The Chinese Government released a set of proposed amendments to its rules regulating religious affairs in early September, showing that President Xi Jinping is attempting to exert even greater control over how religion is practised.
The new set of amendments, up for a one-month consultation period, includes guidelines on religious education, the types of religious organisations that can exist, where they can exist and the activities they can organise.
Yu Zhengsheng, Chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, emphasised the need for provincial officials to have a better overall understanding of religion, so that they are better able to resist ‘foreign’ religions. (The idea of resisting foreign religions is generally taken as an attack on Christianity, which is considered a product of the West, promulgated by foreign powers with the intention of destabilising Chinese harmony’).
