There are already clear signs that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is leveraging the Covid-19 crisis to increase repression and cultural destruction in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Christianity is also in its sights and it’s highly likely that under-ground/house churches will be the key focus of a fresh round of repression that will take advantage of the blanket ban on all worship that was enacted in February as China was locked down.

On May 1, controversial new regulations on “ethnic unity” came into effect in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). The “Regulations on the Establishment of a Model Area for Ethnic Unity and Progress in the Tibet Autonomous Region” were adopted by the TAR’s People’s Congress on Jan. 11. The TAR spans about half of traditional Tibet, a historically independent country that China has brutally occupied for more than 60 years.

“The regulations explicitly depart from the principle of ‘preferential treatment’ for Tibetans, which was supposed to guarantee that Tibetans could maintain their culture and traditional way of life in their own homeland,” the International Campaign for Tibet noted.