How has China followed Pope Francis' Asian tour, and what interests has it seen in it?

Michel Chambon: Beijing has closely observed the entirety of this trip, seeking to assess to what extent Pope Francis could contribute to the balance of power, the common good, and the development of the region—and to what extent, therefore, this "universal sovereign" could be an interesting partner for China.

On Chinese social media, Pope Francis' gestures and speeches have been shared in real-time, under the watchful eye of the Communist Party, which allowed this information to circulate.

Like other Asian leaders, China has also seen political interests behind this tour as it expands its influence throughout Southeast Asia and seeks to secure a share of the region's vast natural resources (forestry, minerals, etc.).

Recently, Beijing took a major step by forming a military alliance with the Solomon Islands, east of Papua New Guinea, which has caused significant tensions with Australia and the Western world.

Chinese diasporas have also long been present in various Southeast Asian countries (such as Indonesia), which China seeks to make part of its sphere of influence.

For Beijing, there were therefore several significant geopolitical and economic stakes.

What message has the Pope sought to send to the Chinese authorities?

M.C.: By visiting these Asian countries, the Pope has shown that he is fully committed to the unity of peoples and the integrated development of the region. With his "soft power," he helps all parties return to fundamental issues of stability, dignity, justice, and peace.

The Holy See has demonstrated, through extensive communication, what kind of universal sovereignty Francis wants to exercise in Asia in the service of the common good.

The Pope has also shown great delicacy and adaptability toward his various interlocutors: one can see this as a signal to Beijing, indicating that he can also be its partner.

What impact could this trip have on the renewal of the China-Vatican agreement, which is set to expire at the end of October?

M.C.: In my opinion, it is highly likely that the agreement will not only be renewed but that a new version will be developed in the coming weeks.

The international context—the Pope's trip to Asia, the Synod on Synodality, U.S. elections—seems favorable: the Holy See and Beijing are free to renegotiate this agreement in peace.

This will likely be done quietly. Chinese authorities also seem eager to move forward. At the end of August, the Holy See announced that Beijing had recognised an "underground" bishop (1) in the northeastern part of the country.

Both parties are reminding the world that the agreement exists and is working, even though Beijing still maintains tight control over civil society, including Catholics.

In early August, Pope Francis once again expressed his desire to visit China. Do you think such a trip could really happen for him?

M.C.: I strongly doubt that this will ever concretely happen. Francis is 87 years old, and China is not ready. For me, these somewhat provocative statements are more of a form of "gunboat diplomacy."

By publicly envisioning such a trip, Francis is once again demonstrating his desire to build a relationship of collaboration and trust with Beijing despite all obstacles.

(1) Previously recognised by Rome, but not by Beijing.

• First published in La Croix
• Michel Chambon is a theologian and cultural anthropologist. He is Research fellow at the National University of Singapore.

This is significant, although the role of the Premier—nominally number two in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hierarchy—is not quite as important as some may think.

Much of the power is now deeply centralised in President Xi Jinping.

Don't get me wrong—it is still a positive sign for our trading relationship to have Li Qiang here, but as his predecessor found out, he holds little actual power.

The visit, however, reminded me of the court case in Hong Kong in which I have been recently named as part of sedition and foreign collusion charges against democracy activists.

I thought I would share this story below as a reminder of what sort of regime Premier Li Qiang represents.

Currently, several court trials are occurring in Hong Kong involving democracy activists.

These cases result from the relatively new National Security Law that Hong Kong passed at Beijing's behest.

It ensures that any questioning of the CCP is unlawful.

One case involves Jimmy Lai and Andy Li.

Jimmy is a 74-year-old Hong Kong businessman and publisher of the now-closed Apple Daily newspaper.

Some may even recall the clothing brand Giordano, which Jimmy created.

Andy Li is a young Hong Konger who co-founded a pro-democracy group during the 2019 protests.

Both have been accused by the Hong Kong government of sedition and colluding with foreign forces.

In Jimmy's case, he's accused of being behind the massive protests in 2019-2020.

The CCP knows these protests were spontaneous across the populace, but they are keen to scapegoat one man.

That he shared thoughts with journalists overseas, such as my friend Benedict Rogers in the United Kingdom, is now deemed a crime by the CCP.

Andy Li - who we reliably understand has been tortured by the CCP authorities - is also accused of talking to foreigners about the situation in Hong Kong.

He is further accused of voluntarily posting web content for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

For this action in particular, I have been named along with Louisa Wall.

She and I wrote a letter, as IPAC co-chairs, back in 2020, asking the New Zealand government to rule out any extraditions to Hong Kong.

Andy is accused of publishing our letter on the IPAC website.

Yes, you have read that right - a man has been arrested, tortured, and taken to court partly because he published a letter two New Zealand MPs wrote to their own government.

Importantly, we are not the only ‘foreign' Members of Parliament mentioned in the case—ours is but a passing mention.

Others from overseas are accused of much more and named specifically as co-conspirators.

So why is Beijing (and Hong Kong) so keen to name people such as Louisa and me, along with at least fifteen others?

As I told Sam Sachdeva at Newsroom, this is the CCP interfering with the work of democratic Members of Parliament.

It intends to create a chilling effect, or warning, to current MPs to not say or write anything that criticises the CCP or calls into question its actions.

The CCP is making it clear that speaking up has a cost—not just for those in Hong Kong but also for those who support them.

Sadly and wrongly, Jimmy and Andy will be found guilty.

The CCP has already determined this result.

If Jimmy and Andy are said to have colluded with ‘foreign forces,' then we are, by extension, the other party involved and also guilty.

This is not a formal charge, of course, but it still means that travel to Chinese-aligned countries comes with serious risk.

There is also a psychological aspect.

It is deeply upsetting to consider that the normal work of a Member of Parliament can be misused in such a way that innocent people will go to prison.

Let's be clear—the trial is a sham, and good people are caught up in it. But this reflects the heart of autocratic regimes, a regime that Premier Li Qiang represents.

So, as New Zealand Ministers meet this man and roll out the red carpet, they might want to spare at least a thought for Jimmy and Andy.

They are ‘just' two people but represent many, many more who are repressed by this Communist regime.

• Simon O'Connor is a New Zealand politician and a former member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the National Party. He represented the Tamaki electorate from 2011 to 2023. He chaired the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee from 2017 to 2020 and was a member of the Justice Committee from 2021 to 2023.
• First published by Simon O'Connor from On Point

These crime rings have revolutionised an industry that turns ordinary citizens into slaves.

Trillion-dollar industry

Interpol says human trafficking and scam compounds in Southeast Asia are worth more than US$3 trillion in illicit revenue a year.

The industry emerged from Cambodia's south coast during the Covid-19 pandemic, where Chinese syndicates honed their criminal enterprises with impunity.

Cambodia has insisted the scourge has been exaggerated by journalists.

This is despite the rescue and repatriation of thousands of people from across Asia who were duped into accepting false job offers.

They were then forced into "pig butchering" out of hidden compounds in secret locations.

Slavers' tools

Romance scams, cryptos, real estate, online gambling, and extortion are just some of the tools of a dark trade.

It was developed alongside legitimate Chinese investors who turned Sihanoukville into a casino mecca known as the "Las Vegas of the East" by the mid-2010s.

Those who fail to meet quotas are beaten, tortured and held for ransom or traded among the criminal networks.

Those who give in and perform are rewarded with cash payouts and promises they can go home and have sex.

"Many women have been trafficked and traded," said a European rescue specialist, who declined to be named.

