Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar: Religious Persecution in China

FASKIANOS: (Off mic)— I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Again, thank you for joining us.

As a reminder, today’s webinar is on the record and the video and transcript will be available on CFR’s website, CFR.org and we will also circulate it after the fact. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

We are grateful to have Bob Fu, Louisa Greve, Cynthia Sun, and Sarah Cook with us today to discuss the Chinese government’s policies toward religious and ethnic minorities.

Sarah Cook will be moderating today’s discussion. She is an independent researcher and consultant who has worked on human rights, technology, religion and media freedom related to China for over twenty years. She was previously China research director at Freedom House, where she directed the China Media Bulletin and authored five special reports about China. Her writings have been widely published and she’s testified before the U.S. Congressional Executive Commission on China, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. And she is the author of Underreported China, a new Substack that highlights the CCP’s actions and their implications for democracy, freedom, and human rights across the world.

So I’m going to turn it over to Sarah to introduce our distinguished panelists. She’ll engage them in a conversation for about twenty-five minutes, and then we’ll turn to all of you for your questions and comments. And with that, Sarah, over to you.

COOK: Thank you, Irina. Before I introduce our panelists, we thought it would be helpful if I said a few words of context on the landscape for religion in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s attitude toward religion.

Of course, during the Mao era any organized religion was banned, temples were demolished, monks and nuns were defrocked, and many believers and clergy were jailed, tortured, and killed. The situation the post-Mao era is more complex. First, a religious revival is underway across faiths in China. And I think that’s something internationally that is not always as well understood as other aspects of events in China. In 2017, a report I worked on for Freedom House estimated there were at least 350 million religious believers, and growing, in China—not including informal folk religions. The largest contingent belongs to Chinese Buddhism, but hundreds of millions of others follow Daoism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and faiths like Falun Gong.

Second, within and among these faiths there is noteworthy variation in how they are viewed and treated by the regime. On the one hand, for some communities—especially the Chinese Buddhists and Daoists—religious believers can appear to have significant freedom and avoid harsh forms of repression. You’ll hear Chinese officials and state media even touting the benefits for religion in Chinese society, although all Chinese Communist Party members must be Marxist atheists. At the same time, large numbers of believers in China, some 100 million by Freedom House’s count, face high or very high levels of religious persecution, including mass detentions and deadly state-driven violence. And then there are the gray areas in between, because even for officially recognized religions—there’s Buddhism and Daoism, Islam, or forms of Christianity—and those who worship through state-approved channels, the party exercises extensive control over clergy, places of worship and religious doctrine.

And this has only intensified under Xi Jinping. But even within these faiths that are recognized, you have subsets—Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and unregistered Christian congregations—that face terrible repression, and groups like Falun Gong that are entirely banned and subject to eradication campaigns. So as we carry out today’s discussion, it’s important to recognize the complexity and the variation in the religious landscape in China and the regime’s treatment of religion. CCP leaders have really pursued a very complex and multifaceted policy that tries to maximize the benefits of religion for party rule while minimizing the risks, including via very brutal repression. I also, before I turn to our speakers, just wanted to acknowledge that there’s not a representative from the Tibetan community included, due to time constraints. But our speakers will try to address the plight faced by Tibetan Buddhists where relevant, and can also address it during the Q&A.

So now to introduce our speakers.

First, we have Bob Fu. Bob is a leading advocate for persecuted religious believers and human rights in China, and founder and president of ChinaAid, an international nonprofit promoting freedom of religion and the rule of law in China. He’s also a life member on the Council of Foreign Relations.

Louisa Greve is director of global advocacy for the Uyghur Human Rights Project. She focuses on government policy and sanctions enforcement, as well as corporate accountability and standard setting. Previously, Ms. Greve was vice president for programs and East Asia director at the National Endowment for Democracy.

And Cynthia Sun, who is a senior researcher at the Falun Dafa Information Center. Her work concentrates on religious persecution in China, transnational repression, and CCP influence in America. She also recently concluded service as a freedom of religious belief fellow.

So the way we’re going to do the conversation is we’ll have a few rounds of questions, and I’ll turn to each one of the speakers, and then, as Irina mentioned, we’ll have twenty-five minutes—twenty, twenty-five minutes or so for Q&A after that. So, Bob, let’s start with you. So, first, can you briefly explain the distinction between state-controlled churches and underground congregations? And then speak in more detail about the kind of key trends and developments that you’ve seen in terms of the regime’s treatment of Christianity over the last two or three years.

FU: Thank you, Sarah. First of all, I want to thank CFR for having this special webinar. And it’s really a privilege for me to be here with my fellow distinguished panelists, friends, Louisa, Sarah, of course, Cynthia. To our audience, want to apologize for going back to the COVID time with a face mask, as there is a little dog bite on my face. I don’t want to scare you. So, to summarize the fundamental distinction between the government-sanctioned so-called patriotic movement religious institutions and the independent, you know, in the Protestant term, called the house churches, really it’s the most fundamental distinction is the word “independent.”

