Report Highlights Increasing Pressure on Underground Catholics While China Rejects Crackdown Allegations

(SeaPRwire) –   Per a report from Human Rights Watch, the Chinese government is ramping up pressure on underground Catholic communities to join the state-run church, while stepping up surveillance and restrictions for the roughly 12 million Catholics across the country.

In its report, the organization stated that this growing pressure forms part of a decade-long campaign designed to ensure all religious groups conform to Communist Party ideology.

The Associated Press reported that the Chinese government has rejected these allegations, stating that Human Rights Watch is “consistently biased against China.”

Catholics in China have long been divided between an official state-operated church and an underground community loyal to the Vatican. In 2018, Pope Francis reached an accord that allows the Chinese government a role in appointing bishops, in an effort to ease long-running tensions.

“A decade into Xi Jinping’s Sinicization campaign and nearly eight years since the 2018 Holy See-China agreement, Catholics in China face escalating repression that violates their religious freedoms,” Yalkun Uluyol, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated in the report. 

“Pope Leo XIV should urgently review the agreement and press Beijing to end the persecution and intimidation of underground churches, clergy, and worshipers.”

The office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson informed The Associated Press that Human Rights Watch “fabricates all manner of lies and rumors and lacks any credibility whatsoever.”

The office further noted that the government “oversees religious affairs in accordance with the law and protects citizens’ freedom of religious belief and normal religious activities.”

Human Rights Watch noted that its researchers are barred from entering China, so the report is based on interviews with people located outside the country who have firsthand knowledge of Catholic life in China, as well as specialists in Catholicism and religious freedom issues.

The 2018 accord stipulates that Beijing puts forward bishop candidates, which the pope has the authority to veto, though the full text of the deal has never been released to the public.

In June 2025, the newly inaugurated Pope Leo XIV appointed a Chinese bishop under the terms of the 2018 agreement, and stated he would continue to honor the deal “in the short term.”

“I’m also in ongoing dialogue with a number of people, Chinese, on both sides of some of the issues that are there,” Leo stated. “It’s a very difficult situation. In the long term, I don’t pretend to say this is what I will and will not do, but after two months, I’ve already begun having discussions at several levels on that topic.”

Since 2018, Human Rights Watch says Chinese authorities have pressured underground Catholics to join the state-run church via measures including detentions, disappearances and house arrests, citing accounts from unnamed individuals who have left China.

The report also noted that China has tightened ideological control, surveillance and restrictions on religious activity and foreign connections, including requiring state approval for clergy to travel, while officially recognizing and closely overseeing five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam.

Back in 2016, Xi Jinping stated he would “Sinicize” the country’s religions, a policy aimed at bringing religious practices in line with Communist Party ideology.

Human Rights Watch stated that authorities have taken sweeping measures to restrict religious practice, including tearing down churches and crosses, blocking gatherings at unregistered churches and seizing religious materials not approved by the state.

The organization added that the broader “Sinicization” campaign has also led to intensified crackdowns on Tibetan Buddhists and Muslim communities.