That article 300 only punishes “leaders” or “criminal” members of CAG is false. Being active in the CAG in any capacity is enough to go to jail.
January 27, 2025

The arguments we listed in the table included in the previous article under numbers 2 and 3 form a logical sequence, and deal with the question of the xie jiao. The decisions granting asylum acknowledge that, once a Chinese citizen is recognized as active in any capacity in a movement banned as a xie jiao, he or she is arrested, sentenced, and detained for several years. Not only leaders, but also common members of a xie jiao go to jail.
A handful of negative decisions does not acknowledge this, insisting, again, on the fact that this statement is denied by information supplied by the Chinese embassies, and only comes either from governmental documents influenced by the anti-Chinese campaigns of the United States, or from scholars who may be suspected to be hostile to China.
In 2019, after an affidavit by one of the authors (Richardson) was criticized in a South Korean case based on information received from the local Chinese embassy, we answered these objections by publishing a voluminous study of both the circular letters produced by the Supreme People’s Courts and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate interpreting Article 300 of the Chinese Criminal Code, which makes being active in a xie jiao a crime, and of decisions rendered in the years 2018 and 2019 against 200 CAG members and published in the online data base China Judgments Online, managed by the Supreme People’s Court (which today is unfortunately no longer publicly accessible and has excluded sensitive decisions dealing with religious issues). For this study, we did not use legal documents or decisions obtained from CAG lawyers or the CAG itself. We only relied on documents published by the Chinese authorities in official data bases.
Our study conclusively proved that Chinese embassies are right when they state that CAG members are sentenced not merely for believing in CAG theology, a state of mind difficult to ascertain, but for “engaging in criminal activities.” Only, under the official interpretation of Article 300, attending worship meetings of a xie jiao, sharing its faith with co-workers or relatives, and even keeping at home a certain quantity of books and videos of a banned movement are “criminal activities” leading to severe jail sentences. Obviously, these activities are not “criminal” in democratic countries, and are protected by international conventions as typical expressions of religious liberty.
After the publication of this and other articles, Zhang Xinzhang, a professor at the School of Marxism of Zhejiang University, visited one of us (Introvigne) in Italy, and started a correspondence aimed at clarifying how Article 300 both actually is and, in his opinion, should be enforced in China. In 2020, Zhang published an article in English continuing this dialogue, very much relevant for this issue.

The fact that a leading Chinese scholar has chosen to open a dialogue on the controversial notion of xie jiao was in itself a welcome development. And, on several points, the text agrees with our analysis.
First, Zhang states that it is a mistake, and one often made by the Chinese authorities themselves when they publish English translations of their texts, to translate “xie jiao” as “cults” or “evil cults.” To him, these translations are misleading, as xie jiao are different from what in the West are commonly intended as “cults.” He recommends not to translate xie jiao, and to simply transliterate it, as scholars normally do for Qigong or Kung Fu. We agree, and we have consistently followed this practice.
Second, Zhang admits that, under the current interpretation of Article 300 prevailing in China, “religious standards” are often used by the authorities to evaluate religious groups, which are prosecuted for their “heresies” rather than for their wrongdoings. The consequence is that secular (and officially atheistic) authorities may help “orthodox religions fight against heresy.”
Third, Zhang writes that one can find texts where it is recommended to prosecute leaders “using” the xie jiao for illegal and criminal purposes, while leaving alone the common members, regarded as mere “victims,” yet “it is difficult to set standards.” Zhang quotes Western scholars including the undersigned as having evidenced that, in practice, there are many cases where common believers are sentenced under Article 300. This is a crucial point for refugee cases. Zhang states that while from his point of view it would be desirable that only leaders would be punished, what currently happens in practice is that “‘normal’ members [i.e., not ‘leaders’] receive heavy sentences.”
Zhang maintains that the expression “xie jiao” in Chinese conveys “the deeper sense of the organization behind the illegal religious organization.” They are “illegal groups who [sic] use religious groups to commit crime.” If we understand Zhang correctly, he claims that it is not an entire religious movement that is a xie jiao. Rather, a xie jiao is an illegal group that, in the literal terms of Article 300, “uses” a religious movement for its own criminal purposes. A xie jiao is thus, according to Zhang, a group within a group.
Zhang maintains that the use in the official interpretive documents of Article 300 of both religious (“superstitious heresies”) and political (“illegal organization”) terminology has an internal coherence, and “is intentional, since the combined use of these two sets of labels offers a complete and accurate way to define xie jiao in the Chinese context: the cult without a political nature is not xie jiao in the Chinese sense, and the secret political organization without a religious color is also not xie jiao.” According to Zhang, “superstitious heresies” not used with an illegal political aim do not create a xie jiao. Yet, a “secret political organization” is not a xie jiao if it is does not operate through “superstitious heresies.”
But how do we know what is “heretic” and “superstitious” without adopting theological concepts? Roman Catholics believe miracles are still taking place today, and that the highest miracle of them all, the transformation of bread and wine during the Mass into the real (not merely symbolical, as other Christians maintain) body and blood of a man who died two thousand years ago, happens daily in thousands of Catholic churches. Why exactly is this belief not “superstitious,” while believing that miracles take place in certain new religious movements is a “superstition”? One telltale sign of a xie jiao, the regulations tell us, is that they “deify” their founders and leaders. Christianity of course deified its founder, and “living gods” exist in many religions.

