A new report from the Center for Studies on New Religion’s publication Bitter Winter reveals China is spying on and censoring any religious teacher to make sure they don’t mention God.
The Center for Studies on New Religion, a human rights organization focusing on abuses by the Chinese Communist Party’s regime, published the report in an effort to help end the crackdown.
According to the report, Chinese authorities will monitor teachers and make sure they refrain from mentioning anything about democracy, freedom, religion or God.
The report also says that religious teachers are already considered a threat to the Chinese Communist Party simply because they are religious, regardless of what they have taught. The report cites complaints from multiple teachers in both colleges and elementary schools. The teachers were kept anonymous so the Chinese Communist Party cannot find and persecute them for speaking out about the regime’s treatment of its own citizens.
One teacher noted that they “were observed during every class.” Bitter Winter goes on to summarize the rest of what she stated, writing, “She added that the Chinese Ministry of Education adopted Opinions on Building and Improving a Long-term Effective Mechanism for College Teachers’ Ethics Construction in 2016, demanding teachers ‘not say or do anything against the Party line in their educational or teaching activities.’ Student informants planted in classes by authorities help ensure that teachers implement this order.”
Already, “numerous” educators have been punished for not emphatically teaching the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, with no indications the persecution of free-thinking teachers will end.
This isn’t the first time China has censored or attacked Christians. Christian Headlines recently reported that the Chinese Communist Party had shut down a 1500-member church after they refused to install surveillance cameras in their church. The authorities also confiscated what they called “illegal promotional material” which likely included mostly Bibles and church literature.
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Andrea Obzerova
John Paluska has been a contributor for Christian Headlines since 2016 and is the founder of The Daily Fodder, a news outlet he relaunched in 2019 as a response to the constant distribution of fake news.
