good Book.
I happen to have a copy right here.
The First Commandment:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me
except as required by Chinese law.
Okay, that’s weird.
Thou shalt not kill,
unless thou art killing rightists,
counterrevolutionaries, running dogs,
separatists, religious extremists,
hostile foreign forces, etc.
Et cetera?
What do they mean, et cetera?
Ok, what about the New Testament?
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
anything except Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought,
Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents,
the Scientific Outlook on Development,
and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism
with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”
Wow!
Revisionist Bible study is so much fun!
And mandatory.
So what do you think of the crackdown on Christians?
And what do you expect to be
in the Communist Party version of the bible?
And now, it’s time for me to answer a question
from a member of my 50-Cent Army,
the fans who support China Uncensored
through the crowd funding website Patreon.
Jordan Laramore asks,
“Is the 610 Office part of the People's Armed Police
or is a completely separate organization?
Do they share intelligence like the CIA and FBI do?
Well, speaking of cracking down on religious people...
the 610 office was created in 1999 by then-leader Jiang Zemin.
He used it mainly to persecute Falun Gong practitioners
...but his real purpose was probably to establish
his own private intelligence and police agency—
outside the rule of law.
Think of it like having your own Nazi Gestapo.
Whoever controls it has enormous power—
including power over political rivals.
So forget inter-agency cooperation.
The 610 office was in fact established to out-rank
other agencies like the Public Security Bureau.
The head of the 610 office has always been a
top-ranked official from the Politburo Standing Committee,
the group of seven men that rules the Chinese Communist Party.
Operationally, it’s completely separate from the People’s Armed Police.
There’s been some talk recently
of Xi Jinping disbanding the 610 office.
But don’t get too excited.
First, it’s probably just a power play against Jiang Zemin’s cronies.
Second, it might be like five years ago,
when China’s congress “voted” to end re-education camps.
And then four years later, partially legalized them again...
...but this time, called them “vocational training centers”.
But to answer your question precisely, Jordan,
not much is known about the secret workings of the 610 office.
Do they share intelligence?
Maybe sometimes.
But they are in no way like the FBI.
If you’d like me to do an episode on the 610 office,
let me know in the comments below.
Be like Jordan, and support China Uncensored
through the crowdfunding website Patreon.
The link is below.
And I might answer your question on the show next time.
Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
Thanks for watching China Uncensored.