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US-China relations
China

US religious freedom report accuses China of jailing as many as 10,000 people in repression campaign

  • Beijing has broadened its efforts to bring all theological activity under Communist Party control, according to annual State Department publication
  • Chinese embassy in Washington calls report’s accusations ‘contrary to the basic facts and deeply rooted in ideological bias’

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The report cited President Xi Jinping’s assertion that “religions in China must be Chinese in orientation” as an indication of what the State Department called a “campaign against religious groups”. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS
Robert Delaneyin Washington
The US government on Monday accused Beijing of jailing as many as 10,000 or more people in 2022 in a widening campaign of repression against religious belief meant to bring all theological activity under the Chinese Communist Party’s control.
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The estimate of those imprisoned in the country ranging “from the low thousands to over 10,000” is one of many accusations contained in the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report, which has been published annually since 1999 and covers nearly 200 countries.

The report’s section on China draws on reports by human rights advocacy groups including Freedom House and religious groups like the Church of Almighty God (CAG), as well as public information from the Chinese government.

For example, the report cited President Xi Jinping’s assertion last year at the 20th party congress that “religions in China must be Chinese in orientation” as an indication of what the State Department called a “campaign against religious groups it characterised as ‘cults,’ including the CAG and Falun Gong, and it conducted propaganda campaigns against xie jiao (literally ‘heterodox teachings’) aimed at school-age children”.

Citing human rights advocacy groups, the report said the Chinese government “increasingly classified as xie jiao any group the CCP perceived as hostile to the regime, and courts increasingly applied anti-xie jiao punishments to groups that were not on the official list”.

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