RAJIV GANDHI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LAW

PUNJAB

POLITICAL SCIENCE MINOR PROJECT (SEM 1)

TOPIC- NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE LIBERTY

SUBTOPIC- The State of Negative Religious Liberty in

China

Submitted by- Submitted to-

Name- Aditi Arya Dr. Saurav Sarmah
Roll No.- 20142 Assistant Professor
Group no.- 13 RGNUL, Punjab
INDEX
i
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1
2. Freedom of Religion in China…………………………………………………………………..2-3

3. Chinese Buddhism………………………………………………………………………………..4
4. Tibetan Buddhism……………………………………………………………………………….5-6
5.Christianity……………………………………………………………………………………...6-7
6. Islam and the Uighurs………………………………………………………………………….7-10
7. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………11

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 INTRODUCTION
Isaiah Berlin, in his essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty”, elaborated his viewpoint about
Negative and Positive Freedom. According to Berlin, having Negative Liberty meant that a
human was no-one’s slave and having Positive Liberty meant that she was her own master.
Liberty and Religion have not always gone hand-in-hand. A great number of violent clashes
and riots that have happened all over the world since ancient times, can be crossed out as the
result of endangering of religious liberty of one group by another.

Religion in its very essence is an indispensable part of the human life. It is one of the largest
community that an individual can be a part of at one time. It serves as an intriguing field of
analysis to study Religious Liberty as a domain of Two Concepts of Liberty. The focus of
this project, is to study Negative Religious Liberty with respect to China. Negative Religious
Liberty can be defined as non-interference of state in the matters of religion. In addition to
this, it also means that the state cannot control an individual’s religious orientation or her
beliefs. It cannot dictate a citizen to hold or to not hold any religious belief or association.

The purpose of studying the state of negative religious liberty in China is to deduce if at all
religious liberty is granted to Chinese citizens and what is the magnitude of their negative
religious liberty. China has often projected itself in the international community as a
culturally tolerant country. Though the leading news reports have frequently accused China
of mass human rights violations, on citizens who are affiliated to religions which the Chinese
government does not favour.

The ground reality of religious liberty in China is still vague and yet it remains extremely
important. The Chinese governments recognises only five religions namely- Buddhism,
Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. Such an arrangement engenders many
questions such as ‘Do the followers of government approved religions have absolute negative
religious liberty?’, ‘What happens to believers of religions which are not government
approved?’ and ‘Does disapproval of a religion means that the followers of that religion have
no religious liberty?’.

This project is an attempt to search for answers to these questions and demystify the Chinese
government’s approach towards religion.

1
 Freedom of Religion in China

Though China's constitution allows religious beliefs but it is specific about them. The
followers of religions that CCP does not approve of face intensifying persecution. 1 Article
36 of the Chinese constitution empowers the Chinese citizens with freedom of religious
belief. It prohibits discrimination on the grounds religions and proscribes state or public
organizations from interfering in the religious beliefs of Chinese citizens.

In 2015, the term 'sinicization' was introduced by the CCP. This essentially meant calling
on leaders of different religions such as Christians, Muslims and Buddhists to synergise
their religion with Chinese Socialist thinking. The CCP has always had issues with
religious practice in one way or the other, but under the presidency of Xi Jinping, the
government's crackdown has increased at an unprecedented rate.

In 2018, regulations on religious affairs were enforced which allowed for greater
freedoms to state-registered religious organizations. Though this legislation was
accompanied with tightened controls in another areas. The legislation allowed religious
organizations which were registered with the state to hold property, collect donations and
publish literature while controls were put at place such as monitoring of online religious
activity and reporting donations that exceed 100,000 yuan. China’s State Administration
for Religious Affairs, established in 1951, recognizes five religions namely Buddhism,
Catholicism, Daoism, Islam and Protestantism. Practicing any other religion is strictly
barred, but traditional Chinese beliefs are informally tolerated. While the constitution has
provision for protecting religious freedom, a non-state recognized religion can only be
practiced till the point they fall under the category of 'normal religious activities'. It is
necessary for the religious organizations to get themselves registered with one of five
official religious associations. These associations are supervised by the State
Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA).2

According to UNHRC's 2018 Universal Periodic Review, the total population of

registered religious believers in China is around 200 Million. However, there are other

1
Eleanor Albert , Lindsay Maizland , ‘The State of Religion in China’(2020),Council on Foreign Relations,
available at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/religion-china#:~:text=The%20CCP%20is%20officially
%20atheist,who%20belong%20to%20religious%20organizations, (last accessed on 16 December 2020)
2
Ibid.

