HONG KONG (UCAN): Responses from religious groups to remarks made by the president of China, Xi Jinping, during his epic address at the opening of the National Party Congress on October 18 in the Great Hall of the People vary radically, depending on which side the political fence they originate from.
 

HONG KONG (SE): There was nothing unpredictable in the comments on religion in the opening speech given by the president of China, Xi Jinping, at the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in the Great Hall of the People on October 18.
 
His comments had been signalled for some time in a series of new regulations that are now in place and ready to come into effect on February 2 next year.
 

HONG KONG (SE): During his three-and-a-half hour presentation at the beginning of the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China, the general secretary of the party and president of China, Xi Jinping, embedded the process of Sinicisation of religion into what is anticipated to become a dogma of belief under the banner of the Thoughts of Xi Jinping.
 

BEIJING (AsiaNews): Wang Xiaochuan, the chief executive of the web search engine Sogou, posted a seemingly innocent image of Winnie the Pooh on his Weibo account on July 15, but it attracted a lot of surprised attention, as the image has been banned in China since 2013.
 
The loveable bear from the stories by A. A. Milne and the animated movies from Disney Studios is regarded as an offensive character by Chinese censors because of its physical resemblance to the president, Xi Jinping.
 

BEIJING (SE): Standing before a mural of the Great Wall for his end of year address on December 31, the president of China, Xi Jinping, said his administration had resolutely defended its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights during the past year.

“If anyone makes this an issue of question, the Chinese people will never agree!” he said in a noticeably higher pitch than the rest of his 10-minute address.

HONG KONG (AsiaNews): More than 100 authors from around the world have signed a letter addressed to the president of China, Xi Jinping, asking him to stop repressing writers in the country and to address the human rights violations being perpetrated against them.

The letter was delivered on the World Day for Human Rights, December 10.

ROME (SE): The gift from China that Pope Francis spoke of with journalists during his return flight to Rome from Baku in Azerbaijan on October 2 is a silk print drape inscribed with ideogrammes from the historical Christian Stele of Xi’an.

It depicts the long narrative inscribed on the famous stele, which is also referred to as the Nestorian Stele, which dates back to 781 during the Tang Dynasty, and documents the first 150 years of the presence of Nestorian Christians in the Middle Kingdom.

HONG KONG (SE): “And the Chinese president sent me a gift. They are good relations,” Pope Francis told an inflight media conference on his way back to Rome from Georgia and Azerbaijan on October 2.