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

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State, has proposed the establishment of a permanent Vatican office in Beijing.

This is a significant gesture towards deeper diplomatic ties.

Parolin reaffirmed that the Church does not threaten China's sovereignty.

While stressing the importance of unity with Rome, he acknowledged that foreign missionaries made past "errors" in evangelisation.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, responded positively to Parolin's call.

He desired "continuous improvement" in relations with the Vatican.

Amid these diplomatic overtures, the Vatican is also focused on renewing its controversial agreement with China regarding episcopal appointments.

Cardinal Parolin, speaking at a conference on Vatican-China relations, expressed optimism about the renewal and development of this deal, struck in 2018.

For decades, the Church in China has been divided into an "official" Church run by the government-backed Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), and a so-called "underground" Church in union with Rome.

The 2018 Vatican and China deal allows the Pope to select bishops from candidates proposed by Chinese authorities.

This significant concession aims to unify the CPCA and the underground Church.

Taiwan monitoring developments

Taiwan, which maintains formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican, is closely monitoring these developments.

Taiwan's Foreign Ministry reiterated its ongoing cooperation with the Vatican on humanitarian issues and religious freedom. The country expressed concerns over China's alleged violations of religious freedom.

Taiwan also highlighted recent interactions with the Vatican. This included a delegation's visit on climate change and the Vatican's presence at Taiwan's presidential inauguration.

Two priests missing in China

Despite the positive signals indicated by Cardinal Parolin and Chinese officials, two Catholic priests from the underground Baoding diocese in Hebei Province have been reported missing.

Fathers Chen Hekun and Chi Huitian are believed to be victims of forced disappearances, according to a report by China Aid on 22 May.

Baoding diocese, one of China's largest underground Catholic jurisdictions, is not recognised by the state-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA).

Incidents of forced disappearances targeting priests resisting the state-sanctioned church have been reported before. Detainees are often subjected to political "re-education" by the Chinese Communist Party, extending their detention until they comply.

Sources

Crux Now

Reuters

UCA News

CathNews New Zealand

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

The three-day 10th National Congress of Catholicism in China ended in Wuhan, the capital of Hebei province in central China, in August. The national conference is held every five years. Senior Communist Party officials also attended the gathering and delivered speeches reported on ucanews.com.

The delegates unanimously accepted the work report of the Ninth Standing Committee on church efforts and activities in the promotion of patriotism, socialism, and sinicisation in the Catholic Church as outlined by President Xi Jinping.

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According to spokesperson Joanne Ou, the Vatican has been requesting China's permission for a representative office to be established since 1999.

Yet, as the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) oppression of Catholics and other groups has intensified, she said it shows that the agreement signed with the Vatican did not improve religious freedoms.

Vatican City State is the only European country to officially recognise Taiwan as the legitimate representative of China, despite pressure from the CCP to change its stance.

Read More

The Chinese authorities announced the measures on March 26 against Alton and eight other U.K. citizens, as well as four institutions critical of the country's human rights record.

The individuals are banned from entering China, Hong Kong, and Macau, and Chinese citizens are forbidden to do business with them.

Alton, an independent member of the House of Lords, the upper house of the U.K. parliament, noted that the step followed the U.K. government's introduction of sanctions against four senior Chinese officials on Monday over China's treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority.

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The plan follows a warning from one of China's top political advisers that the nation is experiencing a national "masculinity crisis."

"Chinese boys have been spoiled by housewives and female teachers," the adviser, Si Zefu, said in a policy proposal in May. Boys would soon become "delicate, timid and effeminate" unless action was taken, he said.

Addressing the issue is a matter of national security, he wrote. Si warned that the "feminization" of Chinese boys "threatens China's survival and development."

Boys in China traditionally are expected to show strong leadership skills, get good grades in math and science and excel in school sports. So wrote Fang Gang, a sociology professor at Beijing Forestry University, about the proposed changes on Jan. 30.

Girls, meanwhile, traditionally are viewed as less intellectual, and they are expected to be less competitive.

"Boys don't need masculinity education," said Lü Pin, the founder of China's largest feminist advocacy media channel, Feminist Voices, which was banned by Chinese censors in 2018.

"The concept of masculinity forces every man to be tough, excluding and harming men with other characteristics," she said. "It also reinforces men's hegemony, control and position over women, which goes against gender equality."

The growing popularity of male Chinese pop stars who wear makeup and androgynous, sparkly clothing has also influenced youth culture.

Taking inspiration from South Korean pop culture, China's young style connoisseurs have embraced the "gentle style" look. It is a softer form of masculinity that stands in sharp contrast to traditional tough-guy tropes.

"The concept of masculinity and femininity many people have is really nostalgia for a past we can't go back to," said Shen Yifei, a sociologist at Fudan University whose research focuses on gender.