We believe that one point to consider, not discussed in Zhang’s article, is that the CCP did not invent the notion of xie jiao but inherited it from Imperial and Republican China. The latter defined the category of “superstition” based on philosophical presuppositions, and the former used xie jiao since the Middle Ages, making it into a legal concept in the late Ming era, based on both theological and political presuppositions, as evidenced by Wu Junqing. Wu’s studies are important in showing how notions such as “deifying the leader,” “superstition,” and “heresy” have a century-old history in China, and loaded contemporary discourse with a heavy cultural baggage.
Zhang’s idea of a “group within a group” is interesting. It can be used by scholars easily with respect to mainline religions. For instance, police investigations in Ireland proved that organized groups of pedophile Catholic priests (as opposite to individual pedophiles) had operated there for years. In Chinese terms, these groups would be xie jiao “using” for their evil purposes the Catholic Church, which is not a xie jiao. Or al-Qa’ida is a terrorist organization “using” Islam that, globally considered, is not a xie jiao.
It is more difficult to apply this dual scheme to smaller religions. How should one apply Zhang’s concept of “a group within a group” to the two main movements persecuted as xie jiao in China (identified as such by Zhang himself in the article), the CAG and Falun Gong? Who should, or should not, be rightfully considered as part of the xie jiao by a Chinese judge who would apply Article 300 not as it is done now but as Zhang proposes? It would seem that only a few leaders “using” the movements for their political purposes should be declared parts of the xie jiao and sentenced. However, Zhang is aware of our 2019 study and the fact that there is no shortage of decisions where CAG members who just attended a worship meeting or shared their faith with relatives and friends were sent to jail for several years. He notes that in several cases those who converted others to the CAG were regarded as “leaders.”
But in this case, one may conclude that those who try to lead others to the movement are, literally, leaders, and part of the xie jiao, while those who simply read the literature of the group, listen to sermons, or contribute some money remain outside the xie jiao. The problem, however, is that this second category of devotees is almost non-existing in contemporary new religious movements, where, to borrow a slogan often used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “every member is a missionary.” If being a “missionary,” i.e., try to convert others, is enough to be regarded as part of the xie jiao, then the slogan would translate in the case of the CAG into “every CAG member is part of the xie jiao.”
In fact, we suspect that the point of disagreement with Zhang is that most Western scholars and human rights activists would not regard promoting, a movement whose theology some may consider “heretic” or “superstitious” as a crime. When confronted with the argument that the real crime of the xie jiao is that they operate in secrecy, they would say that this may be part of a vicious circle created by the authorities with their repression. To his credit, Zhang acknowledges that how China deals with banned religious organizations “is quite different from the idea in most countries outside China who [sic] do not fight against organizations but only against those in organizations who commit crimes.”

Zhang concludes that, “xie jiao involve not only organizations themselves and their members, but also some wonderful, positive, and profound contributions to religious culture as well as some factors and organizational forms that could contribute to enriching social culture and international cultural exchange. In this sense, it is worth deepening the inquiry to avoid ‘throwing out the baby with the bathwater,’ i.e., retaining the positive contributions of such organizations while ridding them of their nefarious elements. This may involve transforming and legitimizing them so they can serve as beneficial forces.”
Zhang’s acknowledgment that groups labeled as xie jiao may also offer “wonderful, positive, and profound contributions to religious culture,” coming as it does from inside China and from the School of Marxism of a leading university there, is significant. However, as far as refugee cases are concerned, Zhang’s article confirms that the notion of xie jiao as it is currently interpreted by Chinese courts leads to the result that “‘normal’ members receive heavy sentences,” based on their belonging to a “heretical” movement rather than on any common crime they may have committed. Even in the more moderate interpretation advocated by Zhang, in the case of the CAG almost all active members would be considered as “leaders,” because they engage in proselyting activities, and would be punished, and this even without considering that local CAG members are elected and remains in office for one year, creating a rotation in office system where most members become temporary leaders.
Zhang’s study thus confirms that decisions investigating whether the refugee is a CAG “leader,” as such deserving asylum, or a “common member,” allegedly immune from persecution in China, follow a wrong path. All active CAG members are persecuted in China.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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