Chinese official slams U.S. report on religious freedom

A senior Chinese religious official has criticized a U.S. religious body's annual report of making groundless accusations against China and twisting the country's religious policies.

Qi Xiaofei, deputy director of the State Administration of Religious Affairs, said the U.S. panel watched religious freedom in other countries through "reversed binoculars", seeing the outside world as "small and ugly."

In a commentary carried by the People's Daily Overseas Edition on Thursday, Qi said that part of the report, released by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which took aim at China's religious policies, shows once again the panel's "ignorance and prejudice."

The report will not have much of a negative impact to China, which "stands on its ground upright", and most of the people will simply brush away its repeated rhetoric, he added.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu expressed the government's "strong dissatisfaction" and "firm opposition" to the report.

"We advise the USCIRF to stop interfering in other countries' internal affairs under the pretext of religion," Jiang said.

Qi claimed that Chinese people enjoy sufficient religious freedom and the country's policy is consistent in respecting and protecting the freedom of religious worship.

"Take Christianity for example," he said, the numbers of believers, churches and publications have boomed remarkably since 1949 when the Communist Party came to power. Indeed, more than 40 million bibles have been published in China over the past 25 years alone.

Qi noted that the number of Protestant Christians in China has risen by over 2,000 percent since 1949. Official estimates as to the current number of Protestants point to figures of more than 100 million, though a recent survey has suggested that the real number may be much in excess.