China News Agency reported that Xu Xiaohong, chairman of the China Three-Self Church, threatened to eliminate the foreign influence on churches in China. The Three-Self Church is the full name of the Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee. It is politically obedient to the political leadership of the Chinese government and its ruling party. It is not subject to the management and intervention of foreign churches. It implements “autonomy, self-support, and self-promotion” and is regarded as a “Christian church with Chinese Characteristics.”

According to the Sing Tao Daily report, Xu Xiaohong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, spoke at the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on March 11. In his speech, Xu emphasized the elimination of the “foreign flavor” of Chinese Christianity. He criticized (Christians in China) who “receive foreign infiltration and continue to have private gathering sites.” He said that “the Western anti-China forces have attempted to subvert the Chinese regime through Christianity and (we) firmly support the country in bringing them to justice.”

Xu Xiaohong later said in an interview with Sing Tao Daily that the Qiuyu Church in Chengdu, which was banned last year, is a church that the “anti-China forces” have influenced  and that “there are more of those remaining” throughout China. According to the article, Xu Xiaohong said, “The anti-China forces in the West are attempting to continue to influence China’s social stability and even use Christianity to subvert China’s political power. It is doomed to fail. We firmly support the country to bring those to justice who use Christianity as a cover for their involvement in subverting national security.”

In December 2018, members of the Qiuyu Church in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, were arrested on a large scale. The pastor Wang Yi and his wife were accused of inciting subversion of state power. Their whereabouts are still unknown. Qiuyu Church is one of China’s well-known family churches. The Chinese government considers it illegal because it has not been officially registered.

According to statistics, more than half of China’s 60 million Protestants are worshiping in unregistered churches.

Source: China News Agency, March 12, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201903120052.aspx

On March 27, 2019, China’s Ministry of Justice announced that, by the end of August 2019, it will implement a professional evaluation system and assessment mechanism for lawyers throughout the country in furtherance of the reform in managing lawyers. The review criteria include the political performance of lawyers. In other words, it assesses whether they support the leadership of the Communist Party.

The professional evaluation system and assessment mechanism first began in March 2017 as a pilot program in Inner Mongolia, Shanghai, Anhui Province, and Shaanxi Province. The Ministry of Justice said that the rating process is conducive to distinguishing good lawyers from bad ones.

According to the website of China’s Ministry of Justice, four criteria must be met: political performance, integrity, years of practice, and the ability to practice.

The focus will be on the first two criteria. The first criterion “political performance” requires that lawyers participating in the rating process must support the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist rule of law. Under the second criterion “integrity,” if the Communist Party disciplined a lawyer or if he received administrative punishment within the past five years, he will not be eligible to participate in the rating process. Big data will be used to gather information about lawyers’ political performance and integrity.

Source: China’s Ministry of Justice, March 27, 2019
http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/government_public/content/2019-03/27/tzwj_231623.html

Recently in China, multiple incidents have occurred in which students reported on university and college faculty members after which these faculty members were dismissed. The students who report on their teachers are called “academic informants.” In Chinese universities, an institution exists in which some students are designated to serve as informants. They report to the school authorities on a regular basis. Student informants are the eyes and ears of the school’s party and political authorities and are also a part of the ideological and political work team.

According to the Wuhan University of Science and Technology’s (WUST), “Administrative Measures for Student Academic Informants at Wuhan University of Science and Technology” were published on its official website in October 2018. Student informants are generally students with an excellent academic performance. Their duties include: “to collect and organize a wide range of teaching and management related information”; “to report promptly on the students’ opinions and suggestions about the teachers’ teaching attitude, content, methods, and quality of teaching, homework grading, and extracurricular tutoring.” The student informants fill out the teaching information feedback form once every two weeks. The Administrative Measures also require that the school be responsible for the confidentiality of students who report teaching information. In addition, the school will issue a certain amount of remuneration each semester based on the informant’s performance.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Song Yongyi, a scholar living in exile in the United States and a staff member at California State University, Los Angeles, said that the student informant has always been a tool for controlling colleges and universities.

“That is the spy culture of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In order to control colleges and universities, the CCP often directly develops spies among students. There is now a large-scale use of student informants because in the past, the party organizations in universities and schools were very obedient. If they hear some remarks, they will report immediately. Today, the party organizations in colleges and universities are not so obedient, so the CCP trains agents to be informants.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, April 5, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/kejiaowen/nu-04052019105014.html

On March 20, 2019, the Department of Ethnic and Religious Affairs of Guangzhou, a city of 14 million people, which is adjacent to Hong Kong, announced that members of the public could earn up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) for providing tip-offs about “illegal religious activities.”

The announcement prohibits anyone from using “religions to carry out activities that undermine the social order, harm the health of citizens, or impede the State’s educational system.”

According to the announcement, the “illegal religious activities” that were targeted include the construction of temples and statues of Buddha, organizing pilgrimages, private Christian gatherings, spreading religion on the Internet, religious training, and the printing of religious publications that the authorities did not approve.

The department’s website said the new reward scheme also has the purpose of “resisting penetration” by foreign countries that use religion to Westernize or divide the Chinese people. “At present, the use of religion for infiltration activities abroad is pervasive and this trend is increasing.”

Further, according to the announcement, “at present, hostile forces and lawless elements carry our many illegal and criminal activities under the banner of religion. These activities undermine the unity of the country and national unity, violate the rights of citizens, and seriously endanger society.”

Sources:
Department of Ethnic and Religious Affairs of Guangzhou, March 20, 2019
http://www.gzmzzj.gov.cn/mzzjswj/gfxwj/201903/353dee928bb14ee1a76a86c07845c14e.shtml
http://www.gzmzzj.gov.cn/mzzjswj/zcjd/201903/8a55bc87d88b40e7892770575a0f927f.shtml

China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRFT) recently issued the “Regulations on Programs for Minors.” The regulations emphasized that the state supports and encourages the production of programs that “promote socialist core values” and “revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture.”

The “Regulations” then also included a universal term that minors’ programs must not contain “contents that display violence, blood, terror, and abetting crimes or imparting criminal methods; nor should they contain sexual topics and graphical pictures other than health education.”

NRFT, the state censor, also emphasized that minors’ programs must not contain contents that “distort national history or national historical figures, or that distort, vilify, defame, or deny the deeds and spirit of heroic martyrs.” Nor should they “proclaim, beautify, or worship the countries, events, and characters that launched the war of aggression against China or carried out colonial rule.”

China’s leader Xi Jinping said at a “School Ideological and Political Theory Class Teacher Symposium” on March 18th that, in order to train the next generation that loves the party and loves socialist ideology, one must “start with the schools and start with babies.”

Radio Free Asia quoted from a Chinese student who is pursuing a doctor’s degree in the United States, “In fact, the trend began a long time ago. Kindergarten kids in China have to learn from Xi Jinping’s theory of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ The Chinese government is comprehensively revising the Chinese language and history textbooks so that they conform to the Communist Party’s political ideology. In the future, the nationwide language and history textbooks will be under the unified control of the government.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, April 3, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/junshiwaijiao/nu-04032017101958.html