"If they refuse to scam, they are offered as prizes and passed around. Some even work as models in love scams, performing online for a targeted victim."

Trafficking rife

Rumors of Chinese and Southeast Asians being trafficked first surfaced in late 2020 when some 400,000 legitimate Chinese workers fled Cambodia as the pandemic took hold.

Thousands more, who were associated with illegal gambling, remained, predominantly in Sihanoukville.

More than a thousand buildings, including dozens of casinos, were left empty and at least 500 half-built skyscrapers were abandoned.

That's when human trafficking was kicked from traditional perceptions — of men being press-ganged onto fishing boats or young village girls sold into brothels — into the billion-dollar orbit of cyber-crimes.

Diplomatic sources say this industry makes about $20 billion annually in Cambodia.

Neighboring governments were soon flooded with pleas for help from stricken families whose loved ones had answered advertisements for high-paid jobs only to find themselves trapped in and around Sihanoukville.

Crisis in Cambodia

By late 2021, the embassies of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Pakistan, and China had all taken what was then a highly unusual step.

They issued warnings about "the situation" and told Cambodia to act, but those reports remained off the radar in Cambodia's well-oiled state-run press.

By March the following year, a group of 35 NGOs told the Cambodian government to urgently address "a crisis of forced labour, slavery and torture".

At the same time, reports detailing kidnapping and extortion rackets began hitting the international headlines.

"The continued existence of these operations is a tragedy, and we are horrified that Cambodia is being used as a base for such inhumanity.

"All relevant actors must immediately guarantee that no one is subject to slavery or torture within Cambodia," they said in a joint communique.

Even an annual report by Cambodia's National Committee for Counter Trafficking reported caseloads in 2021 had more than doubled to 359 over the previous year.

Numbers had been expected to fall given travel and security restrictions imposed because of Covid.

It also found that surrogate mothers, babies, organ transplants, labourers, and sex workers were among those trafficked.

Cambodia had emerged as a trafficking destination as opposed to its history as a transit point, the Committee discovered.

Slaves and slavers

At two press conferences, well covered by the international media in Kuala Lumpur, heartbroken parents cried and pleaded for the release of their children, some as young as 17.

Their children also spoke to reporters from mobile phones they had been handed to scam people with.

"We work more than 15 hours a day. They give us instructions to scam people worldwide," one victim said.

"If we do not perform, they hit us. More than 30 of us have been mistreated because we under-performed."

The evidence was mounting and pointing to senior leaders, real estate tycoons and corrupt businessmen with ties to organised crime, and Chinese nationals with Cambodian passports, as the culprits.

Wan Kuok-koi popularly known as Broken Tooth, former leader of the Macau branch of the 14K triad, was among them.

That should have been enough to prompt Cambodian authorities into action, but they again claimed these stories were exaggerated.

One official described such cases as "immigration misconduct," and another even implied that they, too, were victims.

"Criminals are choosing human trafficking as a career," then interior minister Sar Kheng said, adding: "They won't let it go. They are taking advantage of us when we are facing a crisis."

Pig butchering — where the victim is gradually lured or forced into handing over more money — continued.

This angered the Chinese government amid perceptions that Beijing was, at best, incapable of controlling its criminal element abroad or, even worse, supporting those networks.

China's response

Authorities in Phnom Penh declined the Chinese government's request for special powers to arrest its own nationals involved in criminal activity.

Instead, they swore they would end the scourge before local elections were to be held in mid-2022. That didn't happen.

But China withheld Cambodia's much needed investment dollars and in making its displeasure known, Beijing censors approved the release of "No More Bets" — a movie.

It tells the story of a Chinese pair trapped and trafficked into compounds in Southeast Asia.

The movie was a smash hit in the People's Republic, where authorities refused a Cambodian request to have the film banned.

The United States then dropped Cambodia to its lowest tier on the annual human trafficking list and later imposed sanctions backed by Canada and the United Kingdom.

Rescue and repression

Rescue operations emerged with the help of independent NGOs, foreign embassies, and Interpol operating with local police.

They gathered pace as fears the country's tourism industry — still reeling from the pandemic — would not recover amid all the negative headlines.

A crackdown did follow, and criminal networks scattered, initially to the Vietnamese and Thai borders and further afield into Laos and Myanmar.

There criminal syndicates have taken advantage of the civil war and can operate with impunity from places like Shwe Kokko, where some 10,000 victims are housed in one compound.

Tourism has still not recovered in Cambodia, but the crackdown has escalated in conjunction with Chinese law enforcement.

Two operations in March netted 700 Chinese nationals, all are suspected cyber criminals and to be deported for running scam and human trafficking operations.

However, the scourge is far from eliminated, and recruiters in Cambodia have shifted targets.

No longer favoring Chinese and Southeast Asians, human traffickers are now focused on Central Asia, luring in nationals from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

• First published in UCA News
• Luke Hunt is a UCA News columnist and author and academic. He is an expert on East Asia's socio-political issues.

At its last stop, near the Chinese border, brand-new residential towers rise out of the jungle.

China funded much of the glistening new infrastructure that has transformed this landlocked country of 7.5 million people.

The building boom showcases the kind of modernity China says it can offer the world, notably the high-speed Laos-China railway that in a feat of engineering transformed a two-day journey across the country into a sleek three-hour trip.

The line was built by Chinese engineers to Chinese rail standards, allowing it to connect to China's high-speed network.

But Laos is also an economy in distress. Inflation rose to more than 41 percent at its peak this spring.

The Laotian kip has depreciated more than 43 percent against the U.S. dollar.

In a country where virtually everything is imported, the statistics translate into sacrifice: farmers who can no longer afford fertiliser, children who have dropped out of school to work and families cutting back on health care.

The China-led strategy was meant to protect Laos from these shocks — instead, it led to them.

Laos is struggling to repay the billions it borrowed from China to fund the hydroelectric dams, trains and highways, which have drained the country of foreign reserves.

As repayments drag, external debt is rising, a vulnerability exacerbated by the pandemic and rising global fuel and food prices.

The AidData research lab at William & Mary, which tracks China's lending, calculates Laos's total debt to China over an 18-year period starting in 2000 to be at $12.2 billion — about 65 percent of gross domestic product.

Add in loans from other agencies and countries, and Laos's debt stands at more than 120 percent, according to AidData.

There is "no country in the world with a higher amount of debt exposure to China than Laos.

It is a very, very extreme example," said Brad Parks, AidData's executive director. "Laos went on a borrowing spree and got in over its head."

Laos has had to make compromises, including on its own sovereignty, to appease Beijing and seek some financial forbearance, allowing Chinese security agents and police to operate in the country as Beijing extends its repression beyond its borders, according to human rights groups and Lao activists.

The Laotian electrical grid is now partly controlled by China, in what analysts believe is a trade-off in lieu of debt repayments. A Chinese company provides security for the new train line. Read more

• Shibani Mahtani is a Singapore-based international investigative correspondent for The Washington Post. She focuses on accountability-driven investigations across the Asia-Pacific region.

Pope Francis' main purpose in visiting Mongolia was to visit its tiny Catholic community. He completed his trip with a stop to tour and inaugurate the House of Mercy.

The House of Mercy provides health care to the most needy in the Mongolian capital and the homeless, victims of domestic abuse and migrants.

During his visit to the House, Francis blessed the sign of the charitable institution, which was established to assist women and girls in escaping domestic violence.

The House also has temporary lodging for migrants and others in need and a basic medical clinic for the homeless.

