Chinese Government Increases Measures Against Religion in Schools  

Source: ChinaAid
Date: May 13, 2018

ChinaAid reports on the government’s violations of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religious belief by prohibiting citizens from participating in religious activities in schools.

China’s Ministry of Education issued a notice in February, ordering education departments to pay particular attention to the moral education of elementary and middle school students and political instructions of the staff. It also encourages the schools to undergo training to “guard against religious infiltration.”

Recently, all universities in Qingdao, Shandong, launched an investigation of teachers and students, prohibiting party members from believing in a religion. Authorities also started collecting information on house churches, registering believers attending Sunday services.

Yangtze University advised its students not to attend house churches or private Bible study sessions and not to accept funds from religious organizations.

At the end of February, the Beita District Administration of Education and Technology in Shaoyang, Hunan, released a statement warning that no religious activities should take place on campus. To maintain stability schools are encouraged to “guard against evil cults and illegal religions.”

Nanjing Medical University in Jiangsu recently pushed for stronger control over ethnic and religious work. While at the end of 2017, Guangxi Normal University started a campaign to prohibit all forms of religious activity on campus.

Bitter Winter

Bitter Winter plans to report on how religions are allowed, or not allowed, to operate in China and how some are severely persecuted after they are labeled as “xie jiao,” or heterodox teachings. We plan to publish news difficult to find elsewhere, analyses, and debates.
Placed under the editorship of Massimo Introvigne, one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally, “Bitter Winter” is a cooperative enterprise by scholars, human rights activists, and members of religious organizations persecuted in China (some of them have elected, for obvious reasons, to remain anonymous).