The Chinese government is supervising a five-year plan to make Christianity more compatible with socialism in which there will be a “rewrite” of the Bible, a prominent religious freedom activist has told Congress.

The Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organization China Aid, provided great detail during a House hearing Thursday about a plan enacted by leading state-sanctioned denominations in China to “Sincize” Christianity.

As China’s crackdown on religion has seen many house churches demolished and thousands of crosses removed from churches nationwide, Fu warned upfront that what is happening right now in China represents the highest degree of persecution for independent faith groups the country has seen in decades. . .

In a written testimony, Fu said that under the new regulations religious activity sites will “accept the guidance, supervision, and inspection of relevant departments of the local people’s government regarding the management of personnel, finances, assets, accounting, security, fire protection, protection of relics, health and disease prevent and so forth.” . . .

“There are outlines that the new Bible should not look westernized and [should look] Chinese and reflect Chinese ethics of Confucianism and socialism,” Fu told The Christian Post after the hearing. “The Old Testament will be messed up. The New Testament will have new commentaries to interpret it.” (Read more from “China Trying to Rewrite the Bible” HERE)

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By The Blaze. Nearly a dozen schools in southern China have adopted “smart” uniforms to track students’ whereabouts, Agence France-Presse reported.

The move to use chip-powered clothing is reportedly aimed as a way to reduce truancy and boost school attendance, according to state media.

The technology has the ability to monitor students as they enter the building and when they leave. That information is sent automatically to school officials and teachers.

“When students enter the school, the smart uniforms help take a photo or video of them,” Ran Ruxiang, an elementary school principal in Guizhou province, told the AFP.

Ran said his school started using smart uniforms last November and now more than half of the students are wearing them. The school has about 1,400 students enrolled. (Read more from “Schools Use ‘Smart’ Uniforms to Track Students” HERE)

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Chinese Schools Monitor Students Activities, Targeting Truancy With ‘Intelligent Uniforms’

By The Global Times. Schools in China are promoting “intelligent uniforms” to better monitor students’ attendance and whereabouts.

More than 10 schools in Southwest China’s Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have adopted the uniforms.

If students wear the uniforms, the school authorities receive recorded accurate timing of their entry and exit and automatically send the data to parents and teachers, said Lin Zongwu, principal of No. 11 School of Renhuai in Guizhou Province. . .

According to Guizhou Guanyu Technology Company that provides the technology behind the “intelligent uniforms,” an automatic voice alarm activates if students wearing intelligent uniforms walk out of school without permission.

Two chips are inserted in the shoulders of uniforms and can endure up to 150 C and 500 washes, Yuan Bichang, the company’s project manager, told the Global Times. (Read more from “Chinese Schools Monitor Students Activities, Targeting Truancy With ‘Intelligent Uniforms'” HERE)

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More than 100 Protestant Christians from the Early Rain Covenant Church – one of China’s few openly operating unofficial house churches – were snatched from their homes and streets across Chengdu, Sichuan province, in a crackdown that began on Sunday night. Among those detained were church pastor Wang Yi, his wife Jiang Rong, church leaders, members and seminary students.

The round-up in Chengdu is part a broader crackdown on unofficial or underground churches that Beijing launched early this year, bolstered by amendments to the Religious Affairs Regulation that gave grass-roots officials more power to act against churches and impose tougher penalties for “unauthorised religious gatherings”. . .

[The jailed pastor of the church] also called on church members to keep worshipping and meet outdoors if venues could not be rented, adding that the group would never give up on practising its faith publicly. . .

[The church] has about 500 followers but its weekly gatherings spread across more than a dozen meeting points around Chengdu, attracting more than 800 church-goers each week, according to church leaders. It also has about 100 seminary students and a primary school catering to about 40 children.

Another major house church, the Living Stone Church in Guiyang, Guizhou province, was also banned three years ago. Li Guozhi, one of the church’s two pastors, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for releasing a document outlining an official plan to destroy the church. (Read more from “Members of Unofficial Chinese Church Vow to Defy Crackdown and Keep Meeting” HERE)

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The highly anticipated meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit concluded last Saturday evening with no major breakthrough. Pundits who had hoped for a good trade deal between the U.S. and China are surely disappointed.

President Trump previously threatened to raise tariffs from 10 to 25 percent on about $250 billion worth of Chinese imports on January 1, 2019. Now he has agreed to hold off on the tariff hike while both the Americans and Chinese delegations engage in trade negotiations for the next 90 days.

At present, President Xi has agreed not to impose any tit-for-tat response to current U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. While stock markets and businesses worldwide can breathe a sigh of relief for now since the trade war will not get worse for another three months, the temporary truce can’t mask the deep divisions between the United States and China. . .

From the U.S. perspective, the rise of China has transitioned from a hope to a disappointment to a threat. When former president Richard Nixon visited Communist China in 1972 and established a diplomatic relationship, 99 percent of Chinese people made less than $2 a day and China’s per capita gross domestic product was less than $200. The Chinese people were poorer than people in Bangladesh, to put it into perspective.

In 2017, China’s GDP per capita was close to $9,000. Global poverty rates have been cut in half since 1981, mainly because of China’s impressive economic growth. This economic growth has a lot to do with the Chinese people’s ingenuity and certain market-friendly policies from their central government. But China often fails to mention that China wouldn’t have had almost four decades of impressive growth without the West, especially the United States, providing markets for Chinese goods, bringing foreign investment to China to build factories, and training millions of talented Chinese students at Western colleges and universities. (Read more from “The Ceasefire in Our Trade War with China Doesn’t Solve Deeper Problems” HERE)

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As the media focus on Jamal Khashoggi, Osama bin Laden’s old friend who writes for The Washington Post so that makes him a hero, another international figure has gone missing and may now be dead, according to his own wife.

Earlier this month The Daily Wire reported on the disappearance of then-Interpol President Meng Hongwei. He reportedly went to China to visit family, sent his wife a text with the “knife emoji” and a message saying “Wait for my call,” and then went silent. French police opened an investigation (Interpol headquarters is located in France) and asked the Chinese government for information. A day later, Interpol received a resignation letter from Meng, and China claimed he was being investigated for bribery.

Meng was living with his family in France after he became the first Chinese national to lead Interpol, an international police organization. He was also China’s vice minister of public security.

Meng’s wife, Grace, who first appealed to international media when she believed her husband was missing, now tells the BBC she doesn’t know if he’s still even alive. . .

The Guardian reports that Meng may be held under the new Chinese form of custody, “liuzhi,” which means “retention in custody.” The former custody system, “shuanggui,” used torture. The custody is overseen by the National Supervisory Commission, an agency created this year and charged with investigating government corruption. (Read more from “The Missing, Presumed Dead International Figure You Aren’t Hearing About” HERE)

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