China: New rules for controlling churches in Zhejiang

As UCA News reported on 17 June 2016, Chinese authorities in the province Zhejiang have issued new rules to better control Christians. Thomas Muller, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, comments: "Zhejiang was well-known for the campaign of taking down crosses from church buildings - at least 1700 in the last two years. Now reports emerge that authorities in the city of Lanxi are stepping up efforts to further control churches. It is not just that churches are ordered to fly a national flag in front of their building, they are also required to set up a bulletin board displaying religious policy propaganda. Also, official party members are to be stationed at each church. Whether or not this is just a test balloon remains to be seen. In any case, control is tightening and this fits well with other reports showing that the Communist Party is unhappy with the current weak implementation of religious policies by SARA, the government office responsible. This office has come under the scrutiny of the Party"s anti-corruption watchdog (as reported by UCA News on 10 June 2016) and might be left considerably weakened, so giving the Party more space to tackle the "˜religious problem" in a more direct way."