Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: According to the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom reports, there are an estimated 12,000,000 Chinese Catholics and 60,000,000 to 80,000,000 Chinese Protestants worshiping in both officially registered and unregistered churches in China. The practice of Christianity is overseen by four major entities: Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the China Christian Council, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and the Bishops Conference of Catholic Church in China.
The activities of state-sanctioned religious organizations are regulated by the Chinese Communist Party, which manages all aspects of religious life. The Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking to control, govern, and manipulate all aspects of faith through the Sinicization of Religion , a process intended to shape religious traditions and doctrines so they conform with the objectives of the Chinese Communist Party. On February 1, 2018, the Chinese government implemented new religious regulations that imposed restrictions on Chinese contacts with overseas religious organizations, required government approval for religious schools, websites, and any online religious service, and effectively banned unauthorized religious gatherings and teachings.
Since February 1, 2018, forced closures of churches, arbitrary detention, and arrest of Christian clergy and practitioners have steadily increased, including the arrest and 9-year prison sentence of Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church. In September 2018, the Holy See announced that a Provisional Agreement on the appointment of bishops had been signed with the Chinese government; however, several news sources have reported that since the agreement was signed Chinese authorities have detained clergy, pressured them to join an independent church , closed unregistered churches, and removed children from churches.
There are credible reports of Chinese authorities raiding house churches, removing crosses, confiscating religious paraphernalia, installing surveillance cameras on church property, pressuring churches to sing songs of the Chinese Communist Party and display the national flag during community worship, forcing churches to replace images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping, and banning children and students from attending church services. It has been reported that China is rewriting and will issue a version of the Bible with the correct understanding of the text according to the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom reports, the Chinese government has imprisoned thousands of individuals of all faiths for practicing their religious beliefs and often labels them as cults . Prisoners include Pastor Zhang Shaojie, a Three-Self church pastor from Nanle County in China’s central Henan was sentenced in July 2014 to 12 years in prison for gathering a crowd to disrupt the public order , and Pastor John Cao, a United States permanent resident from Greensboro, North Carolina, who was sentenced for 7 years in prison in March 2018 under contrived charges of organizing illegal border crossings.
Since 1999, the Department of State has designated China as a country of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 states that the United States overall trade negotiating objectives must take into account conditions relating to religious freedom of any party to negotiations for a trade agreement with the United States . The National Security Strategy of the United States issued in 2017, 2015, 2006, 2002, 1999, 1998, and 1997, committed the United States to promoting international religious freedom to advance the security, economic, and other national interests of the United States.