Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities in one Chinese city are mandating that school students disclose their religious beliefs, according to a Chinese parent who recently moved to the United States. He spoke with The Epoch Times and expressed concern that China could be seeing another wave of religious persecution.
Yan Tao, a new Chinese immigrant to Los Angeles and whose daughter had attended primary school in China, recently received a notification from a chat group on popular Chinese social media platform WeChat. It is a group for parents at his daughter’s school. The message sent by the head teacher stated: “According to the notice of the municipal Party committee office and the municipal education bureau, schools are requested to immediately conduct statistics on the status of students’ faith.” The teacher repeatedly emphasized that students with religious beliefs must contact the teacher immediately. Yan was very surprised, but also worried that the Chinese communist regime would again carry out large-scale religious persecution.
Yan recalled that the Chinese education system teaches the communist idea of materialism. Yan said that teachers would indoctrinate students with the message: “People who believe in religion lose their freedom because all religions are ‘superstitions’ and deceive the ignorant people.”
He said, “In fact, those are made up by the Communist Party. In fact, on the contrary, in countries with freedom of religion, people care for each other more, social behavior is more orderly, more free.”
After living in mainland China for many years, Yan gradually realized that the intense competition in Chinese society is caused by people losing their religious faith.
Before moving to the United States, Yan had no religious beliefs. He said: “Because of the communist atheist education, when we were young, we always had some negative perceptions of religions.” After immigrating to Los Angeles, Yan was invited by a friend to attend several church activities. He found that he felt very fulfilled being part of that community. He also saw the people trusted and helped each other—from renting a house, buying a car, to finding schools for their children to attend.
Yan stated that the CCP uses all methods possible to destroy people’s religious beliefs and infringe upon religious freedom. He mentioned that his wife’s friend was dismissed from her job because of her belief in Falun Gong, a meditation practice that is severely persecuted by the Chinese regime. “She [wife’s friend] is a particularly good person ... people don’t dare to talk about it [the persecution] openly, even among friends. Everyone is worried about getting into trouble. Because there are relatives and friends in the family who practice Falun Gong, they will be investigated.” He said that during the household registration census, local police also asked residents if people have religious beliefs or if they knew Falun Gong practitioners.
The CCP uses its power to manipulate public opinion and to pressure and silence people collectively, Yan said. “It’s so terrible that you can’t even mention it. From this you can tell how severe the CCP’s persecution is and how fearful people are in general,” he added.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is composed of meditative exercises and a set of teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It grew in popularity in the 1990s, with 70 million to 100 million adherents in China by the end of the decade, according to official estimates at the time.
Threatened by its popularity, the CCP launched a systematic elimination campaign in July 1999. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
Yan believes that the Chinese authorities’ recent request for schools to investigate students’ religious beliefs shows that the CCP is afraid that it will eventually be overthrown by religious believers and those who seek freedom.
