The Study On The Development And Improvement Of Chinese Legal System Of The Freedom Of Religious Belief

Nowadays China has laid more and more emphasis on the freedom of religious belief since the reform and opening-up and its gradual entry into the whole world. As soon as the People's Republic of China was founded, citizen's right to the freedom of religious belief has been clearly defined in the constitution. Apart from this, however, no any other religious protection laws can be found, so for a long time, religious behavior has been adjusted on the base of the Party's policies. After Chinese reform and opening-up, especially in the nineties of last century, religious legislation has mushroomed in all parts of the country. Regulation on Religious Affairs, which came into existence in 2004, indicates great progress of China's religious legislation. So far, almost every province, autonomous region and municipality have had their own comprehensive rules to regulate and protect people's right to the freedom of religious belief. These all showed that great progress has been made in China's religious legislation.But still, various problems exist in current legal system of religious belief protection. For instance, the unclearness of constitutional statutes and absence of religious basic laws lead to conflicts between the spirits of religious freedom protection constitution and the regulations and rules which are under the legal hierarchy. Besides, issues like the registration and social services of religious groups have also been gradually increasing. All of these put forward new requirements for china's legislation and judicial practice. The main causes of those problems include religion complexity, particularity between politics and religion, and people's traditional concept of the freedom of religious belief. To adapt to the new situation, regulate new religious behaviors and protect citizen's freedom of religious belief more effectively, regulation and rules of religion freedom should be improved. In addition, more effort should be put to release basic laws of religion so that other statutes and rules can be improved within strong foundation. In order to build up valuable experience and asset for issuing religious basic law, each place should keep taking innovative legislation spirit to practice religious legislation. Improvement in both the substantive law and the procedural law should be made to provide feasible relief approaches to help citizen protect their freedom of religious belief.