Freedom of Religion or Belief in China

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) on her speech. Although I will talk primarily about the persecution of Christians in China, and particularly the intolerable position of the Catholic Church, I fully support what she and the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) said about the persecution of Muslims. What is happening to the Uyghurs is absolutely intolerable.

In China, the institutionally entrenched ideological intolerance of Christianity and other religions stems back to 1949, and has continuously been perpetrated by the communist regime, often with extreme violence. An estimated 96.7 million Christians live in China; they are one of the largest Christian populations in the world. Religious groups are made to register with state-operated “patriotic associations”, and unregistered religious activity is illegal. Many Christians worship in unregistered house churches, which leaves them vulnerable to raids, fines and detention.

China currently ranks 17th on the 2026 world watch list, with a persecution score of 79 out of 100. In many regions of China, children under the age of 18 are widely prohibited from participating in religious activities. The restrictions reported include the suspension of Sunday school programmes, schools discouraging religious belief among students, and students being pressured to report religious activity within their families, which is probably the worst of all—something out of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

In September 2025, China introduced new regulations on the online behaviour of religious clergy. The rules require religious leaders to support the leadership of the CCP, promote socialist values and preach only on Government-approved online platforms.

Let me say a bit about the position of the Catholic Church. Catholics were hopeful that the 2018 agreement between the Vatican and the People’s Republic of China would heal wounds caused by the Communist party’s attempt to suppress Catholicism. The promise of reconciliation has, alas, not been realised. In some dioceses, the divisions between the actual Catholic Church in China and the state-backed so-called patriotic Church has actually deepened. Bishops who stood aside in the interests of unity have been marginalised and placed under surveillance for refusing to take part in state structures. State-controlled religious apparatus remains coercive. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association exercises extensive control over Catholic life in the People’s Republic.

[Martin Vickers (Brigg and Immingham) (Con)]

Between 2017 and 2020, my daughter worked as a teacher in Shanghai. We visited her at Easter 2018, and I recall walking past the Catholic cathedral while the service was taking place on Easter morning, and it was overflowing. Later in the day, I attended a service at the church that my daughter went to, and there were 200 or 300 people there. There did not appear to be any repression of the services. Is my right hon. Friend suggesting that it has got much worse over the last three or four years?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The devil is in the detail. When it comes to China, everything is very complicated; there are no simple arguments or solutions. This is not an outright communist regime like North Korea. In theory, if someone is a Catholic, they are allowed to practise their faith, which is why my hon. Friend saw the church overflowing, but they have to practise in a way that is approved by the state.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

The agreement the Catholic Church signed allowed the Government to approve the bishops and the structure. One of the criticisms that many have made, myself included, is that in getting that agreement the Catholic Church in a way turned its back on all the other Christians in China. It got something—not something great—but to do that, it did not then represent them. As the senior Christian Church in the world, it does bear some responsibility to see Christianity prosper, not go the other way. Does my right hon. Friend agree?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. As I develop my speech, I will say that the Church and our leadership were perhaps naive in trusting the communist regime. The agreement is, frankly, proving to be worthless. That is often the case with China, as our own Government found in relation to Hong Kong.

Clergy are more or less required to align with the state body—the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association—in order to function properly in their parishes. The patriotic association has many levers of power at its disposal to use against those who refuse to conform to it, like those principled people mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) who for years were in underground churches. It is a case not of administrative oversight but of the direction of religion by the communist state. The Chinese Communist party has spent three quarters of a century attempting to effectively create an independent national church in China that will conform to the will of China’s secular rulers.

The Vatican-China agreement has resulted not in liberalisation but in stricter controls. Its full details have not been released—it is unbelievable—which prevents us from knowing its actual provisions. We do know from Chinese Catholics on the ground that institutional surveillance is continuing and increasing. State officials are now embedded into dioceses to monitor church life and report on it. In some areas, children are even banned from attending mass and other services. Seminarians are subject to political vetting, and clergy who trained abroad are often required to submit to the approval of the authorities and to retrain. Priests and religious personnel are required to surrender their passports. Surveillance, harassment and even imprisonment are normal.

The United Kingdom’s deal with China over Hong Kong gives us all cause for concern. The People’s Republic of China has continually run riot over it and made a mockery of it. Experience is showing that China is now doing the same with the Vatican’s agreement. We look to Pope Leo XIV for leadership and guidance. The agreement is up for periodic renewal. It has not been successful. We must be honest with ourselves and the world, even if that means not renewing the agreement.

Chinese Catholics and fellow Christians, as well as other persecuted minorities in China, should not have to suffer at the hands of the state. The United Kingdom must be vigorous in raising these subjects in diplomatic conversations. I say to the Minister that this must not just be an obligatory embarrassing aside, but a headline item in our interactions with the communist Chinese state.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I owe you an apology, Ms Jardine, for arriving late to the debate. I am grateful for your chairmanship, and grateful to be allowed in, having been delayed. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) for securing the debate, and for being stalwart in all these issues about freedoms and rights of worship. I bow before her greater authority in this matter.