Basically, the government-sanctioned are officially registered in their venues under the so-called Three-Self Patriotic Movement. They are totally controlled by this political organization, actually the two organizations under TSPT, Three-Self Patriotic Movement, formerly—initially known as the Three-Self Anti-America Aid Korea Movement when it was established—and the Chinese Christian Council, CCC. They’re purely political organizations with religious uniform. So everything they do, they have to adhere to the so-called Communist Party’s united front policy under the United Front Working Department of the CCP and the Religious Affairs Bureau. And then, in 2018, after the new regulation on religious affairs, thirty more organizations are involved in decision making that can issue orders to these so-called patriotic bodies.

There are three trends I can summarize in the past few years that really are different from the previous years, especially, of course, under this new emperor Xi Jinping. The first one is really for the first time in forty years, since the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party officially criminalizing the tithing and offering of the Catholic—or, I mean, independent house churches, be it the Protestant house churches or Catholic house churches. Suddenly, many, many believers are coerced to make a false confession in order to prosecute and indict, imprison many pastors.

Just from barely three weeks ago, October 9, we have seen the largest, most grievous, systematically organized by the central government campaign against one of the largest urban house church network, called the Zion Church. It started from Beijing in 2008 and then in 2018 grew to 1,500 members, and led by Ezra Jin. And then it was banned in 2018 for simply refusing to install the face recognition cameras in front of the pulpit. And then by this year they grew to over 5,000 members across the forty cities with over one hundred congregations. So far, twenty-three church leaders in this group have been rounded up under new criminal name and called it illegal use of internet, or something like that. And also evidence shows they’re collecting the false accusation on the tithing and offering to make a criminal term called fraud.

The second trend is really, for the first time in forty years, we have not seen that the CCP target the meetings of Chinese children, especially those with religious belief, independent of control. For the house church children, the Christians—who has Christian faith, many are forced to sign a Communist Party prepared form to renounce their faith in public in front of their classmates, with their teachers, principals, and their parents, and Public Security Bureau members. And nobody under eighteen years old is allowed even to come close to a government-sanctioned church building. And before, really, two, three, five—four years ago, at least the children were tolerated to be in their Three-Self Patriotic Movement church building. But now, I mean, they were not forbidden to have Sunday schools. But now they’re totally forbidden, even including graduate school students. So no students, no civil servants, no policemen, and, of course, now even extended to some doctors, nurses, not allowed to go to a church building.

And the third quick kind of trend is that the CCP is now criminalizing those who go overseas to attend a religious meeting or, like, a Bible study, or exposition, or Bible or Christian conference, these are—these people are charged with illegal border crossing. So we have seen a number of them arrested under this pretext, and rounded up, and imprisoned, and so on. So we can talk more later on with more details. These are, yeah, the main trends I can tell.

COOK: Thank you, Bob. And I think we’ve seen that dimension about the children come up in other contexts that Louisa may speak about too.

So, Louisa, I think, many people are aware of the mass detentions and the atrocities that Uyghur Muslims have faced in Xinjiang, especially since 2017, but maybe less the religious dimensions of that. So I don’t know if you want to address a little bit of what are some of the religious practices that have contributed to people being punished and jailed. And then again also provide an update on what’s been happening in the region more recently over the last two or three years.

GREVE: Thank you, Sarah. And I’ll add my thanks to CFR and all of the participants for joining.

How do the—how do the atrocities target religious believers? In fact, all aspects of faith and practice were criminalized. And, you know, the mosques that are demolished remain demolished. The people taken away, very few have emerged. And I’m just going to give you some examples. The first person I’m giving you here, this photo—these photos are all from the Xinjiang police files that were leaked, documents directly—somebody risked their life and—their freedom, and certainly their life, to leak these documents.

So this woman is Tursunhan Imin. She was sixty-two when she was detained. She’s a büwi. Büwi is—a büwi is the female religious leader in East Turkestan, for the Uyghurs. They teach children, they lead women’s prayers, and they often prepare—help with funeral and preparing bodies for burial.

This is also a büwi. Her name is Ezizigul Memet. She was forty-seven when she was taken away in 2017. She would now be fifty-six. She was given a sentence, this older woman who’s now seventy-one, there’s unknown fate. She’d be seventy-one now. This this woman is now fifty-six, having spent nine years in detention. What was her criminal activity? In February 1976—so she was age five or so—she was “illegally,” quote/unquote, “studying the Quran for three days with her mother.”

And I’ll also show you a photo of a twenty-five-year old, a woman who was twenty-five when she was taken away. Her name is Tursungül Ghopur. What were her criminal activities? OK, I’m just going to read this to you. Between December 2010 and January 2011—so, for two months—she and her sister’s daughter studied the Quran with their father. They studied for around thirty minutes every evening for one month. That was a crime. And then she also studied the Quran with somebody from another township. So her sentence is fourteen years and eleven months. So it’s at least five minutes—five years before her sentence.

