The Chinese government has been removing crosses from churches and “replacing images of Christ with [images of] Xi Jinping” (Catholic News Agency, October 1, 2024).
Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping…. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches….
“Authorities continue to disappear underground Catholic religious leaders who reject the state-controlled Catholic church, including Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin and Bishop Augustine Cui Tai,” [USCIRF Commissioner Asif Mahmood told CNA]. “The government also refuses to disclose the whereabouts of Catholic leaders who have been disappeared for decades, like Bishop James Su Zhimin.”
CNA is citing a new fact sheet by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “Sinicization of Religion: China’s Coercive Religious Policy,” which observes that the Chinese authorities have been weaving Chinese Communist Party ideology “into every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholic and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists.”
They also forcibly eradicate religious elements considered contradictory to the CCP’s political and policy agenda with ultranationalist overtones. Government officials have installed CCP loyalists as leading religious figures, altered houses of worship with CCP-approved architecture, integrated CCP propaganda into religious doctrines, and otherwise criminalized non-CCP-backed religious activities, all with the goal to ensure the stability of CCP rule. These government measures have routinely violated the internationally protected right to freedom of religion or belief.
Xi sees himself as the worship-worthy godhead of a new Mao-like cult of personality even if, as Chun Han Wong puts it in his book Party of One, his image-building has “stretched credulity at times” and “officials insist that Xi isn’t resurrecting a Mao-style cult….”
