China is increasingly cracking down on Christians, Muslims, and Buddhists.

Authorities are subjecting Muslims to an unprecedented amount of surveillance, shutting down Christian churches, and forcing monks to pledge allegiance to the state.

The officially atheist Chinese Communist Party disapproves of all kinds of grassroots organizations as they are seen to undermine its grip on power.

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China is waging an unprecedented war on religion.

Over the past year alone, China has detained Muslim for showing their faith, forced Buddhists to pledge allegiance to the ruling Communist Party, and coerced Christian churches to take down their crosses or shut down.

Muslim Uighurs in Turpan, Xinjiang, pray before a meal in September 2016. Many Uighurs say they were arrested for showing distinct markers of Islam. Kevin Frayer/Getty

The 'sinicization' of religion

The Party, which is officially atheist, has for decades attempted to control religious organizations to maintain its dominance.

Its State Administration for Religious Affairs, set up in 1951, allows five religious organizations to exist under the state's control: a Party-sanctioned form of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism.

The state controls these groups' personnel, publications, and finances. Technically, citizens are free to practise religion freely, as long as their sect is officially sanctioned by the government.

Party officials in 2015 introduced the term "sinicization" into official government lexicon, in which they called on Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian leaders to fuse their religions with Chinese socialist thought.

Roderic Wye, a former first secretary in the British Embassy in Beijing, told Business Insider last year: "The party has always had trouble with religion one way or another, because often religious activity tends to imply some sort of organization."

"Once there are organizations, the party is very keen to control them," Wye added.

But under the presidency of Xi Jinping, the government's crackdown appears to have increased at an alarming scale.

Read more: Planting spies, paying people to post on social media, and pretending the news doesn't exist: This is how China tries to distract people from human rights abuses

A mural in Yarkland, Xinjiang, in 2012 says: "Stability is a blessing, Instability is a calamity." Chinese authorities have subjected the Uighurs, the majority-Muslim ethnic group based in Xinjiang, to an unprecedented amount of surveillance. Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images

'They want to ... cut off Islam at the roots'

In the western region of Xinjiang, the home of the majority-Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, authorities have installed a massive police state and is estimated to have imprisoned up to 1.5 million residents.

Many detainees said they were arrested for showing distinct markers of Islam, like growing a long beard or refusing to drink. Beijing this week claimed it had released most Uighurs from detention camps, but has provided no credible evidence.

You can read all of Business Insider's coverage of the Uighurs here.

Security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, in November 2017. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Muslims elsewhere in the country are also vulnerable.

Authorities in Beijing have ordered at least 11 halal restaurants and food stalls to remove Arabic script and symbols associated with Islam, Reuters reported this week.

"They said this is foreign culture and you should use more Chinese culture," one restaurant manager, who asked not to be identified, told the news agency. It's not clear if it issued the order to all halal stores in the city.

The Communist Party, which is suspicious of foreign forces in its country, interpret symbols of Islam and the Arabic language as pledging allegiance to something other than the Chinese state.

"They [Chinese authorities] want Islam in China to operate primarily through Chinese language," Darren Byler, a Xinjiang expert, told Reuters.

The Arabic script on a halal store seen covered in Niujie, Beijing, on July 19, 2019. Reuters

The majority-Muslim Hui ethnic group, who are scattered around China, also fear that the government will extend its crackdown to them.

In the northern city of Yinchuan, home to the largest concentration of Hui Muslims in the country, authorities have banned the daily call to prayer because it apparently created noise pollution, the South China Morning Post reported last year.

One unnamed imam in Linxia, central China, also told Agence France-Presse: "They want to secularize Muslims, to cut off Islam at the roots. These days, children are not allowed to believe in religion: Only in communism and the party."

Read more: China is locking up its Muslim minorities, and pushing Islamophobia to get Europe to do it too

China has also been cracking down on "underground" Catholic churches, such as this one in Jiexi, photographed in March 2018. Andy Wong/AP

Monitored services, censored sermons

The crackdown extends beyond Islam.

Authorities have also targeted Christians outside the state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant associations by burning Bibles, shutting down churches, and ordering people to renounce their faith.

Some churches allowed to remain open have to install facial-recognition cameras in the building, or risk getting shut down. Party officials censor and add state propaganda to pastors' sermons, Bob Fu, who runs the US rights group ChinaAid, told France24 last year.

Read more: China is reportedly burning bibles and making Christians renounce their faith to ensure total loyalty to the Communist Party

Last September, authorities in China and the Vatican signed an agreement in which Pope Francis officially recognized seven Beijing-appointed bishops, who had been excommunicated because they weren't approved by the Holy See. Critics said the deal ceded power from the Holy See to the Communist Party.

China has about 9 million Catholics, 5.7 million of whom worship in state-sponsored churches and organizations, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA).

Additionally, there are about 68 million Protestants in China, but only 23 million of them worship in state-affiliated churches, RFA reported.

Two monks wait before the customary flag-lowering ceremony at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in May 2012. Feng Li/Getty

Monks raising the Communist Party flag

Buddhism and Taoism — which has historically deeper roots in East Asia — are not exempt either.

China restricts religious operations in Tibet, and spiritual leader the Dalai Lama remains in his decades-long exile.

Activists say the state monitors the daily activities of major Tibetan monasteries, limits believers' travel and communications, and has routinely detained monks on terrorism charges — not dissimilar from the situation in Xinjiang.

Last summer, China's famous Shaolin Temple — an ancient Buddhist monastery believed to be the birth place of kung fu — raised the Chinese national flag for the first time in its 1,500-year history as part of a government campaign to demonstrate its patriotism.

Monks at the Shaolin Temple raise the Chinese national flag to mark National Day in October 2018. The ceremony marked the second time, since August that the Chinese flag was raised in the temple's 1,500-year history. Yuan Xiaoqiang/Orient Today via Reuters

'No other source of moral or social authority is tolerated'

The Communist Party, keen to maintain its sole grip on power, disapproves of all kinds of grassroots organizations as they are seen to undermine it and disrupt internal stability.

Wye, the former British Embassy official, said China's keenness to exert control over religions is also to limit foreign influence.

"There's always been a concern the Chinese state has had about the extent of foreign influence over religion and the way foreign forces might use to manipulate societal thought," Wye, now an associate fellow at Chatham House, told Business Insider last year.

"This is part of the wider 'China dream' that Xi Jinping has, to make China big and strong again," he added.

"Whatever political and social development China will take in the future, it is to be decided and promulgated by the Chinese Communist Party, and no other source of moral or social authority is tolerated."