China to list legal places of worship in effort to ‘root out’ illegal

In an effort to identify unsanctioned groups and “root out illegal religious activities”, China will publish online details of legal religious venues, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday. Names and addresses for “all Buddhist and Taoist venues” would be published within two years, Wang Zuoan, director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, told a conference on Friday, the news agency said. The government’s attitude toward religion has softened significantly in recent decades, and people are allowed to practice religion at sanctioned institutions that are required to preach and practice loyalty to the government. Despite the rules, unsanctioned religious movements, which the authorities call cults, have proliferated.

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

Chairman Mao Zedong, speaking ahead of a brief period of liberalism in 1956

The government is locked in a long-running dispute with the Vatican over who appoints Catholic bishops, and in recent months some officials have removed crosses from Christian churches and banned Christmas symbolism. The government is even more suspicious of Islam, and has tried to discourage traditional Muslim practice in the Xinjiang autonomous region. It has also tried to suppress political activism among Tibetan Buddhists. The government describes resistance to its rule in Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist communities as inspired by outside forces trying to dismember China, and defends its religious policy as suitable for “reasonable practitioners”.

China Asia-Pacific