2
reports which suggest that the actual figures are way higher than 200 million. A report by
Freedom House in 2017, evaluated that there are over 350 million people in China who
follow a particular religion, and such people primarily include Chinese Buddhists,
Muslims, Protestants , Tibetan Buddhists , Catholics and Falun gong practitioners. Some
Chinese people also practice traditional folk religion. All of these aforementioned
religious practitioners make up as most of the unregistered religious people.

In the reign of president Xi Jinping and his anti-western ideologies, the clutches around
religious groups have tightened. They are required to get approval from the authorities i.e.
religious affairs office in order to conduct any religious events. Often, peaceful activities
of different religious sects are targeted by the government. The CCP, under Xi, has
pushed for conformism of its doctrines and mass adoption of the majority Han
population's traditions and customs. The recent regulations passed in 2020, require that
the CCP ideologies get accepted and disseminated by religious groups.

China is also a country which harbours one of the world's largest population of religious
prisoners. These prisoners are kept in detention, treated with inhumane behaviour and
violence. This is often undertaken to curb the popularisation of these religious groups.
The total number of such prisoners likely range around tens of thousands.
Aforementioned things have made China as a country of particular concern.

It is mandatory for the members of the CCP to be atheists. In 2017, through the medium
of their official newspaper, CCP warned its members against being religious and labelled
religion as spiritual anaesthesia.

3
 Chinese Buddhism

China has an estimate 250 million followers of Buddhism which is the largest Buddhist
population in the world. Buddhism is considered to be an authentic Chinese religion and
hence enjoys more tolerance than religions such as Islam or Christianity.

Around 21% of the Chinese citizens , constitute followers of chinese folk religions. These
religions are often unorganized and their practices are usually a blend of Daoism and
Buddhism. Along with Buddhism and Daoism, chinese folk religions enjoy greater
tolerance in china when compared to other religions. This fact is proved by the existence
of hundreds of unregistered folk religious temples in a country where all religious
associations and institutions are required to be registered with its State Administration for
Religious Affairs (SARA).

During the reign of leaders such as Jiang Zenmin and Hu Jintao, China’s prime focus was
on improving its international image as a tolerant and progressive country. 3 Thus, the
CCP passively aided the growth of Buddhism. Due to this, the buddhist institutions of
china received a boost and it led to their flourishment, particularly of its philanthropic
organizations.4 Under XI Jinping's rule, China has eased its rhetoric against religion.

The condition of Buddhism and Folk Religions in China, can at best be described as
tolerable if not good. Though they may not have the freedom to independently carry out
their religious activities, they are at least not subjected to inhumane behaviour. Analysing
the aforementioned facts, it can be concluded that Buddhism, Daoism and Folk Religions
exercise considerable Negative Religious Liberty in China.

Tibetan Buddhism

3
Andre Laliberte, ”Buddhist Revival under State Watch”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Vol. 40, No.2,
January 2011,pp. 3-5
4
Andre Laliberte, “Buddhist Charities and China’s Social Policy: An Opportunity for Alternate Civility”,Archives
de sciences sociales des religions, Vol. No. 158, April-June 2012, pp. 101-108

4
 In the start of the 20 th century, Tibet growingly came under China’s dominance. This
eventually resulted in the ‘1950 Chinese Invasion of Tibet’. In 1951, Tibet was made
a ‘national autonomous region’ by the signing of the Tibetan-Chinese agreement.
Since then, the ethnic people of the province, have suffered continued persecution due
to CCP’s anti-religious legislation.

