Chinese authorities, seen as repressive toward Roman Catholics, are giving increasingly encouraging signals to the country's small Russian Orthodox community.
Orthodox followers in China hope they will soon be able to practice their faith normally after being forced into hibernation for many years, partly because of a lack of active priests.
The situation was due to be raised during Russian President Vladimir Putin's official visit to China last week, according to religious sources in Moscow, although this was not confirmed.
There are an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 Russian Orthodox Christians in China, either descendants of Russian immigrants or converted Chinese.
Most of them are in Inner Mongolia and around Urumqi, the capital of northwestern Xinjiang Province, although there are also a few hundred in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Harbin.
The Chinese Orthodox church reached its peak in the mid-1950s when it became autonomous and had two bishops who oversaw an estimated 20,000 faithful. However, the church was to suffer much at the hands of the Red Guard, which drove it underground in 1966.
The two bishops died in the 1960s and have never had any successors.
China's Orthodox community has since diminished, with many expecting it to disappear altogether after the death of the last active priest in December.
But, benefiting from the current healthy political climate between Moscow and Beijing, the Russian patriarchate has taken steps to revive the faith in the country.
The most important of these was the decision by Beijing to allow 18 Chinese students to undertake studies in seminaries of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
"If they are allowed to fulfil their priesthoods in China by the Administration for Religious Affairs, one day they will become bishops and be able to ordain priests. Orthodoxy will thus return in China," said Russian businessman Dmitry Napara, who is delighted with the move.
Last June, China permitted an Orthodox monk from Alapayevsk, in Russia's Ural Mountains, to celebrate mass in northeastern Harbin, which is probably China's most Russian-influenced city.
The church has remained open in Harbin, where the faithful have had to make do with services held by laymen since the death of their priest more than four years ago.
In another gesture from Beijing, two Orthodox churches in Shanghai, one of which had been converted into a nightclub, will be returned to "more serious" use, according to Napara.
It was likely that one of them would be developed into an arts centre devoted to the history of the Russian presence in China, he says.
Napara also said the pragmatic Chinese may see the activities of the church in Harbin as an opportunity to attract tourists.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS