Among the 74 special guests invited to join the 2,287 delegates at the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China were seven representing the religious sector; the Buddhist, Taoist and Islamic faiths had one each, while the Protestant and Catholic Churches had two each.
 
The Catholic delegates were Bishop Joseph Ma Yinglin, the chairperson of the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China; and Bishop Johan Fang Xingyao, the chairperson of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.
 

FENGXIANG (SE): Bishop Lucas Li Jingfeng, who was emboldened in 1980 to take a step in disobedience to the Church by accepting episcopal ordination from his predecessor in Fengxiang, Bishop Anthony Zhou Weidao, without a mandate from the Holy See, died at 7.20am on November 17.
 

HONG KONG (SE): In July 2011, Bishop Joseph Sun Jigen played a bit of hide and seek with the government over his episcopal ordination in Handan, when he set a false date for his ordination, for which he had Holy See approval, as July 29.
 
But as the day approached, he announced that in fact he had already been ordained at another location on June 21 in order to prevent illicitly ordained bishops from being present.
 
In the eyes of the Vatican he became the coadjutor of the diocese of Handan.
 

HONG KONG (UCAN): Relatives of Uyghur police force personnel are now being detained as part of a crackdown on the ethnic Muslim group in the Xinjiang region of China. It had been an unwritten agreement that the families of security personnel enforcing the crackdown were off limits, but now the cops are beginning to cop it.
 

LANZHOU (AsiaNews): Bishop Joseph Han Zhihai, who was ordained clandestinely as a bishop in Lanzhou in 2003, has come out of the shadows to be installed by the government as bishop of Lanzhou in northern China.
 
However, he had told the Vatican Insider in 2015, “It is best not to ask for government recognition,” but added the rider that in his case the government had been prepared to offer recognition back in 2010.
 

HONG KONG (SE): The machinations of the United Work Front Department outside of China and meddling in local affairs by Beijing are currently being criticised at both a high level and with great seriousness in Australia.
 
Speaking at a Confucius Institute in Adelaide in October, the country’s top ranking diplomat, the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Frances Adamson, warned international students that freedom of speech is a highly treasured Australian value and that they are not invited to interfere in that.