There are around 6 million ethnic Tibetans, living in the province of Tibet
Autonomous Region. They practice a different type of Buddhism and the Dalai Lama
serves as their spiritual head. A huge number of Han Chinese people have been
moved to Tibet, in order to bring some sort of modernity in its western regions. On
March 31, 1959, due to religious persecution, the Dalai Lama started an indefinite
exile in India. In India, he established a shadow Tibetan government which was also
democratic.5 The Dalai Lama has also accused China of adopting egregious
oppressive methods against the Tibetans. He has also charged the Chinese
government with genocide, which the Chinese government has always refused to
accept.

Few years after his exile, he started garnering international recognition for the Tibetan
cause. There are many peaceful protests within Tibet against the government, though
sometimes they tend to become violent and take shape of self-immolations and riots.
China’s repression of the Tibetan Buddhists is strictly linked to their religious
orientation and status. To maintain China’s dominion within the region, the
authorities prohibit religious activities in Tibet and Tibetan communities residing
outside Tibet. Tibetans live under heavy surveillance with their major monasteries
being monitored on a daily basis, through facial-recognition cameras. In 2018, when
CCP officials were handed control of Larung Gar, one of the world’s largest Buddhist
study centres, approximately half of its centres were demolished, and thousands of
monks and nuns were displaced. In addition, Tibetans are often detained and tortured
for following the ideologies of the Dalai Lama.

The repressive measures that have been taken by the Chinese authorities to subdue the
Tibetan Buddhism are denounceable, and serve to prove that there is almost no
Negative Religious Liberty in the hands of the Tibetan Buddhists.

5
Editors,’ Dalai Lama begins exile’(2010),History.com, available at (last accessed on 16 December
2020)

5
 Christianity
It has been estimated by the Pew Research Center, that sixty-seven million Christians
inhabited China in 2010, which was around five percent of the total Chinese
population.6 Out of the sixty-seven million, it was asserted that fifty-eight million
were Protestants. This population of Protestants included both state-sanctioned and
independent churches. Though, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimate that
there are only twenty-nine million followers of Christianity in China.

A report from a Texas-based Christian NGO, ChinaAid, divulged that there were over
a million cases of religious persecution against Christians in the year 2018 alone. 7
There were various instances of demolition of churches, detention of Christians,
intimidation and incarceration of Christian priests and pastors, and forced removal of
crosses from hundreds of churches. More than a thousand Church leaders and five-
thousand Christians were detained.

China is home to millions of Catholics, yet the Vatican has not had diplomatic with it
since 1951. In September 2018, Chinese authorities and the Vatican signed an
agreement. This agreement leads to the recognition from Pope Francis of seven
bishops appointed by Beijing.8 The continued ordeals being faced by the Christians in
China is a tangible proof of the absolute zero negative religious liberty that they have
at their disposal.

Islam and the Uighurs

6
Pew Research Center,’ Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian
Population’, December 2011, available at
https://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2011/12/Christianity-fullreport-web.pdf ,( last
accessed on 16 December 2020)
7
ChinaAid,’ Chinese Government Persecution of Churches and Christians in Mainland China’, 2018 Annual
Report, January-December 2018, available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1deR6dkQpidTsJ0RheaZ2Y8Q-
C4XVvEWZ/view , (last accessed on 16 December 2020)
8
Alexandra Ma,” Jailing Muslims, burning Bibles, and forcing monks to wave the national flag: How Xi Jinping is
attacking religion in China”, Business Insider, 2 December 2018, available at
https://www.businessinsider.in/defense/jailing-muslims-burning-bibles-and-forcing-monks-to-wave-the-
national-flag-how-xi-jinping-is-attacking-religion-in-china/articleshow/66906763.cms (last accessed on 16
December 2020)

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 The Uighurs are a Muslim Turkic ethnicity living primarily in the province of Xinjiang in
China. The total population of Uighurs living in China is around 11 million. They are also
found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Agriculture and trade have helped evolve
the region's economy for centuries. In ancient times, with the growth of the famous Silk
Road, towns like Kashgar in Xinjiang thrived and developed. Uighurs also have their own
language, which incidentally is also called Uighur. China has been accused of coercing
Uighurs detained in re-education camps to learn Mandarin. Xinjiang currently holds the title
of an autonomous region in China, but in reality, this so-called autonomy only exists on
paper.9

