Ye Xiaowen

Who is Ye Xiaowen?

Ye Xiaowen is a Chinese politician who held various top posts relating to state regulation of religion from 1995 to 2009.

Born in 1950 in Ningxiang County in Hunan, Ye became one of the first students of sociology at the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences after a ban before China's reform and opening up. Ye was selected for national politics when he wrote an article based on his time in the Communist Youth League, describing why many Chinese youth were choosing religion, and advocating for a more moderate religious policy. In 1995, he became the director of the Bureau of Religious Affairs under the State Council. There, he worked to prevent religious unrest, select the 11th Panchen Lama, and ban the controversial Falun Gong group.

In 1998, the Bureau of Religious Affairs was renamed the State Administration for Religious Affairs, while Ye Xiaowen remained its director. He acknowledged presiding over a large growth in Christianity in China, and changed policy to say that religion has a place in society, although he persecuted groups that he thought brought foreign control to Chinese churches, like the Roman Catholic Church. In 2007 he declared State Religious Affairs Bureau Order No. 5, which attempted to reduce the influence of the 14th Dalai Lama and other foreign groups on the reincarnations in Tibet. All the while, he traveled often to the United States to defend his religious policy against criticism. Ye was relieved of his religious post in September 2009 to direct the Central Institute of Socialism.