Giant Christmas trees adorned with lights, tinsel and gift boxes greet shoppers at glittering malls in big Chinese cities like Shanghai and Chongqing, but in many parts of the country, extending season’s greetings is out of the question.
In southwest Yunnan Province, a property management company issued a notice to shopping mall tenants urging them not to sell Christmas cards and presents and to even refrain from hanging decorations, saying foreign traditions should not be “blindly” followed, and one should be confident in one’s own culture.
Schools in some cities from Dongguan in the south to Harbin in the northeast similarly called on students and parents not to follow foreign traditions and culture without thinking.
Photo: Reuters
In Gansu Province in China’s northwest, a local branch of the Communist Youth League told its members to instead celebrate The Battle at Lake Changjin, a 2021 Chinese film depicting a fierce fight between the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army and US forces during the Korean War.
China does not ban Christianity or forbid Christian worship, but like all permitted religions, it must be strictly managed and governed amid concern about “foreign influences.”
Christmas Day is not a public holiday in mainland China, where Buddhism and Taoism are the major religions, with ancestral worship also a common practice. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is officially atheist.
Wang Huning (王滬寧), the fourth-ranked member of the powerful CCP Politburo Standing Committee led by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), told Christian groups last week to “adhere to the direction of the sinicization of Christianity.”
We must “interpret the doctrines and rules in line with the requirements of contemporary China’s development and progress, core socialist values and excellent Chinese traditions and culture,” said Wang, according to a report by the official Xinhua news agency on Saturday.
Over the years, the Vatican has sparred with Beijing over China’s unilateral appointment of bishops in a country that has about 12 million Catholics.
On Sunday, in Langfang, a city in Hebei Province just south of Beijing, a post on X, formerly Twitter, showed a cluster of police officers standing by a tall Christmas tree outside a church in a small county.
“So scary,” the post said.
In 2018, Langfang banned public displays for Christmas and the sale of items related to the holiday to “maintain social stability.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS