HONG KONG (UCAN): Catholics in China’s Henan province are concerned that a new appraisal system for religious personnel is a front for political screening.
 
On priest said that the provincial Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and Catholic Church Committee approached him during Holy Week seeking to appraise him. A few days later, he found the newly launched annual appraisal scheme with an assessment form on WeChat. 
 
“The appraisal is ridiculous,” he said.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): Wang Zuo’an, deputy minister of the Chinese government’s United Front Work Department, published a signed commentary dealing with so-called Sinicisation of the Catholic Church and other religious groups on March 26.
 
Writing in the state-run Zhongguo Minzu Bao newspaper, he insisted there must be Communist Party leadership in relation to religious practice taking into account “geopolitical” factors.
 

Beijing (AsiaNews): Protestant Christians in China “are not a force in disagreement, an error to be managed or rectified, the chosen objective of veiled or direct attacks. Thinking this way is wrong, it’s a fundamental mistake,” said an appeal signed by 34 unofficial congregations.
 
Domestic Protestant Churches have been hit by yet another round of restrictions on their religious freedom.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): The recent crackdown on various Catholic and Protestant communities was the result of more than two years of organisation and preparation at provincial, city and county level through the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) increasingly powerful United Front Work Department, according to Ying Fuk-tsang, a professor and director of the divinity school at Chung Chi College, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.