BEIJING (SE): A series of articles published in the Global Times during July is reiterating the perpetual warning to members of the Communist Party that religious belief is blacklisted, as it poses a danger to the purity of Marxist atheism and can derail party direction and functionality.
 
“Party members should not have religious beliefs, but follow atheist Marxism; otherwise, they will be punished,” Wang Zuo’an, the director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, was quoted as saying by the Global Times.

HONG KONG (UCAN): The former cathedral of Xiamen diocese on Gulangyu Island in eastern Fujian province was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List by the 41st session of the committee held in Krakow, Poland, on July 8.
 
The decision to recognise Christ the King Church as one of the 51 notable sites on the island comes in the centenary year of the building which was commissioned by the Spanish Dominican Bishop Emmanuel Prat in 1917.
 

WENZHOU (UCAN): Two young Chinese, Li Xinheng, from Hunan, and Meng Lisi, from Hubei in central China, were abducted by terrorists in Pakistan on May 24 and are believed to have been killed by their kidnappers.
 
The two, who were in their mid-20s, were working under the auspices of a Korean Christian missionary, Seo Jun-won, who together with his wife was running a small school in which Li and Meng were involved.
 

HONG KONG (SE): A leading scholar in the study of religion within a framework of what is referred to as a Chinese religious ecology, Mou Zhongjian, credits what he calls the wrong-headed policies of Mao Zedong with setting the stage for the revival of Christianity in the 1980s after the country began to open up.
 

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.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): In lamenting the premature death of 61-year-old Liu Xiaobo at the First Hospital of the China Medical University in Shenyang on July 13, Bangkok-based Michael Sainsbury says that the world has now seen the death of one of its bravest human beings and greatest citizens of modern day China.
 

BEIJING (SE): The first collection for Relief Donations Day that was taken up in churches across China on Palm Sunday this year amounted to approximately 775,000 yuan ($930,000) and has been entrusted for distribution to the Jinde Charities, the only government-registered Catholic aid organisation in the country.
 
Although the collection on April 9 was somewhat controversial, the money collected in 15 dioceses and 33 parishes made up around 90 per cent of the grand total.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): Summer camps for children are a regular feature of parish life in many parts of the world and have been a popular way in China of helping children to get to know each other and enjoy each other’s company, as well as introducing them more deeply to their faith.