Washington, June 15 -- Rep. Chris Smith issued the following press release:
Beijing calls its new law "ethnic unity." The phrase is meant to reassure the world. It should alarm it.
Every country needs social peace. Every nation needs a shared civic identity. But the Chinese Communist Party is not asking Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, Hui Muslims, Manchus, Cantonese speakers and others to participate equally in a common future. It is demanding that their languages, faiths, memories and children be remade to fit a Party-approved mold.
That is not unity. It is erasure.
Catholics should recognise this pattern. In China, even the public and institutional life of the Church is tolerated only insofar as it can be managed, monitored and made subor...