In visiting the House, Francis said he wanted to dispel "the myth" that the aim of Catholic institutions was to convert people to the religion "as if caring for others were a way of enticing people to 'join up'."

Inaugurating the church-run facility, Francis stressed that such initiatives aren't aimed at winning converts.

They are simply exercises in Christian charity, he said.

He went on to urge Mongolians rich and poor to volunteer to help their fellow citizens.

"The true progress of a nation is not gauged by economic wealth, much less by investment in the illusory power of armaments, but by its ability to provide for the health, education and integral development of its people," Francis said at the House.

The local church opened the House as an expression of the three-decade-deep roots the Catholic Church put down during its official presence in Mongolia.

However, his visit took on international connotations because of his overtures to neighbouring China about freedom of religion.

At the end of a Mass on Sunday, Francis sent greetings to China. He called its citizens a "noble" people and asked Catholics in China to be "good Christians and good citizens."

Several foreign-staffed Catholic religious orders in Mongolia run shelters, orphanages and nursing homes.

In these, they care for a population of 3.3 million where one in three people lives in poverty.

Source

• Reuters
• AP News

In his historic first visit to Mongolia, the pope spoke to about 2,000 people at Ulaanbaatar's Steppe Arena and emphasised God's presence in difficult times.

Francis drew parallels with life in Mongolia, where about 30% of the land is desert.

"It is precisely in those deserts that we hear the good news that we are not alone in our journey; those times of dryness cannot render our lives barren forever; our cry of thirst does not go unheard," he said at Mass on the final day of his four-day visit.

In an evocative homily, Pope Francis captured the attention of both locals and the international community.

The pontiff used Mongolia's rugged landscapes and nomadic traditions as a metaphor to discuss the universal human journey towards happiness, love and spiritual fulfilment.

Drawing a parallel between Mongolia's arid steppes and the sometimes barren spiritual journey people face, Pope Francis proclaimed "In a spiritual sense, all of us are 'God's nomads,' pilgrims in search of happiness, wayfarers thirsting for love."

Speaking from the heart, Francis acknowledged the challenging aspects of spiritual life, stating that it can often feel as desolate as a hot desert.

He reassured the faithful that God provides the "clear, refreshing water" needed to sustain them in these moments of existential drought.

"Our hearts long to discover the secret of true joy, a joy that even in the midst of existential aridity can accompany and sustain us," the Pope said, adding a layer of hope to his poignant message.

While Mongolian Catholics number about 1,500, those attending Mass swelled by visits from neighbouring countries.

In particular, there are reports of Chinese Catholics facing travel restrictions to attend the papal visit and the possibility of investigation on their return.

In the course of his homily, Pope Francis encouraged people in the importance of embracing the Christian faith as the answer to our thirst for meaning and love, cautioning against worldly pursuits.

In a message of gratitude, he commended Mongolian Catholics as proof that great things can come from being small in number.

Religious leaders unite for peace

Earlier, Pope Francis joined representatives from 11 different faiths in Mongolia to promote peace, tolerance and harmony in the shadow of China's tightening grip on religious freedoms.

Gathered in a yurt-shaped theatre in Ulaanbaatar, the diverse group included Buddhists, Mongolian Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, evangelicals, Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, Shamans, Bahai, Shintoists and Orthodox Christians.

This event highlighted Mongolia's religious diversity and acceptance, a stark contrast to its history of religious persecution under communism. Since democracy emerged in Mongolia in the early 1990s, faith leaders have been welcomed back, ushering in a new era of religious tolerance.

The visit of the 10th reincarnation of Jevzundamba Khutugtu, an important figure in Buddhism, symbolises this hope for a more harmonious future.

The Pope's visit to Mongolia, a country nestled between China and Russia, sends a message of hope and unity in the face of religious oppression.

During the course of his visit, Francis urged religions to come together for the common good, emphasising the importance of harmony and cooperation. He highlighted the social significance of religious traditions in fostering unity and peace when sectarianism and violence are set aside.

While acknowledging the challenges humanity faces, the Pope stressed the potential for hope for the world through interreligious dialogue and cooperation.

Sources

CruxNow

Religion News Service

CathNews New Zealand

The New Zealand intelligence agency's annual security threat report says a top concern is ethnic Chinese communities being targeted by people and entities linked to Beijing.

Elsewhere around the world, reports about China's influence and information operations in Western countries note that there are covert Chinese police stations in major cities, harassment of places that host dissidents and media disinformation campaigns.

Reports confirmed to Radio Free Asia's Asia Fact Check Lab show Beijing deploys cash, aggressive diplomats and boycotts to produce China-friendly press coverage and deter critical reporting.

Chinese diaspora communities in Western democracies are targeted.

Controlled

Two ex-pat newspaper publishers found their thriving publications subject to blacklists and advertising boycotts.

Their papers were popular with New Zealand's Chinese community.

Professor Anne-Marie Brady from Canterbury University has tracked how the Chinese Communist Party works with or buys local Chinese-language media outlets to exert its influence.

She found Auckland's leading Chinese language paper, the Chinese Herald, has close personal links to the Chinese consulate. It "works with the All-China Federation of Overseas Chinese" Brady says.

"The paper...has been steadily 'harmonised' with Chinese media control agencies."

She has identified party links to influential Mandarin media outlets in New Zealand.

Diverging views

Here and overseas, Xi's authoritarianism, nationalistic foreign policy and the pandemic have soured public opinion toward China.

A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found 67 percent of New Zealanders hold negative views of China. Up to 80 percent believe in speaking against China's human rights violations despite it being our biggest trading partner.

Yet 10 years ago the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre says we saw China as "a great opportunity".

Taiwan's Doublethink says over 60 percent of Chinese respondents in New Zealand expressed positive views of China.

Doublethink Lab has identified traits in people susceptible to the Chinese Communist Party's information outreach.

These are: a low sense of belonging in New Zealand; participation in Chinese communities; systematic Mandarin learning; familiarity with Mandarin media in New Zealand; getting news from Chinese social media platforms.

"For older generations of Chinese immigrants, the rise of China has given them renewed confidence," an ethnicity researcher says.

Restoring the glory

Most new Chinese immigrants rely on WeChat and Mandarin communities for their information, making them soft targets for Communist Party's information warfare.

Xi has always targeted diaspora Chinese. He put the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office under the United Front Work Department, a body within the Chinese Communist Party.

He pushes information outreach. His notion of all Chinese "working together to restore the glory of China" resonates with some of New Zealand's Chinese community.

Propaganda

Questions about human rights violations and Hong Kong's destroyed democracy are answered with propaganda.

Ideas and slogans from the China Global Television Network are remembered and repeated.

"China has brought tens of millions of people out of poverty and they've never invaded any countries... unlike the British and European colonisers.

"They only have bad things to say about China.

"Present-day China wouldn't be possible without the Communist Party!"

Source

• Radio Free Asia

It is also a sign of the Holy Father's commitment to making the Consistory truly global and to reaching out beyond the European foundations of the Church to the world.

It gives Hong Kong three Cardinals — a rare privilege for any diocese — as Cardinal-elect Chow takes his place alongside Cardinal John Tong and the courageous 91-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen.

For these reasons, his appointment is welcome and should be celebrated by Hong Kong Catholics.

And the fact that Pope Francis has appointed Hong Kong's Bishop Chow as the new — and latest — Chinese Cardinal, rather than Beijing's Archbishop Li, the head of the Catholic Patriotic Association, shows that there is still recognition within the Vatican of Hong Kong's certain uniqueness. This is welcome.

