China Forces All Religious Buildings to Fly Communist Flag
China’s state-run newspaper Global Times derided critics in the West Thursday for condemning a new initiative forcing all religious buildings to fly China’s red flag as a means to “enhance the concept of nation.”
The newspaper claimed the move was necessary because, without imposing the government’s wishes on individual religions, the nation could “lurch toward war.”
Requiring religious institutions to fly the national flag, a symbol of the nation’s embrace of communism in 1949, is necessary because “religions are exclusive” and the government has a responsibility to work on “strengthening people’s national and civic consciousness,” the Global Times argued....