So none of these people have been released. Nothing’s changed. That’s the story for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The children have been affected much more. So as you’ve seen, I’m sure, Tibetan and Uyghur children are in mandatory boarding school in Tibet. It’s mandatory preschool. What is the purpose? Take the children away from their parents so they can’t be taught their language, their culture, and certainly not their religion.

COOK: Thank you, Louisa.

And, Cynthia, I think among the faiths here today, people are probably a little less familiar with Falun Gong. So maybe you could just briefly explain what Falun Gong is, what the community in China is like, and actually why the regime is so determined to eradicate it. And then also provide kind of a quick update on key trends from the last few years.

SUN: Yeah, sure. Thank you so much, CFR, again. Thank you for moderating.

And in terms of Falun Gong, that’s actually the question we get the most because, as a human rights organization, we usually—most of our lion’s share is on documenting persecution. But, you know, we know that in America and in the West a lot of people don’t know what Falun Gong is. And so as there’s a lot of religious believers in this group today, I kind of wanted to focus on the spiritual aspect. You know, we believe in a creator. Falun Gong is based on Buddhist tradition. And it really comprises of two aspects, meditation and the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance. And so we believe that following these principles will eventually cultivate back to heaven. And in terms of, you know, the aspect of the scale and scope, many people don’t know who Falun Gong is, because we’re not really an ethnicity. You know, you can’t distinguish us by our language because a majority of Falun Gong practitioners are Han Chinese. And we’re spread out in nearly every province. And by government estimates in the ’90s, there were 100 million Falun Gong practitioners.

And so in terms of how that’s changed now there’s two quick points I wanted to point out. Which is it’s become a top-down priority again, and the tech. And what I mean by this is, you know, Falun Gong—most practitioners are punished for free expression and for whistleblowing. Not for—I mean, of course for religious purposes as well, but because they’ve been detained and sentenced on such a high level many Falun Gong practitioners have turned to advocacy as a way to express their faith and express they want the persecution to end. And so, you know, some people may think the crackdown on Falun Gong is happening because of CCP propaganda about criminals or cults. But that’s simply untrue. And according to Freedom House and practitioners who’ve escaped China, tens of millions Falun Gong practitioners still constitute one of the largest grassroots movements today.

And so between 2022 and 2025, over 10,000 practitioners were arbitrarily detained or harassed with over 2,000 sentenced to prison terms up to fifteen years following sham trials. And, even according to official government documents, prioritization of Falun Gong has resurfaced as central to maintaining regime security. And in terms of the tech aspect of that, security agencies like the PSB, the Public Security Bureau, and the Ministry of State Security, and even local police, they’ve now paired these legacy campaigns of, you know, renounce your faith with a contract—a paper contract, with newer tech, like big data-enabled neighborhood monitoring, security cameras, WeChat, like, social media, petition campaigns, facial recognition devices. And they even—you know, in one data point we documented recently, hundreds of cases of Falun Gong practitioners who were free for over a decade have now been detained and sentenced to prison within the last three years. So we really see a resurfacing.

COOK: Thanks, Cynthia. And I think what really comes out, you know, from what you all are describing is this combination of just ordinary, personal religious faith or conversations with people that are criminalized and, you know, receive very disproportionate punishments—that shouldn’t be punished at all, that are both tolerated and even praised in many parts of the world for the benefits that they bring, you know, to communities and to individuals. But then in China, not only is it punished, it’s punished very severely.

Louisa, I’m going to go to you now because I think one area of interest for CFR is not only to understand how specific religious communities are treated, but also the broader implications for domestic and foreign policy. So could you maybe provide one example each of kind of how the regime’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims more broadly affects domestic affairs and foreign affairs?

GREVE: Thank you, Sarah. Can you hear my voice clearly? All right. Certainly this twenty-four/seven surveillance Cynthia mentions, it was back in 2016 when the government of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region had something called health checks for all. They did—literally, everyone had to come between the ages of twelve and sixty. They did facial scan, voice scan, iris scan. And the information we have is this was fed into, quote, “big data” in order to race ahead globally on the technology for facial recognition and other kinds of tracking. And we now know there’s a DNA birth certificate China is using. So that whole tech-enabled Minority Report-type tracking of everyone—you don’t need barbed wire, certainly, in Xinjiang. The barbed wire has been taken down. They don’t need it because you’re tracked everywhere. We all have a panopticon in our pocket when we hold up—take our phones with us. But it’s times one hundred in China. And that was, in some ways, the laboratory of repression for the tech part of it. You know, big data needs data. And the ten million Uyghurs served as one of the sources of data for those machine learning to go.