However, Cardinal-elect Chow is no Cardinal Zen or a Cardinal Kung.

The Vatican's motivation for conferring the red biretta on his head raises some alarm bells.

From everything I have heard from Hong Kong Catholics, Chow is a good, spiritual and pastoral leader.

When his appointment as the city's bishop was announced, I welcomed it because I understood that while he was unlikely to be a vocal cheerleader for democracy; at the same time he was unlikely to be Beijing's stooge.

He appeared to be the compromise candidate acceptable to all — to pro-democracy Hong Kongers, to the pro-Beijing camp, and to ordinary Hong Kong Catholics.

I was hopeful that he would have the right mix of pastoral skills, wisdom and spirituality.

Over the past six months, however, it has become clear that — perhaps under pressure from Beijing, local Hong Kong authorities, the Vatican and the overall circumstances, or perhaps as a result of his natural instincts — Chow has taken a worryingly soft, conciliatory, compromising approach towards the Chinese Communist Party regime and its crackdown in Hong Kong.

To be frank, I never expected Chow to speak truth to power with the bluntness and boldness of Cardinal Zen.

But nor did I expect him to visit Beijing and return, calling his flock to show their patriotism.

True patriotism — love of country — is something most of us would accept.

But you have to be naïve to not realize that in today's China, an official call to "love your country" is easily confused with loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party regime — especially in Hong Kong today, with the so-called oaths of patriotism, which public servants are required to swear.

Cardinal Zen — whose Episcopal motto is Ipsacuraest ("He cares about you," from 1 Peter 5:7) — received his red biretta in 2006 from Pope Benedict XVI, who also appointed Cardinal Tong six years later — whose motto is Dominus Pastor Meus ("The Lord is my Shepherd").

Back in 1979, Pope St John Paul II created Shanghai's Bishop Ignatius Kung Pin-mei a Cardinal in pectore. His motto was Ut Sint Unum Ovile Et Unus Pastor ("That there may be one fold and one shepherd").

Chow's Episcopal motto is Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam ("For the greater glory of God").

All four mottos are of course deeply inspiring.

But while it is clear that Cardinal Zen was honoured for his commitment to justice and human rights, Cardinal Kung was recognized for his 30 years in jail and his lifelong commitment to religious freedom.

Even Cardinal Tong — although he was milder-mannered and more inclined to compromise — called for the release of Chinese Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo and all underground clergy in jail in China in his Christmas message in 2010.

It is unclear where exactly Hong Kong's new Cardinal Chow's conscience and voice lie.

On the evidence, it would seem that his red biretta is an affirmation of or reward for his soft stance towards Beijing, which is a break from the legacy of Zen, and Kung in particular, which is in keeping with the Vatican's current approach.

So what is the Vatican's approach? It appears to be a policy of appeasement and kowtow.

The Vatican-China deal signed in 2018, renewed in 2020, and again in 2022 — each time in extraordinary secrecy, with no transparency, scrutiny, or accountability — has bought the silence of the Holy Father over grave atrocity crimes and human rights violations in China and amounts to the Reichskonkordat of today.

In summary, it has resulted in a situation where a Pope who speaks out more often than many of his predecessors on injustice and persecution in one corner of the world or another — almost every Sunday as he prays the Angelus — is yet continuously and conspicuously silent over one very large part of the world.

Pope Francis is the first pontiff in the past several decades not to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

He has said almost nothing — and nothing meaningful — on the genocide of the Uyghurs, and been silent in the face of the dismantling of Hong Kong's freedoms, forced organ harvesting, and the persecution of Falun Gong and Christians in China.

He has said nothing of significance that could be reassuring to Taiwan.

The latest, and perhaps worst, example of Rome's kowtowing to Beijing is the news last week that Pope Francis has confirmed the appointment of Bishop Joseph Shen Bin as Bishop of Shanghai.

This appointment was made by Beijing, without consulting Rome, in total violation of the Vatican-China agreement earlier this year.

This is at least the second violation of the agreement by Beijing, following the illicit appointment by China of an auxiliary bishop in Jiangxi, in a diocese not recognized by the Holy See.

That drew a mild complaint from the Vatican, which accused Beijing of breaching the agreement.

But the news that Pope Francis now confirms the Shanghai appointment is a hammer blow to any thought that the Vatican might be waking up.

Instead, it is an indicator that Rome's kowtow policy will continue.

I know that within the body of Church teaching, there is room for interpretation and there is a need for a wide range of charisms.

We need those like Cardinal Zen and Cardinal Kung who stand up uncompromisingly for human rights and justice, and we need others — perhaps like Hong Kong's new Cardinal Chow — who pursue justice through dialogue.

Justice and peace go together. Dialogue and reconciliation have a key part to play, alongside truth and accountability. But what we can never do is have one without the other. To lose any one of these is like amputating a limb.

I pray Chow's Episcopal motto will lead to new heights for Hong Kong. But I tend to think that the motto of Myanmar's Cardinal Bo — Omnia Possum in Eo ("I can do all things in Him) — is a bit more ambitious.

There is only one place to genuflect: at the altar of God. Rome should never be genuflecting at the gates of Zhongnanhai.

• Benedict Rogers, a human rights activist and writer, is the co-founder and chief executive of Hong Kong Watch, and Senior Analyst for East Asia at Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a rights organisation specialising in freedom of religion or belief.
• First published in UCANews.com. Republished with permission.

When Dong Luobin, now 39, fled from Auckland's Consulate for the People's Republic of China nearly five years ago, he told NZ police he feared his Catholicism was putting his life in danger.

Six months later New Zealand authorities granted him refugee status. They concluded he faced persecution over his religious and political views were he to return to China.

"Defections are a particularly rare occurrence," says Rhys Ball, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University. This is the first defection of a foreign government official or employee on New Zealand soil that Ball is aware of since the 1947-1991 Cold War.

Dong says he's speaking out publicly about his experiences to help New Zealanders understand the importance of their democratic freedoms.

He describes his early working life in Auckland as one where he and others were constantly watched, monitored and controlled.

He worked in a multi-building compound surrounded by a high barbed-wire-topped wall. Staff, mostly non-English speakers lived on site, had to surrender their passports to the consulate, and were able to leave the compound only in groups of three or more.

When Dong started work at the consulate in 2016, physical security wasn't as tight, enabling him to sneak out during lunchtimes or evenings to visit a nearby church.

Dong is a third-generation Catholic. He says practising his faith in China was subject to surveillance and repression.

His absences to attend church secretly were noticed and on 7 May 2018 he was questioned by consulate staff about his whereabouts the previous day and why he did not answer his phone.

He began to fear the crucifix he wore around his neck may also have been noticed and his religious beliefs would soon be discovered.

Coincidentally that morning he had been given possession of his passport to take to the Automobile Association for his New Zealand driver's licence: It presented an opportunity for escape.

The Catholic defector first tried seeking asylum in the church he had surreptitiously visited, but the pastor he sought was not present and staff called police. He was taken to an Auckland police station where he was interviewed with the assistance of a Mandarin-speaking officer.

"I said to the translating officer, ‘If you send me back to the consulate I will die'. Then the police perhaps understood my situation. The officer said, ‘Don't worry, we will protect you.'"

The following day Dong made contact with a lawyer who immediately filed an application for asylum.

National Party MP Simon O'Connor says while most New Zealanders will be aware of the [Chinese Communist Party's] repression of Uighur Muslims or suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, they mightn't know Christians are also aggressively targeted.

