The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has in the past few years attempted to legislate away religious freedom by passing laws forcing Sinicization and regulating religious leadership, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report published on Monday last week.
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Beijing made use of an elaborate legal system to effectively control religious systems and leaders, the council wrote in its quarterly report on the situation in China.
The council in particular referenced two recent laws: the Measures for the Administration of Religious Personnel, which was implemented on May 1 and aims to more closely regulate religious clergy, and the Measures for the Administration of Religious Institutes, which goes into effect on Sept. 1.
The latter is an update of a previous law establishing religious institutes for the training of clergy and other religious professionals.
PARTY LOYALTY
Under this law, the heads of religious institutes would be required to support CCP leadership, while faculty and students must be educated in “socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new Xi Jinping era,” patriotism and Sinicization of religion.
Both laws complement Xi’s preference for legal administration and Sinicization by legislating religious leaders and institutes, the council said.
At the same time, the CCP has also continued persecuting religious devotees, the report added.
Last month, four Tibetan Buddhist monks were sentenced to five to 20 years in prison after a secret trial, it said.
Their crimes were reportedly contacting Tibetans in Nepal, donating money to help Tibetans in Nepal rebuild after the 2015 earthquake, and possessing images and documents relating to the Dalai Lama, it said.
This was in addition to the arrests of more than 20 Tibetans for celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday online, it added.
In Xinjiang, the CCP has continued placing Uighurs in re-education camps while denying its actions and fiercely attacking any detractors, the council said.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Mei-hui (王美惠) also decried the CCP’s manipulation of religion.
Religion is meant to bring comfort and encourage goodness, but the CCP has been wielding it as a tool for political indoctrination by requiring clergy to study “Xi Jinping thought,” she said, calling the situation “extremely frightening.”
“China’s persecution of minorities in Xinjiang is an indisputable fact,” she said, adding that evidence of its human rights abuses cannot be washed away.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS