Persecution of persons of faith has intensified under Xi Jinping’s policy of Sinicization, which aims to secularize religion to ensure that it advances the CCP’s goals. The policy accomplishes this, in part, through setting up state-sanctioned religious institutions that moderate and even modify the ways in which people of all religions practice their faith.
Under Sinicization, regulation of and outright interference with religious practice have intensified. Christians have seen crosses torn down from atop churches, church buildings demolished, and pastors, like Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain Covenant Church, imprisoned.
Chinese Catholics watched their leaders strike a deal with Beijing two years ago, giving the CCP a say on the appointment of bishops in China. And just last week, it was reported that government-issued high-school textbooks altered a Bible story to turn one of Jesus’s key...