Uighurs had briefly declared Independence in the early 20th century but China invaded
the region in 1949 and brought Xinjiang under its dominion. Over the years, the
government regulations have substantially cut down Uighurs' religious liberty, and a large
number of Han Chinese citizens have been shifted to the province to indigenize the
Uighurs. China intensified its crackdown on the Uighurs after street protests took place in
Xinjiang in the 1990s. In the year 2014, university students residing in the province
reported to BBC that they had been prohibited from fasting during the holy month of
Ramadan. It has also been reported that the local government officials belonging to the
Uighurs Community in Xinjiang, have also been barred from keeping fasts or attending
mosques.10

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other human rights charities have since
long, inculpated Beijing of carrying out mass detention of Uighurs. There also have been
numerous reports regarding mass sterilizations of women of the Uighur Community.
President Xi Jinping issued a directive in 2017, stating that all religions in China should
adapt to a socialist society11. This became the reason for a renewed crackdown on the
Negative Religious Liberty of the Uighurs. Living in Xinjiang means living under
constant surveillance. There is no such concept as privacy as a resident of this province is
under the radar of CCTV cameras which scan everything from individual faces to number
plates. The checkpoints are practically everywhere, there is armed police, military. It is

9
BBC News,’ The Uighurs and the Chinese state: A long history of discord’(2020),BBC.com, available
at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037 , (last accessed on 16 December 2020)
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.

7
 difficult for journalists to communicate with the Uighurs because they are followed by
state security agents that basically intimidate the reporters and anyone whom they try to
speak to.

The Chinese government has tried to justify its violent approach towards handling the
Uighurs by stating that it has reasonable apprehensions against the community's separatist
or terrorist agendas. Though internationally, China has been framed for exaggerating the
threat possessed by the Uighurs. Many important members of the Uighur community
were declared as terrorists by the Chinese government, after which they sought asylum
abroad. In 2018, a UN human rights committee found veritable reports of China detaining
over a million Uighurs in 'counter-terrorism' camps. The U.K., in July 2020, reprimanded
China that it may sanction China over egregious violations of human rights reported in
Xinjiang.

According to government officials and experts, some nine hundred thousand to two
million Uighurs and other Muslims have been detained in camps since 2017. Outside
these camps, the eleven million Uighurs of Xinjiang continue to suffer crackdown. Many
detainees of the camps have never been accused of any illegal activity or crime, and have
no legal recourse available to them. They seem to have been targeted for a variety of
reasons including having contact with or traveling to countries which China assumes
sensitive, sending messages having verses from the Quran, having more than three
children or attending services at the mosque. Most of the time, their only culpability
arises from being a Muslim. For the reason of practicing their religion, Uighurs have been
labeled as extremists.12

The re-education efforts in Xinjiang started in 2014, and were expanded in 2017. Satellite
images and reports from Reuters show that many camps tripled in their size between 2017
to 2018. These camps cover an area roughly the size of 100 soccer fields. Information on
what goes inside the camps is quite narrow, but several first-hand accounts of those who
have managed to flee these camps present a grim picture. The detainees are coerced to
pledge loyalty to the Chinese government and renounce Islam. They are fed the CCP

12
Lindsay Maizland,’ China’s Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang’(2020), Council on Foreign
Relations, available at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang ,
(last accessed on 16 December 2020)

8
 propaganda by making them hear the President's speeches and forcefully teaching them
Mandarin. The situation in these camps is similar to those of prisons, with regular
surveillance through cameras and microphones, which monitor every move of the camp
inmates. Women detainees have also reported instances of sexual abuse and harassment at
the hands of the camp authorities.