O'Connor, a staunch Catholic, said Dong's story should be a warning for New Zealand: "His story, and why he defected, illustrates the paranoia of authoritarian regimes."

Source

• NZ Herald

As videos of crowds holding up paper sheets and chanting slogans flooded the internet last weekend, Chinese-language social media posts have come to call the demonstrations in more than a dozen cities the "white paper revolution."

Authorities have since moved quickly to squelch the protests, arresting some demonstrators and sending university students home, in a bid to quickly snuff out the most overt challenge to Chinese leadership in decades.

Using blank sheets of paper as a symbol of protest is not new.

They were used during protests in the Soviet Union during the 1990s and in recent years in Russia and Belarus as well, Taiwan-based Chinese blogger Zuola told Radio Free Asia.

"In the current climate in China, you can be told off by the government for saying anything at all," Zuola said. "It's the ultimate kind of performance art protest — by holding up a blank sheet of paper, you are saying that you have something to say, but that you haven't said it yet."

"It's very contagious, so everything started holding up these blank sheets of paper to show dissatisfaction with the social controls imposed by the Chinese government, with their political environment and with [controls on] speech," he said.

Pent-up anger

The protests were sparked by public anger at the delayed response to a deadly fire on Nov. 24 in Urumqi, the regional capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, that has been widely blamed on COVID-19 restrictions.

The incident, which left at least 10 people dead, tapped into pent-up frustrations of millions of Chinese who have endured nearly three years of repeated lockdowns, travel bans, quarantines and various other restrictions to their lives.

Videos swirled around the internet showing people in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities holding the white pieces of paper above their heads, demanding an end to the strict "zero-COVID" limits. Protesters also began to call for greater freedom of expression, democratic reforms, and even the removal of President Xi Jinping, who has been closely identified with the rigid policies.

According to an unverified document circulating on social media, officials in major cities were being told to take steps to control the supply of ubiquitous white printer paper, with a major stationery firm suspending online and offline sales.

Compared with the Post-it notes that formed the "Lennon Walls" of Hong Kong's 2019 protest movement, which showcased huge mosaics of diverse messages and creative personal expression, the blank sheets of paper are a more ironic reference to government controls and censorship, analysts said.

Striking a chord

Veteran Taiwan social activist Ho Tsung-hsun said the white paper revolution had quickly spread across the country, indicating it struck a chord with a wide variety of protesters in China.

"Some people pasted blank sheets of paper next to a statue of [late revolutionary Chinese writer] Lu Xu, and under Xi Jinping slogans," Ho told RFA.

"Some students sang the Internationale in their dorms at night, while others took their guitars to sing it on the streets, with blank sheets of paper pasted next to their guitars," he added, referring to the communist anthem.

"In Wuzhen, Zhejiang, some young women sealed their mouths shut, handcuffed themselves and held up blank sheets of paper," he said.

Ho added that people quickly started using other white items following reports that the sale of A4 paper - the typical size of printer paper in China and other countries - was being restricted by the authorities.

"I'm more inclined to call it the white revolution, because people have been very creative about expressing themselves through white objects, since reports emerged online that it was now impossible to buy paper, that sales had been restricted in a lot of places," he said.

"If they restrict sales of white paper, then other white materials and objects can be used, such as white cloth or white paint," Ho said.

Some online accounts have started replacing their avatars or profile photos with white backgrounds, while social media users have used the hashtags #whitepaperrevolution and #A4revolution to show support for the protests, alongside selfies holding blank sheets of paper in the streets or posting them anonymously on bulletin boards and in corridors, cafes and parks.

‘We want dignity and freedom'

A news and commentary account that uses the handle @citizensdailycn across several social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter said the white paper movement was "the revolution of our generation."

"We want to say what they don't want us to say: We want dignity and freedom," it said in an apparent rallying call opposing controls on speech and information, as well as the restrictions of the zero-COVID policy.

The Urumqi fire has coincided with a growing realization that the circumstances in China as it relates to COVID restrictions are unusual compared with other countries, according to Zuola.

"Since the start of the World Cup, the Chinese people have been discovering that no other country is taking [the] Omicron [variant of COVID-19] seriously," Zuola said.

"People are also angry that Sinovac and other [Chinese] vaccine companies won their licenses through bribery, and over the government collusion with business that has made it impossible to roll back pandemic restrictions over the past three years," he said.

Feeling their pain

"Then there was the lone protest by Peng Lifa," he said, in a reference to the Oct. 13 "Bridge Man" protest banners hung from a Beijing traffic flyover. "All of this has been fermenting for some time; it hasn't happened overnight. There has been a sense of long-running grievance over internet censorship in China, too."

When the Uyghur residents of the apartment block died in a fire after screaming to be allowed to leave the locked-down building, everyone in China felt their pain, he said.

"They were shouting that they were all from Urumqi, that everyone was a victim of the disease control measures, and that they couldn't allow those people to be left to die in silence," he said.

Ho believes there is also a mute reference to ballot papers — meaningless in China, where all "election" candidates must be pre-approved by the government — in the use of sheets of printer paper.

The blankness of the sheets also echoes the lack of clear aim or unified leadership during the weekend's protests.

"A movement without a leader is what those in power fear the most," Ho said.

• Copyright © 1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.

The amended Women's Protection Law, which will take effect on January 1, 2023, added nearly 30 new provisions to enhance women's protection in areas ranging from gender equality in recruitment and contract negotiation, employer's obligation in sexual harassment prevention, as well as relief measures to women should their rights and interests being harmed. Read more

Bitter Winter, a magazine covering human rights and religious liberty, says the dozens of detainees include religious figures and imams who had been arrested and released in the past years.

The crackdown comes while a new system of "political re-education" is being implemented. It involves detaining inmates for 15 days, releasing them and then detaining them again after 15 days.

Bitter Winter says at first, some Kazakh Muslims found the new system better than the previous one which saw the detainees would disappear for years. However, soon they discovered the new system was more disruptive.

"Farmers cannot normally attend to their fields. Small businesses go bankrupt. Loans are not paid. Periodical separations between husbands and wives lead to tensions and a soaring divorce rate," the report said.

The Covid-19 lockdowns have exacerbated the problems. They even impoverish the families of those who are not "re-educated" in the detention camps, Bitter Winter reports.

As long as people have money, they can escape arrest and detention by bribing police, some Muslims say. If they don't have money for bribes, they are forced into "re-education."

Media reports and rights groups say the arrests in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang province are the government's response to Muslims who staged widespread protests slamming their religious leaders's detention.

Uyghur sources say since 2014 more than 1,000 imams and other religious figures have been detained in Xinjiang.

The crackdown continues despite China facing global ire for its brutal persecution of the Turkic-origin-Uyghur and other minorities in the region.

Since 2014, the Communist regime has unleashed a systematic, genocidal pogrom to crush Muslim Uyghur and other minorities. This is the culmination of longstanding Chinese-Uyghur conflict amid an active insurgency, rights groups say.

It's estimated one million Muslims, mostly Uyghurs, are detained in secretive detention camps in Xinjiang. They are subject to brutal oppression including forced sterilisation and forced birth control, rape, forced labour, torture, internment, brainwashing and killings.

Western nations have slammed the persecution of Uyghurs and termed it genocide.

Former UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, who visited China this year, released a report about the situation on 30 August. It accused China of committing "serious human rights violations" against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province, which may amount to "crimes against humanity."

In his 2020 book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, Pope Francis mentioned "poor Uyghurs" as "persecuted people," triggering a backlash from Chinese authorities.