The other thing I would say is that the push for international—making the world safe for genocidaires—the CCP is a genocidaire. It is truly able to do non-kinetic repression of religion. Yes, people are tortured. Very, you know, fewer—it’s not arresting people to death camps, but it is arresting people. And many people do die. The propaganda against that is what I want to mention now. So here’s an example. Sometimes religious leaders are taken on Potemkin tours. I think religious leaders on this call really have to be careful about who overtures about international friendship and links between peoples.

Princeton University Press got caught in that in June. They had a—you know, they have an agreement with the press in China and were invited to a tour. And they said great. We’ll take our trip. We’ll go. So they learned last minute they were going to Xinjiang. Did not do their due diligence. And you get these—I don’t know if you can see this—but, you know, there’s the head of the Princeton University Press, you know, taking a picture of the so-called Uyghur dancing and tourism, and just being used by the government. So this is something that’s happening. Everyone needs to be aware of it in international relations. Don’t be used by the Chinese government to normalize their incredible repression of religion.

COOK: Thank you, Louisa.

So, Bob, coming to you, you know, and I think given that Christians in China are, you know, spread throughout the country as well as having, like you said, international connections if they go to conferences and things like that, what are some of the broader implications for domestic and foreign policy that you see the treatment of Christians by the Chinese government can have?

FU: Yeah. I mean, the implication is huge. I’d just really continue what Louisa has said, and echo what she said. The CCP really is not only dissatisfied with their domestic repression efforts, and be it like using the big data to track people. And in Xinjiang—I just recently met with a Chinese pastor who traveled to Xinjiang. As soon as he sat with three Uyghurs in a restaurant, I mean, then immediately the police showed up in the restaurant. And they were warned, basically said there is a new regulation. No three Uyghurs should sit together in one restaurant. I mean, you can’t even eat together with more than three Uyghur ethnic minority people. And they were raided and tracked.

So unfortunately, in the Chinese Christian context we have seen the high-tech companies, even telecommunication companies, like Apple, had been actively collaborating and cooperating with the CCP’s requirement—voluntarily removing all the Bible and Bible apps from the millions of Chinese Apple phone users Apple Store. As we all know, the Chinese, hundreds of millions Apple phone users, their Apple Store is separated, segregated from the rest of the world. The data is controlled by the CCP’s national security in the province of Guizhou. So Apple voluntarily basically remove all the Bible apps and Bible-related apps from the Apple Store in China., That makes the Chinese users instantly lose the access to the scripture. Of course, all the e-commerce stores are totally forbidden to sell Bibles. Bible is a forbidden product to be sold in any public bookstore.

And also, internationally the CCP is extending its long arm, really, to the—I mean, across the border, beyond its controlled border, and under the banner of so-called Sinicization, I think we—all independent religions have been impacted, be it Falun Gong, or Uyghur, or Tibetans. The Sinicization that Xi Jinping means is dramatically different from what Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao’s policy for making religion compatible with socialism. The former was really just trying to co-opt the religions just in their form of teaching into socialism doctrine. But the latter is the totally, I call it, a falsification. It’s like the last time I can see this picture of Xi Jinping and Chairman Mao was—their portrait was forced to put in the government sanctioned-church pulpit was in Nazi Germany in 1933. Their Lutheran Church were forced to put a Nazi symbol on their pulpit. And guess what? Even in the city of Los Angeles, in the U.S. soil, I mean, during the Chinese National Day you have seen some churches were raising the Chinese national flags, singing the communist red songs, led by these Chinese American pastors, in the form of celebrating the founding of the CCP and the People’s Republic of China.

And I don’t think they celebrate the founding of American, but they are really, I think, coerced to do this in order to maybe get a visa back to China, or to go to take care of their elderly parents in China. So this is already in the free world, in the U.S. soil. I think the CCP has, of course, individually tried to track those activists, like myself and certainly many expatriate Uyghur leaders and Falun Gong practitioners as well. Certainly, Tibetan communities have been—a lot of them have been tracked. So that’s the transnational repression approach, if you want to hear more later.

COOK: Thank you, Bob.

And, Cynthia, coming back to you, like Christians—I mean, you mentioned Falun Gong practitioners are really dispersed around China. They’re a bit more concentrated maybe in the northeast, but you really do see these cases of persecution happening in different parts of the country. And of course, a very violent campaign has been going on now for more than twenty-five years. So how do you see what the regime is doing to Falun Gong, or has done to Falun Gong, impacting kind of both domestic and foreign affairs?

SUN: Yeah. So I think Bob and Louisa raised really good points. And ultimately, Beijing’s—whether it’s transnational oppression or security and other aspects—they’re waging a physical war against a spiritual group, against our spirits, because they can’t touch our spirits. They’re using everything else they can—physical, psychological, what have you, anything but boats and guns and ships—to fight this war because, you know, they’re trying to influence us in their favor, right? The more people that believe in atheism, or the more people that turn away from religion, the more people that they can control.

