China’s first committee focused on promoting the development of Christianity in the Chinese communist context.

Photo: Vatican media

Newsroom (04/30/2023 19:56, Gaudium Press) ChinaAid reported that the Qingdao City Christian Council held a ceremony last March 16 to establish a new Special Committee to Promote the Sinicization of Christianity. More than 30 people from government-controlled Christian “patriotic organizations,” including pastoral ministry representatives, lay people, scholars, and Communist officials from Qingdao, attended the inauguration ceremony.

China’s President Xi Jinping had already made a proposal in 2015, reiterating it in 2022 during the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party: to “fully and faithfully implement the Party’s policy on freedom of religious belief,” then added, “adhere to the direction of the development of religions in the Chinese context and actively guide religions to adapt to socialist society.” Xi also indicated specific measures to carry out patriotic education in religious circles and strengthen the ideology of religious people, with an emphasis on “cultivating a team of religious people who are adherents of the Marxist view of religion.”

According to experts, the fundamental purpose of sinicizing Christianity is to transform and alienate Christianity by actively guiding religions to adapt to a socialist society. The Communist Party hopes to reduce Christianity to the point of using it as a tool of its interests, transforming it into “pseudo-Christianity.”

China’s “practice” of religious freedom is nothing more than a veil. Religious activities are only allowed under the CCP’s terms. The state employs advanced surveillance to ensure that Christian conform to the socialist ideology of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping.

Compiled by Dominic Joseph