From Red River to Chengdu, religious activity reporting has begun: Why grassroots religious governance has shifted to “mass discovery”

Since 2026, China has successively launched an award-winning reporting system for so-called “illegal religious activities.” Yunnan Red River State issued an announcement in February, listing 35 categories of matters, and stipulating that ordinary, larger and major clues will be awarded 200 to 5000 yuan respectively; China has subsequently introduced a trial method, giving 200 to 800 yuan for verifying clues.

These policies do not simply add a hotline of reporting. They extend the management of religious affairs from professional supervision by government departments, religious venues and public security agencies to community residents, hotels, travel agencies and ordinary business entities. Whether religious activity is "legal" is therefore increasingly likely to be identified and by neighbors, landlords, company employees or site operators in daily social relationships and then into administrative procedures.

The list of Red River states shows that regulatory targets have gone far beyond violence, fraud or extremism.

Among the 35 categories of reports disclosed by the National Religious Affairs Commission of the Red River State, both include the use of religion to endanger national security, the implementation of terrorist activities, fraudulent fundraising, and clear violations, including the holding of collective religious activities in unregistered private homes, office buildings, hotels, restaurants, parks, etc., religious training online, inviting foreign or overseas people to preach, and the establishment of meeting places without approval.

But the boundaries of the system have also become more complicated. A peaceful family prayer meeting, online check-in or temporary religious gathering can also enter the reporting list if the corresponding registration is not completed. For believers, the risk is no longer just from the law enforcement’s active inspection, but from the mutual supervision in the daily social networks.

The “award announcement” change is governance incentive.

Traditional administrative supervision relies on the authorities to actively detect violations; the reward system increases the economic incentive for ordinary people. The Red River State major clue maximum reward is $5,000, and the actual clue reward is $200 to $800. The information of the whistleblower is confidential, and false reporting and accusations are clearly prohibited. From a public administration perspective, such systems help to detect hidden violations; but when the reporting behavior includes broadly defined religious activities, the reward can also increase the likelihood of neighboring conflicts, private complaints and excessive reporting into the administrative system.

The effectiveness of governance therefore depends on the back-end process: whether the reporting has been fully verified, whether the reporting person can explain the situation, whether the administration can distinguish between peaceful religious practices and acts that truly endanger public security, and whether the misreporting can be timely corrected. If only the one-way chain of "discovery

• reporting
• punishment" and the lack of clear hearings, review and judicial review, mass participation could turn from governance tools to social pressure.

This year’s new Security Management Penalty Act also provides a more direct penalty interface for such local governance.

Human Rights Watch pointed out that the amendment of the Public Security Administration Penalty Act, which came into force in January 2026, for the first time included specific “illegal religious activities” in the scope of administrative detention, and can be detained from 5 to 15 days. The Chinese government has long argued that citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief in accordance with the law, but religious activities must comply with laws such as registration, location, network dissemination and overseas contacts.

The controversy is that China’s religious freedom protection and administrative licensing systems are highly overlapping. When “registering” becomes an important criterion for judging whether activities are legitimate, the state’s actual management includes not only harmful acts, but also the locations, ways of organizing and channels of dissemination of religious activities. This system has a direct impact on groups such as family churches who are unwilling or unable to enter the official registration system.

Local documents also show that religious governance is becoming more closely linked to social governance platforms.

The Red River State 2026 National Religious Work Conference called for the promotion of religious Chineseization, the strengthening of the rule of law in religious affairs, and the integration of grassroots governance and stability work into the overall deployment. Religious regulations in Guangzhou and other places also proposed the establishment of reporting incentives, information sharing mechanisms, and the use of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and big data to enhance religious management capabilities. Religious management is no longer an independent administrative line, but gradually embedded in the community, public security, market supervision, network platforms and social governance system.

This model of governance increases the ability of the state to access information and coordinate departments, but also brings up new privacy and freedom boundaries issues. Do hotels need to determine whether guest meetings are religious? How can community staff distinguish between private beliefs and collective activities that require administrative intervention? To what extent do online platforms undertake the obligation to identify religious content? These specific questions can determine the actual rights of ordinary people more than the principle of “regulating religion according to law.”

At the core of China’s attention is whether there are clear borders to “mass surveillance.”

The reporting mechanism itself is not the only one in China. Many countries also encourage the public to report violent crimes, fraud, hate crimes or security risks. The real difference lies in whether the reporting subject is sufficiently specific and whether the state deals only with acts that cause identifiable harm. If the reporting subject extends from violence, fraud to unauthorized peaceful gatherings, private family activities and online religious exchanges, the executive will go deeper into private and community lives.

Documents in Red River and Chengdu have written this trend into specific systems: government bonuses, social clues, religious department checks and, if necessary, public security punishment or other enforcement procedures. The future needs to be observed is not only the number of reports, but how many clues are ultimately punished, what the punishment is based on, whether the notified are remedied, and whether the local publicly misreported and withdrawn cases.

A governance system can increase its ability to “discover problems” through more reporting, but the quality of the rule of law ultimately depends on whether it also has the ability to restrict the wrong state intervention.