"Love for the homeland must be greater than the love for the Church and the law of the country is above Canon law," declared Msgr. Fang Xingyao to the Political Consultative Conference on Religions held last November 26 in the capital.
This is not recent news. Just over two years ago, on November 14, 2017, smpc.com reported as follows, quoted in part [2]:
Thousands of Christians in an impoverished county in rural southeast China have swapped their posters of Jesus for portraits of President Xi Jinping as part of a local government poverty-relief programme that seeks to “transform believers in religion into believers in the party”.
Located on the edge of Poyang, China’s largest freshwater lake, Yugan county in Jiangxi province is known equally for its poverty and its large Christian community. More than 11 per cent of its 1 million residents live below the country’s official poverty line, while nearly 10 per cent of its population is Christian, according to official data.
...
Qi Yan, chairman of the Huangjinbu people’s congress and the person in charge of the township’s poverty-relief drive, said the campaign had been running across the county since March. He said it focused on teaching Christian families how much the party had done to help eradicate poverty and how much concern Xi had shown for their well-being.
...
A resident of another township in Yugan, surnamed Liu, said that in recent months many of his fellow villagers had been told to remove religious artefacts from their homes.
“Some families put up gospel couplets on their front doors during the Lunar New Year, some also hang paintings of the cross. But they’ve all been torn down,” he said.
Many believers did not do so voluntarily, Liu said.
“They all have their belief and, of course, they didn’t want to take them down. But there is no way out. If they don’t agree to do so, they won’t be given their quota from the poverty-relief fund,” he said.
But Qi dismissed claims that the funds were contingent on the religious posters being removed.
“We only asked them to take down [religious] posters in the centre of the home. They can still hang them in other rooms, we won’t interfere with that. What we require is for them not to forget about the party’s kindness at the centre of their living rooms.”
It was not an either-or situation, Qi said.
In China, it is Chinese Socialism not Roman Catholicism (Christianity and religions in general) that is the answer to poverty and it is China's State Law that has supremacy over Vatican's Canon Law.
[1] http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Bishop-Fang-Xingyao:-The-homeland-before-the-Church;-Chinese-law-before-Canon-law-48702.html
[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2119699/praise-xi-jinping-not-jesus-escape-poverty-christian
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