China continues to violate the right to freedom of religion, although the worst forms of persecution long-term imprisonment and physical abuse of religious activists appear to have declined in recent years.

In a recent report on China: State Control of Religion, Human Rights Watch/Asia cites a dramatic growth in all religions in officially atheist China, with Buddhism growing the fastest of all. As interest in religion has increased, so have efforts by the state to control it. Chinese authorities continue the crackdown in the belief that religion breeds instability, separatism, and subversion, with Christianity and Islam in particular seen as vehicles for foreign influence and infiltration.

Control increasingly takes the form of a registration process administered by the State Council's Religious Affairs Bureau through which the government monitors membership in religious organizations, locations of meetings, religious training, selection of clergy, publication of religious materials, and funding for religious activities. The government also now undertakes annual inspections of registered religious organizations. Failure to register can result in the imposition of fines, seizure of property, razing of "illegal" religious structures, forcible dispersal of religious gatherings, and, occasionally, short-term detention. In Tibet, control takes the form of political vetting of monks and nuns and strict supervision of their institutions. These controls not only violate the right to freedom of religion, but also the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and association.

A key problem is the Chinese government's definition of freedom of religion as the right to private belief, rather than accepting freedom of religion in the broader context set forth in a key U.N. resolution called the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. That declaration states that freedom of religion includes among other things the right to assemble with others, to maintain appropriate charitable or humanitarian institutions, to write, issue and disseminate relevant publications, to teach a religion or belief in an appropriate place, to solicit and receive voluntary contributions, to train, appoint, elect or designate religious leaders, and to establish and maintain communications with others at the national and international levels.

Human Rights Watch details restrictions on religious activities in general as well as specific targets of government repression: Tibetan Buddhism, Islam in Xinjiang, the Catholic underground, evangelical Protestantism, and the wide variety of groups that the Chinese government labels cults and superstitious sects. The 71-page report includes a section on the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong and several appendices containing copies of internal government regulations on religious policy and control of religious activities in specific areas of the country.