A new report shows the severe lack of religious freedom in China
In its recent Freedom in the World report, Freedom House ranked 195 countries and fifteen territories on their political rights and civil liberties. The report considered many specific questions within the categories of political and civil freedom, including the extent to which each country allows its citizens to practise and express their religion freely. On a scale from 0-4, with 4 representing the greatest degree of freedom and 0 representing the least, China scored 0 for religious freedom in Freedom House’s latest report.
The report cites a number of broad trends in persecution across China, including the government’s increased focus on vetting religious leaders and its attempts to align religious doctrine with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) priorities. China’s state-approved churches, including the protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Catholic Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, face this type of pressure regularly. Leaders in both institutions are vetted for their allegiance to the CCP.
The Vatican signed an agreement with the Chinese government in October 2020. It agreed to accept the legitimacy of bishops already appointed by China in exchange for acknowledgement of the Pope’s authority to appoint bishops in China going forward. It was recently discovered that China reneged on its side of the bargain just weeks after signing the agreement.
Persecution is even more severe outside of state-run religious institutions – a 2017 Freedom House report found that “at least one hundred million believers belong to groups facing high or very high levels of religious persecution, namely Protestant Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and Falun Gong practitioners.”
Source: persecution.org
