An article in the Washington Post on December 27, highlighted the efforts of  Chris Smith, a Republican, representing New Jersey in the U.S. House of Representatives, to dissuade the Vatican from seeking a form of accommodation with Beijing despite its ongoing anti-religion campaign. In September, Vatican officials signed a "provisional agreement" that essentially ceded to the Chinese government the power to choose — subject to papal review — every candidate for bishop in China, which has an estimated 10 million to 12 million Catholics. He said the United States and several European countries have condemned it, but any nation that values freedom of religion should unite in denouncing China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners. In particular, Muslim-majority countries, strangely muted regarding the persecution of Muslim Uighurs, must protest these abuses even at the risk of endangering the benefits from China’s "Belt and Road" infrastructure projects. He added that Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and he had urged the Trump administration to use Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to target Chinese officials responsible for egregious human rights abuses. Chris Smith said the United States must lead the way in letting the Chinese Communist Party know that taking a hammer and sickle to the cross and enslaving more than 1 million Uighurs in an effort to erase their religion and culture are destructive, shameful acts that will not be tolerated by the community of nations.

(Comment: Earlier in September 2018, Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader who immigrated to the United States in 1997 and founded the persecution watchdog organisation China Aid, briefed the House Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations on China's crackdown on religion. He said "Religious freedom in China has really reached to the worst level that has not been seen since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution by Chairman Mao [Zedong] in the 1960s". He disclosed that China's Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the Chinese Christian Council (CCC - China's state-sanctioned Protestant bodies) held a seminary in July 2018 for preliminary discussion about the five-year plan, outline of which was finalized at a meeting this March, on "promoting the Sinicization of Christianity." He also claimed over 4,000 to 6,000 crosses of state-sanctioned churches have been torn down and churches that have crucifixes on the inside must "put up pictures of Chairman Mao and Chairman Xi [Jinping] on both sides of the cross".  "In the beginning of every church worship service, the choir of the church has to sing a few communist revolutionary songs praising the communist party before they can sing the worship songs." State officials have also urged 20,000 house churches to close and join state-sanctioned churches.