And so in terms of domestic, you know, religious persecution is kind of a badge of honor for the lower officials. And that’s their one-way ride up the ladder to political leadership, to securing their careers. Because in the CCP, it’s really opposite. You know, you have bounties for Falun Gong practitioners, if you can transform a Falun Gong practitioner to become an atheist and to renounce their faith. You know, these lower-level officials actually get promoted. And then you see this across other communities as well. You know, a person in Tibet who has persecuted Tibetans for a long time gets shipped to northeast China. And then he persecutes Falun Gong. And then he suddenly gets promoted over someone else who didn’t choose religious persecution. And so I think it’s really—you know, there are kind of two sides of the coin. Like, religious persecution is part of the political system there. And it’s really corrupt, but that’s just the reality.

And in terms of the foreign affairs, I think Beijing’s malign influence—whether it’s transnational repression or influence over our media or otherwise—and American complicity are kind of two sides of the same coin. And I’ll give an example of this. If you use AI, like, ChatGPT or something else, or you use your phone a lot during the day, if you search up Falun Gong on, like, a Xiaomi or another device, or if you search it up on DeepSeek, which is a Chinese AI LLM tool, then, you know, they’ll actually censor Falun Gong. So if you try right now to go on DeepSeek and try to ask, what is Falun Gong, or what’s the persecution of Falun Gong, like we’re asking today, it’ll immediately come back with a, sorry, I can’t answer that question. It’s politically sensitive. And same thing for Xiaomi. I have papers here, actually, from Lithuania, where you can see Falun Gong is a part of the censored terms that’s on the Xiaomi phone. And so this really does affect everyone.

You know, when you use Chinese social media, like WeChat, when you engage in Chinese companies, you know, there’s certain things that you can and cannot say. And it ends up censoring Americans as well. And on the point of transnational oppression, my team has been documenting, I think, well over 180 threats targeting Falun Gong practitioners now, including on Shen Yun Performing Arts, which, you know, is a renowned music and dance group founded by Falun Gong practitioners to raise awareness about the persecution. And Bob’s nodding, but, yeah, we’ve, we’ve been documenting this for the past two years now. And it really shows how much money Beijing is willing to put, how much power and manpower that they’re willing to put to stop people who dissent against them.

COOK: Thank you, Cynthia.

On that note, I did have another question for you guys, but I want to make sure we have questions from the audience. So, Sam, I’ll turn it over to you, and then just maybe leave, you know, five to eight minutes at the end, and I can ask the panelists one or two more wrap up questions.

OPERATOR: Thank you, Sarah.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

We will take the first question from David Adams.

Q: Yes. Good afternoon. Can you hear me, OK?

FU: Yes.

Q: OK. Thank you very much. Very interesting, if depressing, presentation by all of you.

I had a question, being with—VP emeritus of Cross Catholic Outreach, very much involved in Catholic faith and religious and humanitarian issues. Just wanted to know if any of you could comment on the more recent developments of the attempts by the Vatican to have some sort of concordance, if you will, with the government, picking up on what transpired under Pope Francis’ time as Pope.

COOK: Thanks, David.

Bob, I think you’re the best place to answer that. So we’ll give you that question.

FU: Thank you. Thank you, David, for that question. Yeah, when Vatican and Beijing announced they have reached that secret deal a few years ago, and people have some high hopes that at least you know, the Vatican would get some favorable term by getting an independent right to appoint their own bishops without the CCP’s filtering, and but it turns out it’s a disaster. I mean, everybody as an objective observer would think that—would conclude that so-called secret deal by the Vatican and the CCP is dancing with the devil. And the deal are basically giving the CCP cover to continue, if not reinforcing, its repression against the Catholic believers and independent bishops and clergymen.

We have seen not only those for years who had been disappeared and enforced the disappearance, kidnapped, arrested, had not been released, but also new ones. We have seen bishops had been arrested and kidnapped. And the Hudson Institute has documented and featured twelve bishops who had been continuing or newly under enforced disappearance. Some were, like, you know, fifteen years or so already, no word dead or alive. So we also have seen the Chinese Communist Party even use the papal vacancy time, you know, after the pass—the old pope, Pope Francis. And then before the new pope had been elected, the CCP basically installed new bishops of their own, basically without any input from the Vatican at all.

So I think Vatican should treat that as a truly, directly insult. I certainly hope the money could—should discontinue, cancel this really useless secret deal. And also, I want to raise these issues that somebody can—I think political forces are pushing even harder to approve CCP’s kind of approach by even hosting the CCP’s national director for their health department, and (in room ?) by giving them a stamp for their totally unethical organ harvesting practice—you know, organ transplanting practice, and giving them religious cover. And declaring, oh, the CCP’s organ transplant is ethical. This is just a tremendous violation of basic conscience and international law. As we all know, the CCP has been proven their systematic, egregious violation by practicing this organ harvesting against many people of faith, particularly we know the Falun Gong practitioners, now extended to the Uyghurs, they call it “halal organs,” and perhaps extended to other people faith as well. So I think Vatican should be the first one to stand up to say, no, this is a violation of basic human rights.

OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Richard Morrison. Please accept the unmute prompt.

Q: Hello.

I’m wondering about the state of seminaries and other institutions that are in the business of training the pastors and other clergy. And on the assumption that many or most have been closed, how will professional clergy be trained for future service?

COOK: Bob, I’ll let you touch on that. And then, I don’t know if Louisa, Cynthia—I mean, Falun Gong doesn’t have clergy in the same way. And I think what’s happened in Xinjiang is that they’ve really arrested all of—almost all of the religious leaders. I think with Christianity, Bob, maybe you can talk about what the state is of that type of religious training and education.

FU: Yes. Thank you for that question. So, to put it simply, under the banner of so-called Sinicization, all the so-called patriotic clergymen, or government approved so-called the bishops or the Protestant pastors, or deacons, or anything in the church, has to not only now to make a pledge to adhere in their teaching, I mean, to the socialism and communism ideology, but also they have to make absolute pledge of allegiance and loyalty to President Xi Jinping’s thoughts in the new era of Chinese socialism with the new characteristics. The term is longer and longer. But in practice, every Sunday, I mean, can you believe that in the government-sanctioned Church, the congregates were ordered, before they can sing the doxology, to praise the creator and the Lord Jesus Christ, they have to rise up to sing the Communist Party’s national anthem first, before they can sing the Christian songs.

And plus, in many congregations, those pastors have to go through the extensive so-called, kind of, to use what they are doing in Xinjiang, is a mind transformation process. Basically, it’s a series of so-called patriotic education, including the ceremonial raising flags, singing the national anthem, and then study all the political ideology, in some course of hours, and so before they can be issued a certificate to practice their clerical tasks in their churches, or mosques, or temples. So everybody now vow to become Xi Jinping’s great monks, great pastors, Xi Jinping’s great kind of other faith adherents.

COOK: And I think, you know, what Bob is talking about here, that control does actually exist also for the less-persecuted groups—like the Buddhists, like the Daoists. Sometimes Daoist priests actually have a hard time getting confirmed and so forth because of the politicization and the bureaucratic backlog, and things like that. And then I think what you’ve seen over the last decade-plus is, right, there used to be other avenues. People could, like, get information from overseas, listen to radio broadcasts from Hong Kong, and things like that. And so much of what the CCP has been trying to do is just narrow the channel so they have to go through these very tightly politically controlled avenues just to be able to be a religious leader in China.

FU: Yeah. All the CCP-controlled seminaries, you know, they have essentially become the second party school of the Chinese Communist Party. You know, I used to teach in the communist party school before I was exiled. But we knew how ideological, brainwashed that kind of school. So two-thirds of the coursework have to do with the political brainwash in their seminary studies.

COOK: All right, Sam. I think we could take another question.

OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Harry Parks.

Q: Hi. Can you hear me?

FU: Yes, sir.

Q: Hi. My name is Harry Parks. I’m from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

My question is—it’s really two questions. But what is the status of the of the Eastern Orthodox Church in China? Have Orthodox Christians received more protection due to the Orthodox Church’s connection to Russia, as the diocese in China is part of the Russian Orthodox Church? Thank you.

COOK: Bob, I think that one’s for you.

FU: (Laughs.) Well, thank you, Harry, for asking that question. I have to be honest with you, I have not really studied a lot—much about the Russian Orthodox Church in China’s presence, since it’s a very small percentage of presence. And certainly, given the unshakable or forever alliance between Putin and Xi Jinping, and their unwavering support of the Russians’ war against the Ukraine, you can safely assume that the Russian Orthodox Church have to pledge their absolute allegiance to the CCP’s so-called Sinicization effort, but by adhering to the socialism and communism teaching in their church as well. And their clergymen absolutely cannot pass the muster of the CCP’s filter unless and until they make the same pledges and, in both word and practice, in their faith to obey this communism teaching in their church.

COOK: Thanks, Bob.

So with the time we have remaining I have a couple more questions for each of the panelists. And I think we want to—you know, looking a bit more at the optimistic side, because there is—there is—you know, it’s not only about what the regime is doing. I think, whenever I’ve had an opportunity to look at religion in China, and especially to interact with believers or former prisoners of conscience, it’s just striking actually how much the CCP’s repression is failing. How hard it is—even people who are forced to renounce in custody come out or get into exile and resume their religious faith. There’s just this very deep resilience. And so I wanted to give each of you kind of an opportunity to speak to that side of it.

So, Cynthia, why don’t we start with you? Can you talk a little bit about how that plays out in the Falun Gong case? And if you have some specific examples of kind of a grassroots response, both within China, but what members of the diaspora try to do to support their co-believers in China.