Source

• UCA News

Retired Catholic bishop and Cardinal Joseph Zen and five co-defendants pleaded not guilty at the West Kowloon Magistrates Court to failing to properly register their 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which offered financial, legal and psychological help to people arrested during the 2019 protest movement.

The West Kowloon Magistrate's Court adjourned the trial after defence attorneys for Zen and his co-defendants, former pro-democracy lawmaker and barrister Margaret Ng, scholar Hui Po-keung, jailed former lawmaker Cyd Ho, Cantopop star Denise Ho and former fund secretary Sze Shing-wee tried to counter police witnesses called by the prosecution.

The prosecution was allowed to fully make its case that the defendants should have registered the fund within one month of starting the operation, but when the defence came to cross-examine them, their questions were overruled as irrelevant.

The trial was adjourned before the defence could call witnesses or make its case after judge Ada Yim ruled that their testimony was already well-established. The trial had been scheduled to run for five days.

Zen and the other defendants were arrested in May under a draconian national security law for "colluding with foreign forces" but have yet to be indicted on that charge.

Vatican silent

On Monday, the first day of the trial, the prosecution said the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund had raised a total of US$34.4 million and used part of the fund for "political activities and non-charity events" such as donations to protest groups.

The defence argued that the defendants had a right to form an association under the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

The Vatican has remained mostly silent on Zen's trial apart from issuing a statement after the cardinal's arrest in May expressing "concern" and that it was "following the development of the situation with extreme attention," the Catholic News Agency reported.

The cardinal's trial comes as the Holy See and Beijing are determining the terms of the renewal of an agreement on the appointment of bishops in China, it said.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said in an Italian television interview on 2 September that a delegation of Vatican diplomats has returned from China and that he believes the agreement will be renewed by the end of the year.

Zen has been an outspoken critic of the 2018 deal, calling it "an incredible betrayal".

'Man of God'

Pope Francis said on 15 September that the Vatican has "chosen the path of dialogue" with China.

However Cardinal Fernando Filoni, an expert in Chinese affairs, said in a recent article in the bishops' newspaper Avvenire that Zen "is a man of God; at times intemperate, but submissive to the love of Christ.

"He is an authentic Chinese. No one among those I have known can, I say, be truly as loyal as he is," Filoni wrote.

Zen travelled to Rome last year in a bid to discuss who will be the next Bishop of Hong Kong, but was denied an audience with the Pope and returned home empty-handed, he told the National Catholic Register at the time.

As well as criticising the Vatican's deal with Beijing, Zen has said he fears that appointing a bishop for Hong Kong who is totally obedient to the CCP would effectively collapse any distinction between the Catholic church in mainland China and that in Hong Kong.

He said such a collapse had been made likely by the imposition by Beijing of the national security law on Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 2020, and that the Vatican had "taken leave" of the church's principles in signing the deal.

"Everyone in the Chinese Catholic church is now a yes-man for the Chinese government and the underground church has been eliminated," Zen told RFA in October 2021. He has said he will refuse to be interred alongside CCP-appointed clergy in a Hong Kong cathedral.

• Lee Yuk Yue and Hoi Man Wu.
• Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. Copyright © 1998-2020.
• Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The exercise, named after Operation Cartwheel - a major military operation for the Allies in the Pacific during World War II - aimed at building "expeditionary readiness and interoperability", according to a press release from the US Embassy in Suva.

Around 270 troops from five nations took part in drills conducted in both jungle and urban environments.

The New Zealand Defence Force's land component commander, Brigadier Hugh McAslan, told NZ media that Exercise Cartwheel provided a platform for participating forces to work together, building readiness for military action and other crises.

"We have an obligation to work alongside these folks… We are part of the Pacific," McAslan was quoted as saying. Read more

This 2019 legislation would have allowed extradition to the People's Republic of China. Many residents viewed this as a subversion of Hong Kong's semi-autonomous political system, leading to large-scale protests, political unrest and a police crackdown. It also prompted Beijing's further direct intervention in Hong Kong's governance.

For the Chinese Communist Party, this organization's support of protesters and alleged collusion with foreign forces violated the party-mandated national security law. This law has since been applied retroactively.

A retired bishop of the Hong Kong Diocese, Cardinal Zen has long supported Hong Kong protesters, critiqued Beijing and criticized the Vatican's rapprochement with the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese Catholics see the arrest as an attempt to intimidate and prevent activism among Hong Kong's Catholic community.

To understand why the Chinese Communist Party would feel intimidated by a 90-year-old man and threaten him with life in prison, it is important to go beyond narrow, concrete effects - such as a cowed Catholic community - and identify the principles held by the leadership. As a former military diplomat currently researching the link between philosophy and foreign policy, I argue that Cardinal Zen's threat to the Chinese Communist Party lies not in his support for democratic reform, but as a competing source of political authority.

The party's morality of hierarchy

The Chinese Communist Party leadership continues to be shaped by the principles of classical Chinese philosophy. Despite official condemnation during the Mao years, the party has more recently tried to bolster the foundations of classical Chinese thought to legitimize its own rule.

During a 1997 speech at Harvard University, Jiang Zemin - then the general secretary of the party - praised classical Chinese thought and tied it to contemporary values and the state's development. Today, General Secretary Xi Jinping routinely mentions classical philosophy in his speeches and noted at the 19th National Congress that the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics will build upon Chinese culture's traditional vision, concepts, values and moral norms.

Classical Chinese ethics begin with the existential centrality of the family. Fan Ruiping, a researcher in Confucian ethics at the City University of Hong Kong, notes Confucianism sees the family as the basic structure of human existence, not simply a social institution. Thus, the family becomes the standard against which behavior is judged. For example, to protect the family, Confucius argues it is moral for a son to hide the misconduct of his father.

According to the Yongle Emperor, an emperor who ruled in the 15th century, the entire world is a single family. Within this system, one's position is defined by one's role, grounded in the five Confucian relationships: ruler to subject, father to son, husband to wife, elder brother to younger brother, and friend to friend. Each of these is both reciprocal and hierarchical. The moral individual conforms to the role one fills in society and treats others according to theirs.

Even in contemporary Chinese society, friends treat each other as elder and younger siblings, such that in any situation there is a hierarchical relationship - an older friend is addressed as "elder brother" or "elder sister." In calling another "elder brother," one's own position in that reciprocal relationship - "younger" - becomes obvious.

Through identification of the family as the moral standard and its extension throughout society based on the five relationships, Confucianism views a moral society as a unified family, ordered hierarchically. At the top of the hierarchy sits the emperor, whose relationship with subjects mirrors that between father and son. One serves the rulers as one would serve one's father or elder brother.

In this view, society is well organized when each person fills the assigned role, paying appropriate deference to those above and acting benevolently toward those below. As Confucius stated, "The ruler is the ruler; the minister is minister; the father is father; and the son is son. That is government."

According to Confucianism, order, stability and prosperity are maintained when all subjects fill their proper roles. The danger of ignoring this lesson was highlighted by the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, when Chairman Mao Zedong used students to attack those in the party who opposed him. It was also evident in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when the party allowed the students to develop moral authority and had to resort to military force to crush peaceful student protests. The consequences of losing control was made stark two years later when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Cardinal Zen and challenge to hierarchy

According to its moral principles, the party can tolerate no competition for authority, and has a long history of eliminating those who present a challenge to the party's position. For example, following the 1956-57 Hundred Flowers Campaign that encouraged engagement from intellectuals, Mao Zedong used the Anti-Rightist Campaign to eliminate their growing authority. This campaign sought to refute anti-regime commentary made by intellectuals, punishing about 550,000 of them, many with reform through labor.

More recently, Xi Jinping has used an anti-corruption drive to eliminate intra-party challenges to his authority by purging prominent figures, such as Zhou Yongkang, retired public security chief and former member of the Politburo Standing Committee. In Hong Kong, the national security law has been used to charge publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai, whose media holdings regularly criticize the Hong Kong and Chinese Communist Party leadership.

The principle of hierarchy can also be used to understand and predict how events can unfold. For example, if Cardinal Zen dies in custody, he could become a martyr of the protest movement - hardly ideal for the Chinese Communist Party. Still, the leadership's philosophy suggests it would be even worse for the party to let Zen continue his activism and become a more active threat to its moral and political monopoly.

Additionally, arresting a cardinal could disrupt ties with the Vatican. However, as political scientist Lawrence Reardon demonstrates, since 1949 the party's chief concern in relations with the Vatican has been whether the pope or the party appoints bishops within the People's Republic of China. In other words, who sits atop the Catholic hierarchy within the People's Republic of China is more important than anything else the party gains through relations with the Vatican.

To remain at the pinnacle of China's moral hierarchy, the party will need to remove alternative sources of authority. Through his criticism of the party and the Vatican, Cardinal Zen has shown the potential of transforming into a political leader in his own right.

As a possible alternative source of authority, Cardinal Zen has become the latest victim of the party's moral hierarchy; he will not be the last.

• Scott D. McDonald is a Non-resident Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies; he is also a PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.
• Published with permission of Religion News Service

With the pope surrounded by empty seats in Kazakhstan, critics questioned the efficacy of his diplomacy of encounter and his strategy of silence when it comes to outright condemning human rights violations in China, Russia and Nicaragua.

But Vatican diplomacy insiders urge patience, arguing that even as the pope remains silent, the institution's diplomatic corps is hard at work behind the scenes, advancing the cause for dialogue.

Soon after being elected, in 2013, Pope Francis scored a major win for Vatican diplomacy efforts. As the United States and its allies prepared for an offensive against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, the pope beseeched all parties involved — including Russia — to stop the conflict.

According to the memoirs of the then-foreign minister of Australia, Bob Carr, the tensions were diffused as Russian President Vladimir Putin urged U.N. member states to "listen to the pope."

Three years later, Francis sat down with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in the airport of Havana for a meeting that seemed to pave the way for the pope to be the first Catholic leader to visit Moscow.

Vatican observers marvelled at the peacemaking prowess of the pope from the Global South. But today, as Ukraine enters its seventh month of war with Russia, Francis seems to have lost his touch.

The pandemic forced a meeting between Francis and Kirill to be rescheduled, and the two met instead in an online conference in May where the pope warned the patriarch not to become "Putin's altar boy."

But even as Pope Francis refused to openly condemn Putin and Russia for the war in Ukraine, relations with the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church chilled.

Victor Gaetan, author of "God's Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy, and America's Armageddon," thinks that's only half the story.

"The Holy See is the only Western institution that has an ongoing dialogue with the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church," Gaetan said, speaking to Religion News Service on Tuesday (Sept. 20).

"It was actually the Western states, and especially the United States, that have failed in the path of dialogue with Russia and its state religion," Gaetan said.

Gaetan said that Metropolitan Anthony, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department, has kept a steady relationship with the Vatican and even met with Pope Francis in May to tell him that while Kirill wouldn't be going to Kazakhstan, there would be a Russian Orthodox delegation in his stead.

While "any leader could be accused of not having done enough," Pope Francis could have probably been more outspoken at the international level, said Mario Aguilar, professor of religion and politics at St. Andrews Divinity School.

Aguilar, the author of "Pope Francis: Journeys of a Peacemaker" and a political adviser for the Vatican, told RNS that the Vatican "is a finite institution" and its foreign policy is no stranger to failure. "I have seen Pope Francis say many times: ‘Let's pray and let's try again.' But he's not bothered by failure," he said.

Francis' struggle to gain traction on the path toward dialogue was also evident when Xi, the Chinese president, reportedly refused to meet him while they were both in Kazakhstan. "I didn't see him," Francis said, vaguely answering questions by journalists while on the flight returning from Kazakhstan on Thursday.

In 2018, the Vatican and China signed a controversial and secretive deal on the appointment of bishops that is up for renewal in the coming weeks. One of the major critics of the deal, Cardinal Joseph Zen, a human rights activist and former bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested by Chinese authorities and put on criminal trial on Monday.

"Here at the Vatican, there is a dialogue commission that is doing well," Francis said during the in-flight news conference, but he added he doesn't "feel like qualifying China as antidemocratic because it's such a complex country."

Francis has remained quiet on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in order to support the Sino-Vatican deal, which promises to breach the historical rift between the state-recognized Catholic Church in China and the "underground church" approved by the Holy See.

William McGurn, the former speechwriter to U.S. President George W. Bush, wrote an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal on Monday declaring, "The Pope Abandons Cardinal Zen." Cardinal Gerhard Müller, formerly at the head of the Vatican's doctrinal department, criticized Rome's silence on Zen's arrest during a summit of cardinals at the Vatican in late August.

"Nobody has raised the grave question of our brother Zen," Müller told fellow cardinals and the pope. "I hope he won't be abandoned."

According to Gaetan, critics of the pope's diplomacy are part of "a campaign against Pope Francis' diplomatic approach with relations with Russia and China."

Gaetan pointed to the fact that a long-standing group studying Holy See-Chinese relations might soon move from Hong Kong to Beijing and that the Sino-Vatican agreement will likely be renewed in October.

"The pope and his diplomats will not change because of this criticism," Gaetan said. "Their mission is clear and has been practiced for centuries," he added, pointing to the fact that even the fiery St. John Paul II did not interrupt dialogue with Beijing after the events at Tiananmen Square.

Aguilar believes it's a mistake to expect a public pronouncement by Pope Francis on international diplomacy. "It will be the very ancient, slow cup of tea of Monsignor Paul Gallagher that will solve everything without a press conference," he said, referring to the Vatican's head of relations with states.

Instead of "a soft diplomacy," Aguilar added, the Vatican operates a "very hard diplomacy" by leveraging its numerous faithful in the world through its nuncios and the Vatican's foreign office.

In Catholic-majority Nicaragua, Pope Francis has not publicly denounced the oppressive government of President Daniel Ortega, which has been openly hostile toward the Catholic Church by arresting clergy members and banning feasts and processions.

But Aguilar foresees "a regime change, because in a very Catholic country when you oppose the Catholic Church, you are opposing your people. If your people cannot celebrate Mass, go to processions or say prayers and celebrate the feasts. Eventually, they will not vote for you."

In countries where Catholics are a majority, like Nicaragua, the Vatican's efforts are more impactful. But in places such as China or Russia, where the Catholic faithful represent but a tiny fraction of the population, it's much more difficult for the Vatican to promote its interests and create the basis for dialogue.

"People expect the Vatican, the oldest diplomacy, to act very rashly," Aguilar said.

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Pope Pius XII kept diplomatic relations with Japan, angering the Allied forces. Years later, the Catholic Church became instrumental in recovering English and American prisoners in the Eastern country.

"The basics of diplomacy at the Vatican is a continuity of at least one century," Aguilar said. "It looks very slow, but only because it's not public."

