HONG KONG (UCAN): The Chinese government has ramped up efforts to tighten control over religions in the Pengyuan district of the populous central province of Henan.
 
On April 4, local authorities posted a notice demanding those who follow the officially listed faiths—Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism—register with the residents’ committee.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): The long-standing director of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), Wang Zuo’an, has been formally transferred to the United Front Work Department (UFWD), as the religious affairs bureau is officially absorbed into the latter office.
 
While Wang will be promoted to deputy director of the UFWD, he will his retain his SARA title to prevent confusion in dealings with other nations on religious matters.
 

Hong Kong (UCAN): “With the implementation of the revised regulations on religious affairs, the religious world on the Internet will surely become a target in the next wave of rectification,” said Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the divinity school of Chung Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as Catholic groups expressed concern that Beijing will bring its heavy Internet censorship squarely into the world of religious literature, including a state-sponsored re-working of the Bible, and materials both physically and on the Internet after the Chinese government banne

HONG KONG (UCAN): On March 12 photographs began circulating on the Internet showing domes and religious motifs being removed from mosques in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of northern China, as officials imposed the new religious regulation that came into effect on February 1.
 
Netizens in Yinchuan, the capital of the autonomous region, shared photos of a crane being used to dismantle elements of Islamic buildings deemed to breach China’s Sinicization directive.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): Bishop Vincent Guo Xijin of the unofficial Church in Mindong, Fujian province, was taken from his home on March 26, according to AsiaNews. 
The 59-year-old bishop received a call from the local Administration for Religious Affairs on March 26 asking to meet at his office. 
 
After least two hours of talks, the bishop returned to his home at 7.00pm where packed his bags before being taken away at 10.00pm.
 
The priest who is the bishop’s secretary was also taken away.

Hong Kong (UCAN): The presence of Chinese health officials at the March 12 to 13 conference on organ trafficking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican, would be more meaningful if such meetings weren’t just mere “window-dressing,” said a human rights researcher.
 
Patrick Poon, an Amnesty International researcher, had little faith in what they had to offer.
 

Hong Kong (UCAN): China’s Communist Party has further stepped up control over all religions, dissolving its long-standing State Administration for Religious Affairs bureau and handing its functions over to the feared United Front Work Department.
 

VATICAN (CNS): “If we see only our own reasons and insist on our own experience as the norm, thereby denying the basis of other people’s experience, then disagreement, quarrels and even wars will be inevitable,” between individuals, communities, nations and religions, the former bishop of Hong Kong, John Cardinal Tong Hon told symposium on Christianity and China.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): The cathedral of Shangqiu South Church in Henan province, China, became the first Catholic church in the province whose crosses were removed by street office and district committee officials, a source, who requested anonymity, reported on March 9.
 
“The officials said the largest one at the highest point of the cathedral had to be removed but church staff disagreed,” the source said.