SUN: Yeah. I think just real quick, earlier for Minister Morrison’s question, you know, whether it’s churches or temples, a lot of the politicization does have to do with money. A lot of temples can’t survive on their own. And I think this is where Falun Gong differs. Obviously, you know, you can practice by yourself, you can practice with a group, you can meditate in your home or you can go outside. And, you know, there’s a book by Bill Porter who actually documented a lot of the Buddhist and Daoist temples, and their reaction to slowly getting Sinicized. And so I’d recommend that book.

But in terms of Falun Gong, you know, like it was mentioned earlier, there are no clergy. And so what really happened is civilians started, like, their own movement to push back against the persecution. And a huge part of that is nonviolence, right? So we—there was a congressional staffer who specializes in national security that told me last year when he went to Beijing back in 2008 one of the first people he met at the airport was a Falun Gong practitioner. And that Falun Gong practitioner handed him, like, a USB stick. And that was actually a VPN. And that was, like, one of his most vivid memories of being in Beijing. And this is for all of the millions of Falun Gong practitioners inside and outside China, there’s really this effort to push back.

And so if you read the news when COVID broke out a few years ago, you know one of the first people, Fang Bin, to actually whistle-blow COVID, he was a Falun Gong practitioner. And he was sentenced for both his faith and for whistleblowing. And you see this across many of the of the court cases. One of the largest movements that I think Chinese citizens and people who go to China will know is the Tuidang Movement, which is quitting the party. Because when you’re in elementary school you have to join the Young Pioneers. You have to, you know, pledge your allegiance to the CCP. When you’re in, you know, work at the office you have to pledge allegiance to the CCP. And there’s three main associations. And so what Tuidang does, what quit the party does, is, you know, you can sign a certificate saying that you vow to leave the CCP and all of its associations.

And from what I know, hundreds of millions of Chinese people have chosen to take that step, to leave the CCP. So I think that’s—you know, the largest movement is really about resilience and pushing back against the CCP, and saying, you know, the only path forward is not the CCP. A lot of Chinese citizens and people of faith see a future of China without the Chinese Communist Party.

COOK: Thank you, Cynthia. And I think it’s interesting that Cynthia mentioned the Tuidang. Actually, a lot of people use aliases, because obviously it can be very dangerous to come out. But there are a lot of activists, including some of the human rights lawyers who are Christians, who had made, you know, public statements about symbolically renouncing their connection to the CCP. And so I think it is really interesting because the way people talk about it is more of, like—almost like a spiritual dimension. Of like they want to make clear that their mind and that they don’t belong to the CCP. (Coughs.) Sorry.

Louisa, same question for you. I mean, I think in Xinjiang it’s much more difficult given the restrictions, but maybe what are people in the diaspora doing to help people in China?

GREVE: Thank you. Yes. For the diaspora, there’s a mission, for the Uyghur people. Our people are slated to be eliminated. People are taken away to factories. You know, when you turn sixteen or eighteen in a village, the party cadre there say, we now have a job for you. Get on the train. We’re taking you to a factory. You know, the children are taken away from their parents for six day a week boarding school so that—you know, can people even get married to another Uyghur? So at home they don’t dare. So the elimination of that civilization is on track under Chinese control. So the burden or the mission of the diaspora is, can we frustrate the genocide? At least the Chinese government will not succeed in its genocidal and eradication aim if we maintain our culture. So a lot of people have focused on writing poetry and learning the poetry of the past, the great philosophers of the past.

One initiative is called the—in English, it’s called the Uyghur Wellness Initiative, to help people not to be crushed when you live in exile. You know, your sister, your brother, you have nightmares about them being tortured, but they don’t want you not to live your life. You should have children who grew up in a happy home. So we have an initiative called the Uyghur Wellness Initiative to encourage people, help them overcome survivors guilt, which is a very common thing from all the big genocides. Interestingly, for this group when we were debating what should we call it in Uyghur, we call it the spiritual wellness initiative.

And I’ll mention one other thing about, you know, positivity. People are aware—I think people know that, you know, a lot of Christmas decorations, they get shipped from China. There’s, you know, people, forced labor, Falun Gong, and others who are working, the notes smuggled out. So I think one thing that we can all do for those who are approaching Advent in the Christmas season is not only for oneself, but maybe for our own congregations, let’s not use anything made in China, as a way to make sure we’re standing in support of those and give people hope that people around the world are not willing to look the other way.

COOK: Thank you, Louisa. And what you said about the cultural, you know, resilience. I remember being on a panel with the person who had been the head of the Tibetan prime minister in exile. And it was just really striking how optimistic he was in certain ways, given the level of repression. And basically saying, look, in fifty years we will still be here. The Communist Party will not be. (Laughs.) And so I think that that is also, I think, a long-term perspective that you really hear a lot, I think, from religious believers, when I interview them. And they’re like, no, we’re going to stay around. We’re going to make a freer China. We’re the people in China who actually want to have more peace with the international community, and things like that.