Much of what I wish to say has already been said. Therefore, in the short time available, I will try to cover the issues that are at stake. We have talked consistently about the problems in China. There are of course many other countries in the world where Christians and Muslims are persecuted, but it is in China that the collective persecution becomes an absolute, state-inspired problem.

The nature of what has been discussed already is quite remarkable. Look, for example, at the programme of Sinicisation of religion by law, and by deliberately abusive behaviour. Crosses must be removed from churches and domes, and the minarets of mosques must be demolished to make them look more like Chinese buildings. Pastors and imams are told to focus on religious teachings that reflect socialist values in line with those of China. Newly annotated versions of core religious texts, including the Bible, the Quran and others, have been issued back to places of worship, and what is left of the churches are regularly ordered to replace images of Jesus with pictures of Xi Jinping. Blatantly, boldly and in full view, China does not want to have any kind of worship beyond the worship of the communist, and in particular of Xi Jinping.

In March this year, China approved a new law that codifies ethnic assimilation, in contravention of China’s own constitution and of international law. It mandates that all children must be taught Putonghua before kindergarten and—interestingly—that they will therefore avoid all aspects of other religions as a matter of doctrine.

That brings me to two elements that I want to focus on. First, as has been said well by hon. Members in this debate, the Uyghurs are suffering a genocide. There is no question about it. The Chinese authorities find them a deeply troublesome group. They are not Han Chinese, and that is what most Chinese policy is about. At the core of the dislike of the Uyghurs lies their Muslim belief. What astounds me so often is that we know about this. We have campaigned on it. I was sanctioned because of the campaign on the Uyghurs. It is interesting how easily people have been allowed to forget the issue and not raise it. I would love all the mosques in the United Kingdom to raise the plight of the Uyghurs, because it is the right thing to do. I would love Christian churches to constantly talk of the plight of the Uyghurs. The Uyghurs have, in many respects, become forgotten.

The persecution of the Uyghurs is appalling. Many hon. Members have talked about the nature of the re-education camps. When did we last hear about the concept of re-education camps? In Nazi Germany. It is astonishing. The women are persecuted and raped, and are now no longer having babies. The population of the Uyghurs has now collapsed because they are being forcibly sterilised, and the men are going off to forced labour—it is so obvious; millions have gone.

By the way, to those who like the free market, I should underline the point that forced labour completely undermines the free market. How can anyone compete with a country that uses forced labour on a grand scale to make products and drive out competitors? There is, in every respect, an absence of tolerance to Christianity, Islam and Buddhism—we too often forget about the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists, nearly a quarter of a million of whom are in forced labour camps, rather like the Uyghurs.

What is happening to the Uyghurs is a terrible travesty, but I also want to speak about Christianity and Christian churches. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who I have a huge amount of time for, raised the issue of the role of the Catholic Church. I have to say to him that, since I set up the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, we have tried to extract from the hierarchy in the Catholic Church—I say this, by the way, as a Catholic—the text of what it agreed with the Chinese Government, and we have never been able to. It has never been published. We have never been able to refer to it. All we are asking for is that it be laid out in the open, so that we can see, first of all, whether the Chinese stick to their arrangements and, secondly, whether there was any provision for other Christians in China.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Holy See, and therefore I go regularly to the Vatican to talk to Archbishop Gallagher, the Foreign Minister of the Vatican. He is an extremely clever, subtle and charming man, but it is very difficult to understand, despite having those personal conversations, what has actually been agreed. My view is that the Vatican is full of principled people who live in a moral dimension, and they are up against intellectual thugs, frankly. We have been sold a pup with this agreement, and we should reconsider it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend completely. Openness sometimes is a far better disinfectant for a problem than keeping it behind closed doors. As we know, the reality, even under the agreement, is pretty appalling. The Chinese get to appoint the bishops they want. People cannot have church house meetings. All the Protestants and other free churches now suffer massive persecution; they can be closed down because the umbrella of the Catholic Church has moved away from them.

What do we know about China? China is petrified about what happened to it, to Poland and eventually to the Soviet Union: the Catholic Church eventually broke down the whole adherence to communism in Poland; that infected pretty much the rest of the Soviet Union, which then collapsed. China is petrified that it will face the same. The only reason it did a deal with the Catholic Church at all was to try to put off the idea that it would be influential, and it has succeeded in that respect. I am very sorry that the previous Pope and the current Pope did not take it upon themselves to pursue this issue and sort it out. I take no pleasure in criticising the Church that I am a member of, but we have to be honest about this. The situation in China for Christians is appalling. We could have done more, and the Catholic Church could have done more, but we forget the Buddhists, we forget the Muslims, and we forget the others whose right to practise free faith has gone as well.

Before anybody says that I am only on the attack against the Labour Government, I want to say that I am not: when my party was in government, I was as much a thorn in their side as I am now in the side of the Labour Government. It is just the reality, and we have to face up to the facts. The recent visit by the Prime Minister to China was a problem. I simply say this to the Government. When the Minister responds to the debate, he must understand what has already been said by one of his colleagues: does economics trump freedom, freedom of religion and freedom of speech? If it does, we have gone down a bad road. If it does not, then why are we doing this right now?