(The portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong hangs behind red flags, raised during the sitting of parliament, and the Chinese national flag (R) in Beijing's Tiananmen Square March 3, 2008/David Gray)

The hardline Chinese official removed last week as Communist Party chief of restive Tibet has been made head of the province in the centre of contention over China’s Catholics, giving him an influential role in another sensitive religious issue. Zhang Qingli, who gained a reputation as an unyielding Communist Party secretary of heavily Buddhist Tibet, has been appointed party secretary of Hebei, the province surrounding Beijing, the Xinhua news agency reported late on Sunday.

Hebei, with a population of 70 million, is home to roughly a quarter of China’s 8-12 million Roman Catholics.

Zhang, 60, was known for his tough stance against Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama, a man reviled by China as a separatist. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk denies advocating either violence or Tibetan independence. Zhang was in charge of Tibet in 2008 when protests in the regional capital Lhasa gave way to deadly riots that rippled across other ethnic Tibetan areas. After the protests, he rained insults on the Dalai Lama, calling him a “jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes.”

Zhang’s new post will give him an influential role in China’s relationship with the Vatican, which is in dispute with Beijing over control of church affairs, especially appointing bishops.

China’s Catholics are divided between a state-sanctioned church that has appointed bishops without the Vatican’s approval and an “underground” wing wary of government ties. The underground church has deep roots in Hebei.

Read the full story here.

.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Subscribe to all posts via RSS

(Uniformed and plainclothes police surround a man at the site of a proposed church gathering at a shopping area in Beijing April 10, 2011/David Gray)

Hundreds of Chinese police scrambled to prevent a planned outdoor service by a “homeless” church on Sunday, shoving people into vans and buses in the latest show of the Communist Party’s determination to smother dissent and protests. The Shouwang Church, a Protestant group with about 1,000 members, had urged members to gather for the outdoor service after they said official pressure forced the church out of a place of worship it had been renting.

But hundreds of police officers covered the area in the Zhongguancun commercial district, where the Shouwang Church had planned to worship, deterring any effort by church members and supporters to gather for the morning service.

The government has been alarmed about calls for protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Middle East, and that appears to have prompted Beijing to move against the church. Police cordoned off the broad, elevated walkway where a mobile phone text message said the service would happen.

Police and plain clothes guards took away dozens of people, although it was unclear how many were church members, supporters or bystanders. Police monitoring vans, bristling with antennae and communications dishes, stood nearby.

“I think this reflects the overall panic mood of the government leadership over what’s happening in the Middle East and North Africa,” said Bob Fu of the China Aid Association, a Texas-based group critical of China’s controls on religion, which has monitored the Shouwang Church dispute.

Read the full story here.

.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Subscribe to all posts via RSS