As with all communist constitutions, China’s basic law lists rights we in the West take for granted. But at the end of that list is a general defeasance clause: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China, in exercising their freedoms and rights, may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society, or of the collective.” And who determines that? Why, the Chinese Communist Party, China’s real government.
Fidel Castro put it succinctly: “Within the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, nothing.” China’s religious repression is “lawful.”