I love the news alerts from China Daily and found this an especially useful item:

For the first time in its history, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has mentioned the word “religion” in an amendment to its Constitution adopted on Sunday at the closing session of the 17th CPC National Congress. . . .

It said the insertion has been made in light of the new circumstances and tasks.

The CPC is atheistic but allows freedom of religious beliefs. China is home to 100 million religious faithful, largely Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, Catholics and Islamites.

We’ve long planned to develop an issue about faith - a word we used because it seemed more neutral, and less Western, than religion. But if the CPC Constitution now refers to religion, perhaps that’s what we’ll use, too. We had the topic on our editorial list because it is a subject that a number of Chinese colleagues have urged us to explore and write about. Not because they are themselves believers, but because they see faith - or religion - as of considerable importance in China today and know that it is a subject that we can deal with effectively at Guanxi: The China Letter because we work hard to be fair and accurate and have, at Berkshire Publishing, developed many projects on world religions with many experts. The full article is here.