An anti-extremism law was passed by the Chinese government in 2017, which prevented
the residents of Xinjiang from wearing veils in public and growing long beard. Through
this law, the efficacy of training centers in eliminating extremism was also recognized.
Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang's Communist Party Secretary, moved to the region in 2016 from
Tibet, after holding a prime leadership position there. Under his authority, arbitrary
detention became extensively used by regional officials. Since his migration to Xinjiang,
Che has substantially escalated security in Xinjiang.13

Any expression of Islam is considered to be separatist by the Chinese Government. It has

accused the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, an extremist group founded by Uighurs,
of terrorist attacks. The Chinese authorities aim to coma=bat what they refer to as 'three
evils'- separatism, international extremism, and religious extremism. In 2009. riots broke
out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, as the Uighurs protested against the migration of
Han Chinese into their province, deprivation of religious liberty, and economic
discrimination. Around two-hundred people were killed in the riots. This marked a
turning point for Beijing's attitude towards the Uighurs, and since then it sees all Uighurs
as potential separatists or terrorists. After that incident, authorities have continued to
blame the Uighurs for local attacks as well as for the Tiananmen Square attack.

Much of the information collected through monitoring the Uighurs is collated into a
colossal database, called Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which then creates a list of
suspicious people using Artificial Intelligence. In November 2019, more than ten-
thousand Xinjiang inhabitants were placed in detention camps after being reported by the
algorithm. Other governments have also been pressured by Beijing into returning the
Uighur refugees. In the year 2015, more than a hundred Uighurs were returned by
Thailand. The Chinese government has briefed its officials to collate information on
Chinese Uighurs living abroad, in order to detain them as soon as they re-enter China.

13
Ibid.

9
In Xinjiang, mosques are destroyed in the name of shoddy construction and safety issues.
Women are forcibly sterilized and anyone with more than three children is threatened
with arrest and detention. Uighurs are not allowed to give traditional Muslim names to
their children. The local government has also launched a campaign against Halal food,
which is a part of Muslim diet specially prepared according to Islamic law.

The international community has condemned the detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang.

Access to the camps has been demanded by the UN Officials. The U.K. and the European
Union have called for China to change its policies in Xinjiang and to provide greater
Negative Religious Liberty to the Uighurs. Human Rights Groups have constantly
demanded China to be made liable for the inhumane treatment met by the Uighurs and
their disappearances. However, many nations have chosen to remain silent, giving priority
to their economic ties with China over their stand for human rights violations. The most
notable countries among the aforementioned ones are the Muslim majority who have not
raised any voice or concern over the brutal handling of the Uighurs.

10
 CONCLUSION
After a thorough analysis of the Negative Religious Liberty available at the disposal of
different religious followers in China, it can be said that such Liberty in China is only
superficial. Whatever negative religious liberty is enjoyed by the Chinese citizens, is only due
to the fact that the Chinese government approves of it. There is no true religious freedom in
this country as followers of Tibetan Buddhism, Islam and Christianity face brutal instances of
persecution at the hands of Chinese authorities.

Han-Chinese exercise most of the religious freedom available to Chinese citizens. The
government favours the traditional Chinese religious practices while considering practices of
foreign religions as potential method of disseminating separatist or terror motives. Chinese
Buddhism is another such religion, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) indirectly
approves. Though this does not means that absolute negative religious liberty for the Chinese
Buddhists as most of their activities take place under strict monitoring by the authorities. All
the religious associations operating in China are required to get themselves registered with
State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). This authority acts as a watchdog for all
the religious activities and affairs taking place in the country.

Though these aforementioned religions possess minuscule negative religious liberty but when
compared to the Uighurs, this seems far too much. The Uighurs are a Turkic-Islamic
community living in the Xinjiang province of China, who have for decades faced persecution
at the hands of Chinese authorities for their religious beliefs. The Chinese government views
the Uighurs as potential separatists and terrorists, and is therefore undertaking what may be
called as ethnic cleansing. Uighurs have been forced into detention camps, in an effort to
brainwash and align them with the communist agenda. They are also tortured and harassed in
these camps, and very less is known of what goes on inside these camps. Methods of
persecuting the Uighurs also include banning them from attending their religious services,
destroying the mosques and forcefully sterilizing.

Much can be said about the state of negative religious liberty in a country, after overviewing
the fact that sometimes one can face vehement punishment in China just for her beliefs. In
China, one has to follow the path laid out by the government by following either atheism or
one of the five state sanctioned religions. If one refrains from doing so, then let alone
religious liberty, even the right to life gets endangered.

11