A woman offers prayer in front of a Buddha statue for at the Huayan Temple in Chongqing municipality in southwestern China. (AP File Photo)BEIJING: The Communist Party has ordered local governments to better regulate the construction of large outdoor religious statues amid increasing restrictions on religious expression in China. "The meeting required all localities to take up the regulation of large outdoor religious statues as their top priority in preventing the further commercialisation of Buddhism and Taoism," it said. Although many have been restored and reopened since then, new regulations and a bureaucratic overhaul earlier this year have put the day-to-day running of religious affairs directly under the officially atheistic Communist Party. The anti-religion drive overlaps with campaigns to promote patriotism and party loyalty, oppose separatism among ethnic minorities and fight Western liberal values.

Source: Bangkok Post May 26, 2018 07:41 UTC