The hardline Communist bureaucrat who led China’s roughshod\u00a0campaign against Tibet’s Buddhist dissidents has been given a new target: to destroy China’s “underground” Catholics.<\/p>\n
Zhang Qingli, known as the “Tibetan bulldog,” has been appointed as the Communist Party Secretary of Hebei province,\u00a0according to\u00a0Clifford Coonan for the British daily newspaper\u00a0the Independent.<\/em><\/p>\n Zhang’s assignment is to break Chinese Catholics who refuse to sever ties to\u00a0Catholics worldwide.<\/p>\n The Chinese government brags\u00a0that it permits\u00a0freedom of religion — while downplaying that such freedom is only allowed in state-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association churches whose clergy are selected and paid by the Chinese government. They preach state-approved homilies that reflect Communist Party politics. Children are barred from services or instruction.<\/p>\n The Vatican has threatened excommunication of any priest who serves in such churches — as well as anyone who accepts appointment as a bishop.<\/p>\n Chinese Catholics\u00a0are required by law\u00a0to join the Patriotic Association church, which has five million members.\u00a0At least twice that number of Chinese\u00a0Catholics refuse — instead supporting financially Vatican-approved priests who\u00a0celebrate mass and teach children\u00a0in illegal\u00a0“house churches.”<\/p>\n Millions of such “underground”\u00a0Catholics worship in such churches in the Hebei area, which surrounds Beijing and has a population of 70 million.<\/p>\n Relations between Beijing and the\u00a0Vatican nosedived last year after Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas Day message deplored the persecution of Chinese Catholics.<\/p>\n Coonan reports:<\/p>\n Last month, the Vatican denounced the ordination of a Chinese bishop without papal approval and excommunicated him. Much to Beijing’s irritation, the Vatican is one of a handful of states that extends diplomatic recognition to the self-ruled island of Taiwan.<\/p>\n The US-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, which highlights the cases of oppressed priests in China, says there are 25 underground bishops, and all of them are either in jail, under house arrest, under strict surveillance, or in hiding.<\/p>\n