"There is nothing wrong with men being caring and emotionally expressive. Qualities considered to be feminine, and women can also benefit from being courageous and rational," Shen said. "Good personal qualities have nothing to do with the sexes."

Still, the Chinese government maintains a more conservative view of how men and women should behave. Depictions of gay relationships are banned from Chinese television under a 2016 law barring "vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content."

And while homosexuality was decriminalized in 1997, no law prevents discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Sources

NBC News

CGTN

Eugenics is the study of how to manage reproduction within a human population to increase desirable heritable characteristics.

Among the Chinese Communist Party's goals listed in its policy blueprint for the years 2021-2025 is to "optimize its birth policy" and "improve the quality of the population."

"I am actually very worried," Columbia professor Leta Hong Fincher told a panel of China experts in a virtual event hosted by the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) on Nov. 13.

"What caught my eye was that they actually use specific language saying that China needs to 'upgrade population quality,' " she said.

Fincher said that the Chinese government's plans to control reproduction were part of the regime's goals to maintain internal security. They would do this by encouraging growth of the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China.

At the same time, the government would systematically limit births of an ethnic minority, the Uyghur Muslims.

"We see it happening in Xinjiang with the forced sterilization of particularly Uyghur Muslim women. And the language in the plan suggests to me that the government is going to continue with that," she said.

"You have seen a huge reduction in birth rates in Xinjiang and, on the flip side, the government is also trying to coopt and persuade Han Chinese women who are college-educated into having more babies."

The government of China's Xinjiang autonomous region has acknowledged that birth rates fell by nearly a third in 2018. Much of the fall was attributed to "better implementation of family planning policy."

In Xinjiang, an estimated one million Uyghurs have been detained in re-education camps.

Inside the camps, they are reportedly subjected to forced labor, torture, and political indoctrination. Outside the camps, Uyghurs are monitored by pervasive police forces and facial recognition technology.

The final version of the latest Chinese five-year plan will not be passed until the National People's Congress meets in March 2021.

Sources

Angelus News

La Croix

This is a move which observers say is a setback to China's hopes of implementing the deal smoothly.

The deal was signed secretly in September 2018, and no details have yet been released.

Its key provision is believed to apply to the appointment of bishops. The Chinese Communist Party would name a slate of three bishops, from which the Pope would select one.

Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of Mindong announced his resignation on 4 October and said he will no longer participate in public activities.

An online letter being circulated said the bishop was resigning in view of the "signs of a new era, a new chapter for the Church, and particularly in the Diocese of Mindong".

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"The Chinese regime led by the all-powerful Xi Jinping and the CCP — not its people — owes us all an apology and compensation for the destruction it has caused," Cardinal Muang Bo says.

Bo, who is head of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences, denounced the CCP's for hiding information about COVID-19.

He also condemned the CCP regime for punishing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world of the virus's potential danger.

"China as a country is a great and ancient civilization that has contributed so much to the world throughout history, but this regime is responsible, through its criminal negligence and repression, for the pandemic sweeping through our streets today," Bo says.

He stresses that Chinese citizens are not to blame for the pandemic.

"Let me be clear — it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China, and no one should respond to this crisis with racial hatred toward the Chinese."

"Indeed, the Chinese people were the first victims... and have long been the primary victims of their repressive regime. They deserve our sympathy, our solidarity and our support."

"Many Chinese people did their best to alert the world to the potentially deadly disease, but were shut down," Bo points out.

"Doctors who tried to raise the alarm ... were ordered by police to ‘stop making false comments'."

"One ... was told he would be investigated for ‘spreading rumors' and was forced by police to sign a confession. He later died after contracting coronavirus," Bo says.

China's secretive response is particularly damaging to the world's poor, especially those living in countries neighboring China.

"Myanmar is extremely vulnerable," Bo says.

It borders China where COVID-19 originated, and it is a poor nation without the health and social care resources more developed nations have.

"Hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar are displaced by conflict, living in camps in the country or on our borders without adequate sanitation, medicines or care."

"In such overcrowded camps the social distancing measures implemented by many countries are impossible to apply," he explains.

"The healthcare systems in the most advanced countries in the world are overwhelmed, so imagine the dangers in a poor and conflict-ridden country like Myanmar."

Infectious diseases physician and Harvard Medical School professor Richard Malley and the president of International Crisis Group Robert Malley, warn of "massive death tolls, economic meltdowns and skyrocketing unemployment and poverty" developing countries could be facing.

Furthermore, UN officials say an outbreak in the world's refugee camps appears imminent.

As a means of compensation for exposing the world to COVID-19, Bo wants China to write off the debts other countries owe it.

