BEIJING (AsiaNews): China’s demographic picture is starting to look a lot like that of Japan: births are declining, the workforce is getting smaller and the population is aging. This is what the latest official figures show.
 
According to the National Statistics Bureau, while the country’s economy grew 6.9 per cent in 2017 from 6.7 per cent in 2016, its demographic statistics are less positive. 
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): Father Lu Danhua from the diocese of Lishui in eastern Zhejiang province has been missing since government officials from State Administration for Religious Affairs took him away from a priests’ dormitory on December 29.
 
A witness to the incident said that the officials claimed Father Lu was only going for a brief chat.
 
He is the only priest of Lishui and was ordained by for the diocese by Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, from the unofficial Church in Wenzhou, on 14 December 2016. 

BEIJING (SE): Authorities in China demolished the Golden Lampstand church belonging to an unofficial Protestant community in Linfen, Shanxi province on January 9, UCAN reported. 
 
It is the third church demolition or closure in China in just over three weeks and comes amid a broader crackdown on religions by the government of president, Xi Jinping.
 

WWENZHOU (AsiaNews): Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, from Wenzhou in Zhejiang, was released from detention on January 3. Named by the Vatican as the bishop for both the official and unofficial communities in Wenzhou, he is not recognised by the Chinese government and was taken away by police and officials from the Religious Affairs Bureau on 18 May 2017 (Sunday Examiner, 4 June 2017).
 
However, he has freedom of movement although sources say he is not in Wenzhou but in Xining in Qinghai, which is 2,500 kilometres away.
 

BEIJING (AsiaNews): Reverend Olav Fykse Tveit, the secretary general of the World Council of Churches (WCC), has been on what has been deemed an historic trip to China. 
 
Reverend Fyske has been in the country since January 7 together with the WCC president for Asia, Reverend Sang Chang along with the programme executive for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, Reverend Peniel Rajumkar.
 

Chinese intellectuals were eager to hear from the priest-missionaries who came their way.
 
“A spiritual nature is God’s gift to man and it is the greatest gift of all… benevolence, righteousness, social etiquette and wisdom are all indeed of this nature. These things that God has given us are what we’ve had all along. The bible calls it morality and Confucius calls it conscience,” Yáng Tíngyún wrote in The Light Emitted by Heaven.
 

SHANGHAI (AsiaNews): St Ignatius Cathedral in Shanghai was reopened on December 16 more than two years after it was shuttered up for major renovation.
 
The century-old cathedral was suffering from serious leakage and flaking of the ceiling that was considered a safety issue. The renovation project has kept the original structure of the cathedral, which was named a national monument by the State Council in 2013.
 

XI’AN (AsiaNews): The only Catholic church in Zhifang, a village in the Huyi District, near Xi’an in Shaanxi province, was torn down by authorities on December 27 with no reason given apart from a simple notification. 
 
News of the demolition was reported on social media along with pictures of the church’s legal papers which show that it had been duly approved and had all the necessary permits from the Religious Affairs Bureau to use the land on a permanent basis.