AlJezeerah has an article about the pressure on various religions in China being pressured to become loyal to the regime.The AlJ article essentially quotes people saying the Vatican was a fool to believe the Chinese would keep the promises in the Vatican/Chinese govt agreement.
The first time the Chinese leader publicly spoke of it was at a conference in Beijing in 2015, during which he also declared “that the Communist Party could give active guidance to religions so that they could adapt themselves to socialist society, adhere to the direction of sinicised religion, and increase the standard of the regulations controlling religion”...
“The current wave of sinicisation is driven by the party-state as it seeks to change religion in China, so it aligns with the Communist Party’s and Xi Jinping’s interpretation of dominant Chinese culture and socialist core values,” Stroup said.
It manifests in the demolition of domes, crosses and minarets and their replacement by Chinese-styled tiled roofs and Buddhist-styled pagodas. It involves mandatory patriotic education for Buddhist, Christian and Muslim clergy and it entails party-approved sermons and prayers.
not the first time:
Four persecutions of Buddhism occured from the fifth to tenth century.
and during the third persecution everyone was harassed:
In 845, Taoist Emperor Wuzong of the Tang dynasty initiated the "Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution" in an effort to appropriate war funds by stripping Buddhism of its financial wealth and to drive "foreign" influences from Tang China. Wuzong forced all Buddhist clergy into lay life or into hiding and confiscated their property. During this time, followers of Christianity, Judaism,[5] Manichaeanism and Zoroastrianism[6] were persecuted as well.
the history of China is one of trying to unify the country by making everyone obedient to the emperor. Confucian law encourages this idea, and given the history of Civil Wars, one can understand this. But the history shows these civil wars were often a reaction against persecution or corruption.
various religions promised an alternative answer to societal problems and often undermined the regimes (and here I include communism as a millenial religion).
the Uighar Muslim persecution is well known but less well known is the persecution of the Hui Muslims. LINK.
and don't forget the Falun gong persecution: worse than the reeducation of other faiths.