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

"On the backs of trafficked workers and child labourers, China exploits the vast cobalt resources of the DRC to fuel its economy and global agenda," a congressional hearing on human rights violations heard this week

Rigobert Minani Bihuzo, a Catholic priest who has worked to expose child labour and human rights violations in the DRC's mining sector, testified to the dangerous working condition at the mines.

The children work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, he said. He described their working conditions as being "like slavery".

Injuries are common, and for those who are hurt or become sick, lack of medical care means "the majority will die due to various untreated illnesses", he said.

US representative Christopher Smith, who chaired the "Child Labour and Human Rights Violations" in the Mining Industry of the Democratic Republic of Congo, clearly voiced his views on the violations.

"The Chinese Communist Party's quest for cobalt for batteries and lithium for solar panels to power the so-called Green Economy motivates human rapacity as an estimated 40,000 children in Congo toil in non-regulated artisanal mines under hazardous conditions."

The DRC produces over 70 percent of the world's cobalt. 15 to 30 percent of this is produced in artisanal mines.

Smith said that, for years, these small-scale operations have been notorious for human rights violations. The congressional Council on Foreign Relations attributes some of the inhumane working condition to the DRCs instability - "a country weakened by violent ethnic conflict, Ebola and high levels of corruption".

Congolese civil rights attorney Hervé Diakiese Kyungu told the hearing children are trafficked and exploited because they are small.

Kyungu explained this is because the artisanal mines "are often no more than narrow shafts dug into the ground.

"Children are recruited — often forced — to descend into them, using only their hands or rudimentary tools without any protective equipment, to extract cobalt and other minerals."

At the Chinese company Dongfang Congo Mining, children are often exposed to radioactive minerals, injuries, and deadly and painful diseases as they work to extract the valuable ore, Kyungu testified.

They are also unpaid and exploited. The work is often fatal as the children are required to crawl into small holes dug into the earth.

"Officially artisanal mines are supposed to be owned by Congolese citizens working in ‘cooperatives'.

"In reality, they are selling the product extracted from these to the Chinese and other foreigners such as Pakistanis or Indians. The vast majority of this ore, however, is trafficked through Chinese intermediaries."

Chinese representatives are on site, overseeing the operations.

On one occasion "two persons identified as Chinese citizens… instructed two Congolese military officers to whip two Congolese who were found on their site".

The whipping, which was shared on the internet, demonstrates the cooperation between Chinese companies and DCR government officials, Kyungu said.

Source

• CNA

Bishop Stephen Chow commented in the Sunday Examiner that these plants "are proofs of the amazing power of life that comes from the Creator. How can they grow up in such a tight and awkward environment?

"I can feel that Hong Kong, including our church, is becoming more like an existence within cracks," Chow said.

"We used to enjoy much space and freedom of expression when we could express our opinions in any way we like."

Hong Kong's new national security law came into effect in June 2020, imposing strict punishments for those accused of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign or external forces.

After the arrest of several high-profile pro-democracy activists including Cardinal Joseph Zen, Chow has urged the faithful to refrain from "reactive" instincts. Instead, followers should search for God amid the changing social landscape.

The Cardinal's arrest in May was connected to his work at the former entity, the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund. The fund used to provide financial assistance to pro-democracy campaigners to help cover their legal costs and medical bills.

Cardinal Zen was released on bail but his arrest sparked an international outcry from governments and human rights groups.

While some have opted to leave Hong Kong, others have stayed, Chow said, saying he made his own choice when he decided to accept his appointment as bishop of the territory.

"I want to share with you that the love and light of God can be found in all things, even cracks," he said, pointing to the image of flowers, trees, and shrubs that have grown up through cracks.

"They have demonstrated that nothing can prevent life from flourishing, adding colours, beauty and hope to our world," he said. "The tougher the condition, the more resilient life will be. Cracks can even widen in some cases."

Amid these circumstances, faith can be "an amazing engine that empowers our lives, individually and collectively, if we positively live out our faith," he said.

"However, if we only want to stick to the past, not ready to find God's guidance in the changing context, our lives will become bitter and sour. Darkness will take hold of us."

Chow insisted that accepting the changing reality and social situation "does not mean endorsing it" but rather finding a way forward by "learning to discern new possibilities with a creative mindset amid tensions from the changing context."

Sources

• Crux Now
• Christian Today

Reuters could not establish if the place was currently functioning as a mosque.

Within minutes of reporters arriving, four men in plainclothes showed up and took up positions around the site, locking gates to nearby residential buildings.

The men told the reporters it was illegal to take photos and to leave.

"There's no mosque here … there has never been a mosque at this site," said one of the men in response to a question from Reuters if there was a mosque inside. He declined to identify himself.

Minarets on the building's four corners, visible in publicly available satellite images in 2019, have gone.

A large blue metal box stood where the mosque's central dome had once been. It was not clear if it was a place of worship at the time the satellite images were taken.

In recent months, China has stepped up a campaign on state media and with government-arranged tours to counter the criticism of researchers, rights groups and former Xinjiang residents who say thousands of mosques have been targeted in a crackdown on the region's mostly Muslim Uyghur people.

Officials from Xinjiang and Beijing told reporters in Beijing that no religious sites had been forcibly destroyed or restricted and invited them to visit and report.

"Instead, we have taken a series of measures to protect them," Elijan Anayat, a spokesman for the Xinjiang government, said of mosques late last year.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Wednesday some mosques had been demolished, while others had been upgraded and expanded as part of rural revitalization but Muslims could practice their religion openly at home and in mosques.

Asked about restrictions authorities put on journalists visiting the area, Hua said reporters had to try harder to "win the trust of the Chinese people" and report objectively.

Reuters visited more than two dozen mosques across seven counties in southwest and central Xinjiang on a 12-day visit during Ramadan, which ended on Thursday.

There is a contrast between Beijing's campaign to protect mosques and religious freedom and the reality on the ground. Most of the mosques that Reuters visited had been partially or completely demolished.

China has repeatedly said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from separatists and religious extremists who plot attacks and stir up tension between Uyghurs who call the region home and the ethnic Han, China's largest ethnic group.

A mass crackdown that includes a campaign of restrictions on religious practice and what rights groups describe as the forced political indoctrination of more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims began in earnest in 2017.

China initially denied detaining people in detention camps, but has since said they are vocational training centres and that the people have "graduated" from them.

The government says there are more than 20,000 mosques in Xinjiang but no detailed data on their status is available.

Some functioning mosques have signs saying congregants must register while citizens from outside the area, foreigners and anyone under the age of 18 are banned from going in.

Functioning mosques feature surveillance cameras and include Chinese flags and propaganda displays declaring loyalty to the ruling Communist Party.

Visiting reporters were almost always followed by plainclothes personnel and warned not to take photographs.

A Han woman, who said she had moved to the city of Hotan six years ago from central China, said Muslims who wanted to pray could do so at home.

"There are no Muslims like that here anymore," the woman said, referring to those who used to pray at the mosque. She added: "Life in Xinjiang is beautiful." Continue reading

The potential links highlight the challenges in buying goods made in China, where the supply chains are often opaque, and come amid a broader effort to ensure New Zealand is not supporting modern slavery.

Chinese company CRRC is manufacturing buses and trains for New Zealand companies, despite alleged ties to forced labour, according to a news report published this week.

A total of 98 CRRC-made electric buses had already been ordered for Wellington, with the first one due to hit the streets in July, Greater Wellington Regional council transport committee chairman Roger Blakeley confirmed yesterday. Continue reading