“After President Xi Jinping stressed during a national education conference on September 10, 2018, that the fundamental task for education is to train builders and successors of socialism, the pressure on teachers to indoctrinate students increased significantly. In June last year, a primary school in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang threatened to dismiss a teacher after finding out that she also preached in a house church. She was told to stop doing that, or the government would punish the entire school. In August, authorities investigated a kindergarten teacher in Shenyang, the capital of the northeastern province of Liaoning, because she is a practicing Protestant. She was forced to quit her job. In November, Chen Qiufa, the CCP Committee secretary of Liaoning Province, demanded to suppress ‘religious influences’ on teachers and students at a meeting for Party members and provincial government officials. In December, at a training event for local Party members in Liaoning’s Anshan city, participants were demanded to carry out ‘four investigations’— scrutinize schools, teachers, students, and their actions—to ensure that no CCP members, teachers, and students in kindergartens, primary or middle schools hold religious beliefs. Similar measures have been implemented at the end of last year in many counties and cities in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A teacher from the eastern province of Shandong told Bitter Winter that last July, local education departments carried out investigations targeting newly employed middle school teachers. The primary focus was to find out if they hold religious beliefs and support the Communist Party.”
“Teachers Forced to Renounce,” Bitter Winter, May 18, 2020