Source

• National Catholic reporter
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Zenit

Chinese authorities in the Xinjiang region use high-tech surveillance with facial recognition and an app tracking its user's location to monitor the Uyghur ethnoreligious minority intensely.

Between 800,000 to 2 million Uyghur Muslims have been detained and sent to "re-education camps," where they have been subjected to abuse and political indoctrination.

The high-tech surveillance model is one the Chinese could apply to other parts of the country in the future.

Christian churches throughout China have been equipped with 24-hour CCTV surveillance. Beijing's largest Protestant church was forced to close last September after its pastor refused a government order to allow face-recognition cameras to be installed on his pulpit.

On a local level, government officials are punished if their superiors find evidence of unauthorized religious expression in the areas under their control via a "job responsibility contract" system, China expert Steven Mosher says.

"What that contract says is that you must enforce the new restrictions on religious behaviour. You can't allow children under the age of 18 to attend religious services.

"You can't allow any unauthorised religious gathering to take place. If it does, you find the people present and you can arrest the leaders."

Changes in 2018 within Chinese governance shifted direct control of all religious affairs in China to the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department.

This department's role is to ensure that groups outside the Chinese Communist Party - ethnic minorities like Tibetan Buddhists, Xinjiang Muslims, Hong Kong democracy activists and the Catholic Patriotic Association - are following the party line.

Chinese President Xi Jinping says the United Front Work Department is one of his "magic weapons," which he uses to co-opt and control.

"Local officials have been given the green light to intensely persecute the local church and the Patriotic church is not going to be exempt," Mosher says.

"We now know that Patriotic churches are being destroyed, not just underground churches."

In September 2018, the Vatican signed a provisional agreement with the Chinese government about the process of appointing bishops in China.

The aim was to unite China's estimated 12 million Catholics who worship in both underground and registered churches.

The terms of this Sino-Vatican agreement have not been made public, something that Mosher says has been used against Catholics living in China.

"The problem with any secret agreement is that either side can misrepresent it at no cost because there is nothing to compare their statements with," he says.

Source

• Catholic News Sgency
• Image: Business Insider

The plan aims to develop the Catholic Church altering religious principles and practices to match Chinese communist ideals and eliminate "foreign influence" ensuring governmental control of all religious activities.

Neither organisation is recognised by the Holy See. However, both acknowledge the Communist Government in Beijing as the primary authority in China.

Religious leaders will need to have Communist Party approval.

Although details have not been released, the plan will involve "understanding the history of the church" in China, theological research, and evangelism. Architecture, arts and liturgy will change to fit better with Chinese ideals.

Religious conformance to Chinese principles has been an expectation in China for many years.

This expectation has strengthened recently. As an example, in 2015, President Xi Jinping spoke to the United Front, calling for outside influences on religion to be eradicated.

The United Front is answerable to the Communist Party Central Committee; it has powers to impose state control on religions.

China and the Vatican are currently at odds with each other at present and will meet again next week to discuss their expectations.

Three weeks ago the South China Morning Post quoted the Pope as saying he will not "compromise Catholic principles" by giving China the power to appoint their own bishops.

However, China does not want to allow the Pope to appoint religious leaders, seeing it as a means to keep the influence of Western ideals in China.

Source

• Catholic Herald
• The Tablet
• Image: Business Insider

The Vatican is a popular destination with Chinese tourists.

The recent resumption of diplomatic talks between the Vatican and China has prompted an increase in the flow of tourists-pilgrims.

If he realises they are at the Vatican, Pope Francis greets them personally and poses for selfies with them.

Some see their visit in the nature of a pilgrimage while others go because they are curious.

Travel agents have been warned they will be fined up to UK£34,000 if they don't cancel scheduled tours to St Peter's and Vatican City.

The Chinese Communist Party says it has established the ban because "there are no diplomatic relations" between China and the Holy See.

However, news reports say relations between China's ruling Communist Party and the Vatican have been strained since Chinese Catholics fled to Taiwan after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong's communists in 1949.

The news sources note that, in 1950, a Catholic priest was jailed for his alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate China's leader, Mao Tse-tung.

China has since indicated a desire to restore relations with the Vatican.

The catch is, the Vatican must agree to sever links with Taiwan, which China sees as a renegade province.

The Vatican is the only European state with which Taiwan has full diplomatic relations.

However, all European Union nations recognise Taiwan as a Chinese territory.

It is not clear what effect, if any, the ban will have on a recently agreed joint cultural exhibition between the Vatican and China.

Source

• Herald Malaysia
• Express
• Image: South China Morning Post

"There's a lot going on," says Brent Fulton. "But ... if political reform is able to move ahead, it should bode well for the Church. It should result in greater freedom and legal recognition."

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