Regardless of your faith (or lack thereof), I hope you agree that this is pretty horrible from a freedom of expression perspective :/
> From the article: The government requires religious groups to register.
China allows for the operation of pretty much all religions including the world's favorite Abrahamic ones. Unregistered religions pique the interest of countries founded on religious persecution, and ignore the operation of registered ones.
Registered ones are able to continue verbatim teachings, but obviously cannot be used to talk about "subversive ideas", in China.
The limitation about what can be discussed, and even the strings attached to the registration requirements (gov't officials part of the church) are things to criticize. Many proponents of any of their religions find registration to be an unfavorable condition.
The point is that this title could just as easily be "China's Christian registrations flourish". Because they do and they are probably the second largest Christian population in the world - simply because the rest of the world is less populated - while a non-registered minority also contains possibly tens of millions of people and it will seem like any massive civil rights crackdown because it also affects millions of people.