By Breitbart. The Chinese Communist Party has passed a series of draconian administrative measures for religious groups, which will go into effect on February 1, 2020, bringing them completely under government control.

Religious organizations must henceforth “spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party” by educating “religious staff and religious citizens to support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,” reported AsiaNews, the official press agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.

All religious activities or rallies and even programs of religious communities must have the approval of the Religious Affairs Office, according to a communication published this week by Xinhua news agency, as the new measures seek to complete the “Regulations on religious affairs” that went into effect on February 1, 2018.

The government’s religious affairs department will assume absolute control over religious groups and “should perform their functions such as guiding and supervising the groups’ operation,” Xinhua revealed Monday.

More broadly, the new regulations “stipulate how the groups should designate their officials, carry out their work and manage their own affairs,” the report stated. (Read more from “China Passes Tighter Restrictions on Religious Practice” HERE)

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Religion in China in 2020: from bad to worse

By Mercatornet. On February 1, 2018 the New Regulation on Regulation Affairs, enacted in 2017, came into force. It was the legal embodiment of President Xi Jinping’s new policy on religion, the most restrictive since the Cultural Revolution.

A new law was not needed to crack down on the Black Market of groups banned and persecuted as xie jiao, such as The Church of Almighty God (the single most persecuted movement in China) or Falun Gong. Draconian measures organizing their suppression were already in place.

Most scholars agreed that the aim of the 2017 Regulation was to gradually eliminate the Gray Market of the religious organizations not explicitly banned as xie jiao but resisting incorporation into the Red Market of the authorized and government-controlled Five Authorized Religions.

The largest segment of the Gray Market consists of Protestant House Churches. The regulation that came into force in 2018 aimed at compelling them to join the pro-government Three-Self Church, thus entering the Red Market, threatening, if they refused, to destroy their places of worship and arrest their pastors.

On December 30, 2019, the decision sentencing Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church, one of the best-known figures in the House Church movements, to nine years in jail was announced. Perhaps not coincidentally, on the same day, the CCP announced that new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups” have been approved and will come into force on February 1, 2020. Two years after the 2017 Regulation on Religious Affairs, the religious policy of Xi Jinping will have a new legal tool at its disposal. (Read more from “Religion in China in 2020: from bad to worse” HERE)

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China will lower tariffs on products ranging from frozen pork and avocado to some types of semiconductors next year as Beijing looks to boost imports amid a slowing economy and a trade war with the United States.

Next year, China will implement temporary import tariffs, which are lower than the most-favored-nation tariffs, on more than 850 products, the finance ministry said on Monday. That compared with 706 products that were taxed at temporary rates in 2019.

The tariff changes were made to “increase imports of products facing a relative domestic shortage, or foreign specialty goods for everyday consumption,” the ministry said in a statement on its website.

China and the United States cooled their drawn-out trade war earlier this month, announcing a Phase 1 agreement that would reduce some U.S. tariffs in exchange for more Chinese purchases of American farm products and other goods.

The finance ministry said the tariff rate for frozen pork will be cut to 8% from the most-favored-nation duty of 12%, as China copes to plug a huge supply gap after a severe pig disease decimated its hog herd. (Read more from “Trump Win: China to Lower Import Tariffs” HERE)

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China and the US have made a breakthrough in trade negotiations, with a consensus agreement reached for a phase-one deal that will halt further tariff increases and lower some already in place, Vice-Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen announced on Friday.

Speaking in a late-night press conference in Beijing, Wang said the agreement covered a wide range of issues, including intellectual property protection, technology transfer, purchase of agricultural products and expanding trade.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative confirmed the agreement on Friday, saying in a statement: “The United States and China have reached an historic and enforceable agreement on a Phase One trade deal that requires structural reforms and other changes to China’s economic and trade regime in the areas of intellectual property, technology transfer, agriculture, financial services, and currency and foreign exchange.”

Both countries will proceed to detailed translations and legal review of the text and discuss arrangements for signing the agreement. US President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said that process should take “inside of a few weeks”, and that the final signing would be between US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He.

“The deal can help expanding economic and trade cooperation between the two nations and effectively manage the trade disputes,” Wang said. (Read more from “Trade War Breakthrough: U.S. and China Reach Phase-One Deal” HERE)

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