So, Bob, how do you see that among Christians, both inside of China and outside China?

FU: Yes, Sarah. I mean, I totally echo the positive, optimistic tone. Actually, it’s not all the news are kind of depressing news. Because we all know the CCP’s war against faith is doomed to fail. I mean, it will never win the spiritual warfare because of the strong, and heavy, and active resilience against the dictatorship. I mean, because it is the core of the Christian faith, basically, that we won’t worship an idol like Xi Jinping, other than the creator and the redeemer, Lord Jesus. So that’s why when Ezra Jin, the China Zion Church pastor, right before he was arrested on October 10, he was asked, actually, by one of his coworkers that what would happen if all of the Zion Church national pastors are being arrested? He said, hallelujah. That means a greater revival will happen.

And guess what? I mean that exactly has been happening since the CCP took power. Just for sheer number, we can see before, I mean, CCP took power in 1949, the number of Protestant Christian communion takers was recorded with less than one million. But today, I mean, according to a very credible sociologist, Dr. Yang Fenggang, who spoke at CFR several times in the past, and their research found at minimum the number of Chinese Protestant Christians, including actually the Protestant and Catholics, has a minimum reach to over 100-130 million. So that’s one-hundredfold growth, to the minimum.

And just to illustrate that for the Zion Church, and get, you know, between 2008 to 2018 in Beijing they only have 1,500 members. Grew from twenty to 1,500. And then in the past five years they grew to 5,000, from one city to forty cities. And actually, every morning I even sometimes sign up on the morning Bible study devotion time. And usually it attracted over 10,000. Every morning 10,000—over 10,000 people sign up for their morning live devotion. And plus, they made very professionally a Christmas show and attracted usually between one hundred to 150,000. So even after the crackdown in the past two weeks, every day and every Sunday their worship, I mean, among the nationwide has never been stopped. So I think the CCP is creating the spiritual revival among the believers by launching their war. I think it’s the opposite will be true to their intent.

COOK: Thank you, Bob. And, yes, I’ve seen that a lot in my research, where you have communities or individuals that didn’t have a problem with the Chinese Communist Party. And then they were just practicing their religion or their faith, and then suddenly there’s an order to take down the cross of their church, or they get—the Falun Gong is banned, or suddenly they can’t read the Quran. And suddenly they actually end up becoming a lot more active in pushing back. And the CCP is kind of creating its own problems that way.

Well, we’ve got one more minute but I want to give you each a chance to say one thing. Maybe you can go an extra minute or two late. One thing you think that members of the audience can do. I mean, Louisa already mentioned that about the decorations. Bob, is there anything that you feel that members of the—you know, religious leaders in the United States can and should do on this issue?

FU: Yeah. I think one thing is we—especially to the mainline religious institutions—I think to raise awareness is still a number one issue. Because a lot of Americans, we are focusing our own daily life and we take our great freedom for granted a lot, for a long time. I think our congregation members, even in our academic community—I mean, institutions, are very less aware of what’s really happening in the—this dynamic growth of religious—independent religious communities. And I think we need to write about it, and research about it more, and reach out to the independent church leaders or other faiths in your community. So that’s what I really want to call for.

COOK: And, Cynthia, do you have anything you want to suggest?

SUN: Yeah. I think for me mainly, in line with both of them, is, you know, if you see any sources or you see any individuals that could be tied to the Chinese Communist Party, just, you know, read them with suspicion and know the context behind it, because obviously for Beijing the context is anti-religion. It’s pro-CCP. And so everything that they do, including with the consulates, with cultural groups. I answered this in the chat for Thomas Walsh, but essentially there are different groups, like the Chinese police station, that are operating currently in America and in other countries. They are not just benign, you know, protection—for your protection, or they’re just benign cultural celebrations. Like some of these groups are paid directly by Beijing. And they’re here to control a narrative. So, you know, treat your neighbors with love, but just know the context behind these groups.

COOK: And, Louisa, any last word? And then we’ll turn it back to Irina to wrap us up.

GREVE: No, just my advice is, just like Cynthia’s, pay attention, because there’s a lot of aggressive move to have people inadvertently endorse this communist objective.

COOK: And I would just add, I think if you encounter anything and you’re not sure, that’s why people like Cynthia, and Louisa, and Bob, and their groups are very great resources. If you see something fishy, just reach out to them and be like, do you know who this person is? Do you know who this group is? They and their colleagues are often very happy to offer, you know, advice in this—navigating this kind of tricky landscape. Irina, I’ll turn it back to you.

FASKIANOS: Thank you, Sarah.

This was fantastic. Thank you all for a terrific hour, and to you for your great questions. We will be sharing the video and transcript as well as resources that were mentioned. So I encourage you to listen to it again, view it again, and share it with your colleagues. And with that, please do send us any suggestions for future topics and speakers to [email protected]. And thank you all, again, for being with us. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. Have a good day.