In an excellent report using inter alia 21 “Bitter Winter” articles as sources, the U.S. agency explains that the policy is aimed at making religion more subservient to the CCP, not more Chinese.
by Massimo Introvigne
The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Its Commissioners are appointed by the President and by Congressional leaders of both political parties.
Dated September 2024, its report “Sinicization of Religion: China’s Coercive Religious Policy” is one of the most comprehensive documents to-date on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “Sinicizes” all religions, which does not mean making them more Chinese but compelling them to become mere mouthpieces for the regime.
As in other cases, “Bitter Winter,” which often deals with the Sinicization issue, is honored of seeing 21 of its articles quoted and linked among the sources of the report. The text is excellent and needs to be read in its entirety. We highlight here some key points.
“Chinese authorities,” the report says, “attempt to exert total control over religion through an extensive, complicated web of state laws, regulations, and policies that the CCP and various government agencies enforce.” Among the main enforcers are the CCP-controlled five authorized religions and their bureaucrats.
“The CCP and government,” the reports adds, “also have attempted to stamp out other religious groups they consider as ‘cults’—such as Falun Gong and The Church of Almighty God—that traditionally are not part of the state’s ‘Sinicization’ effort. Through the CCP-linked China Anti-Cult Association (CACA), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and the use of the anti-cult provision (Article 300) of China’s Criminal Law, the Chinese government has carried out campaigns to eliminate these religious groups, resulting in their mass arrests and imprisonment. There are also reports of state-controlled religious organizations like the BAC and CACA working with the MPS to ‘deprogram’ Falun Gong practitioners in an apparent effort to coerce them to change or renounce their faith.”
The report then presents the theory and practice of Sinicization. It defines it as “a political indoctrination process that embeds the CCP and its political ideology into every aspect of religious life, from the religious beliefs themselves to the physical structure of places of worship.” Under Xi Jinping, “the goal of Sinicization is to turn religious adherents and institutions into perfect vessels of the CCP, root out all perceived non-CCP influences— which the government often disparages as ‘foreign’—and subdue ethnic minority communities through forced assimilation.”
All the new laws and regulations on religion recently introduced and the new “Five-Year Sinicization Work Plans” (2023–2027) pursue this aim with respect to all the five authorized religions. “These ideological principles guide the state’s approach to enforcing Sinicization, resulting in severe repression and gross religious freedom violations for religious groups and individuals who neither espouse nor embody CCP ideology.”
In practice, among those mostly suffering for Sinicization are the Uyghurs and other Muslim Turkic peoples living in Xinjiang. The USCIRF does not avoid the G word and writes that, “Since 2017, Chinese authorities have committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs,” offering a long list of atrocities. The report notes that “Chinese authorities have also targeted Hui Muslims with similar Sinicization tactics, despite the fact that Hui Muslims speak Chinese and have adapted to Chinese culture over centuries.”
A second main target of Sinicization are Tibetan Buddhists. “The Chinese government has perpetrated gross religious freedom violations in its campaign to sinicize Tibetan Buddhism. Over the years, authorities have subjected monks and nuns to political reeducation; installed CCP officials to run monastic affairs; altered or removed Tibetan Buddhist religious imagery, texts, statues, and architecture from monasteries and shrines; and prohibited pilgrimages and other religious activities during the Buddhist holy month of Saga Dawa. They have also separated one million Tibetan children from their families and placed them in state-run boarding schools to forcibly assimilate them to Han Chinese culture and sever ties to their native familial, language, culture, and religious traditions.” However, “the most distinct and troubling component of this sinicization effort is the government’s interference in the reincarnation process of high-ranking Tibetan Buddhist religious.” Now “Chinese authorities intend to interfere in the Dalai Lama’s own reincarnation by installing a CCP-obedient successor, arguing his reincarnation must comply with Chinese law. Reportedly, Chinese officials have secretly met in 2023 to start planning the selection process for the Dalai Lama’s successor.”
The CCP, the report notes, also “targets Catholic and Protestant Christians for Sinicization. The government has ordered the removal of crosses from churches, replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi, required the display of CCP slogans at the entrances of churches, censored religious texts, imposed CCP-approved religious materials, and instructed clergy to preach CCP ideology.” Again, the CCP-controlled Protestant Three-Self Church and Patriotic Catholic Association (despite the Vatican-China deal of 2018) are active accomplices of the policy.
Even Taoism and Chinese Buddhism, which are quintessentially Chinese religions, are “Sinicized,” confirming that “Sinicization” certainly does not mean adapting religion to China’s traditions but to Communism. As summarized by the report, “The Chinese government has not spared perceived traditional and majority ethnic Han Chinese religious groups like Chinese Buddhists and Taoists from Sinicization. Authorities have destroyed temples, posted CCP slogans on temple grounds, and ordered the removal or destruction of statues and religious architecture from temples. Any religious activity viewed as directly contradicting the CCP’s vision for patriotic activity could lead to criminal and/or administrative punishments.”
The report concludes that, “Enforcement of such Sinicization policies has consistently resulted in systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom and related human rights, including genocide, crimes against humanity, mass incarceration, enforced disappearances, and the destruction of cultural and religious heritage.”
We hope that the document will be widely read—including in the Vatican, where a somewhat over-optimistic idea of the situation of Catholicism in China seems to prevail recently, as attested by Pope Francis’ declarations during his return trip from Singapore on September 13, and among those Protestants and Buddhists in the West that continue to welcome the bureaucrats of the five authorized religions, ignoring the fact that they actively cooperate with Chinese crimes against humanity.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
