China’s new religion laws a ‘pretext’ for arrests, clerics say

Clerics in China say new restrictions on religious practice are about cutting Chinese Catholics off from the outside world

The Chinese Communist Party announced this week new restrictions on religious practice by foreigners in mainland China, which are set to come into force May 1.

A Catholic church in Jingzhou, China. Credit: Zhangzhugang/CC BY-SA 3.0

The rules, issued by the party’s National Religious Affairs Administration, ban foreign nationals from common worship with Chinese citizens, and require all visitors to affirm the national independence of Chinese Churches and faith communities.

The restrictions, which also ban any form of religious practice by visitors in unofficial locations, mark an escalation in Chinese control of religion on the mainland, and come six months after the extension of the Vatican’s controversial agreement with the Chinese government.

The new measures, which clerics in China told The Pillar were likely aimed at creating a “pretext” for arresting foreign nationals for religious activity, suggest that six years after the Holy See’s accord with China, the Church faces less, not more, freedom to operate.

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The regulations, billed as 38 “Detailed Rules,” were carried on the website of the Catholic Diocese of Shanghai and first reported by the website asianews.net.

According to the new regulations, which take effect May 1, “foreigners who engage in religious activities in China must abide by Chinese laws, regulations, and rules, abide by the principle of China's religious independence and self-management, and accept the legitimate management of the Chinese government.”

“Foreigners who engage in religious activities in China must abide by Chinese laws, regulations, and rules, abide by the principle of China's religious independence and self-management, and accept the legitimate management of the Chinese government,” the regulations say.

The rules also require all liturgies take place in officially sanctioned places of worship and be presided over by authorized Chinese ministers. Only in extraordinary circumstances and with official permission can a foreign national preside at a liturgy or worship in an unsanctioned space, and prohibits common worship between Chinese and non-Chinese faithful.

Non-Chinese who “speak or carry out actions hostile to China, hold extremist ideological tendencies or interfere with Chinese religious matters” are liable for arrest under the new rules.

The requirement that non-Chinese affirm the independence of religious practice in the country as a condition of worship effectively requires Catholics to adhere to the same principles of sinicisation as are required of Catholic priests and bishops on the mainland as a condition for membership of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the state-sponsored group through which the Communist Party recognizes and regulates Catholic practice in the country.

The sweeping new regulations affect all faith groups in the mainland, though do not apply in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau.

Clerics on the mainland told The Pillar that the general impression amongst local Catholics was that the government was especially concerned with cracking down on underground evangelical protestant communities and sects, but all agreed that the move represented an effective criminalizing of unsupervised foreign religious practice in China.

“The message is that these are more ‘protective regulations’ than actual regulations,” said one senior mainland cleric, who asked not to be named citing potential government action.

“In other words, if [a foreign national] turns up at a religious ceremony without permission but where Chinese people are present, they have committed an offense which means that they can, if it’s convenient for the authorities to do so, be arrested, rather than that the authorities are looking to arrest everyone who does so,” he said. “The rules are a pretext for arrest, if necessary.”

A second cleric who ministers in China, and who is familiar with underground Catholic communities there, told The Pillar that the new rules were a “license to arrest.”

“Suppose you have a visiting Catholic, or even a Catholic from a Western country who lives in China,” he said, “they cannot go to Mass anywhere but in an official church, celebrated by a [CPCA] priest, specifically for foreigners.”

“If they were to try to live their faith alongside Chinese Catholics, that’s now going to be a crime. It makes it dangerous for local Catholics — especially underground communities — to have any contact with foreigners. It’s about cutting the Chinese Church off from the outside world.”

The new rules were announced six months after the Holy See and Beijing announced an extension to the controversial agreement on the appointment of mainland bishops, first signed in 2018.

The agreement granted the Chinese government a role in the appointment of bishops and was intended to regularize the status of the Church in China, which was split between the underground Church in communion with Rome and the state-sponsored CPCA.

However, despite the deal having been renewed in 2020, 2022, and 2024, the Vatican has been unable to secure the release of various clergy, including some bishops, arrested or “disappeared” by the mainland government since the Vatican-China deal first came online, including those who have refused to sign up to the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and been detained this year.

And, while some bishops have been appointed to mainland sees through a cooperative process between Beijing and Rome, several more have been installed unilaterally by the CCP.

More problematically for the Holy See, the Chinese government has several times moved to create and suppress entire dioceses without papal approval, which the Vatican has had to concede falls far outside the norms of the agreement.

However, the Vatican-China deal has not been entirely without isolated advances for the Church on the mainland. Last year, Beijing took the unprecedented step of recognizing an underground mainland bishop as the legitimate leader of his diocese.

Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, 95, had led the Diocese of Tianjin since 1982 — first as coadjutor and then diocesan bishop from 2019 — and became the first Catholic bishop government authorities have recognized who has not formally joined the CPCA.

On balance, though, and despite committing to extending the arrangement, the Vatican has in recent statements been frank about the imperfect nature of its deal with the Chinese government.

In an interview with official Vatican media earlier this year, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin addressed directly the “weakness” of Rome’s position vs Beijing, and said that he was “not as shocked by differing views [on the deal], as some may believe.”

“Other solutions may exist” for the Vatican’s approach to Chinese relations, the cardinal conceded. But “the Holy See deemed this agreement to be the most effective solution to begin a dialogue with one of the key issues on the table… the appointment of bishops.”

Parolin acknowledged that the Vatican’s chosen “solution” was “progressing slowly—sometimes even taking a step backwards” and “not always successful” with its two main goals: ensuring that all Chinese bishops are in formal communion with the pope and “ensuring some degree of normalization” for the daily life of the local Church.