 Thank you very much, Thierry, for this kind introduction. Let me then start with a couple of introductory remarks on the state-religion relationship in China, first at present and secondly, how it was envisaged in the recent and remote past. After two decades, several decades of renewal, religious renewal in post Mao Zedong China and especially after the opening of Deng Xiaoping, renewal which enjoyed a large degree of tolerance from the government, we have seen a sudden change this last two years. The reasons for these changes, I think, will be ultimately recognized as largely political but I leave that to my co-panelists to discuss later. Let me just start by putting this religious question into perspective. The first time was probably in 2016 when Xi Jinping convened and presided personally a conference on the place of religion and society in China. This was the first time that such a high-level conference had been convened in 10 years. So something was in the making there. This was confirmed last year in October 2017 in the 19th Party Congress, which, as you know, decided a number of very far-reaching constitutional changes, including the indefinite term in office of Xi Jinping. Now, what's interesting is that along with these great political decisions, religion appeared once again at the heart of the political agenda of China. What were the measures introduced in 2017? The first and most often talked about the cynicization of religion. Now, this is a very interesting term and with strange implications which we could perhaps discuss later if you're interested. I won't have time now to remain to dwell on this. The second was to place religions under the authority of the United Front Department, which is a unit of the Communist Party, which oversees and surveys, let's say, if that term applied to China's civil society or elite groups that are non-CCP and their overseas extensions as well. So this organization was given also the authority of ethnic minorities, ethnic minorities and religious affairs with their overseas extensions. So one can understand a bit what this meant for the situation of religions in China. The third point was patriotic education. Priests had to undergo education and Marxism and patriotism and Chinese culture and so forth. This is a little bit strange when it was applied to Confucian organizations or to Daoist priests because in the context of cynicization, since there's nothing more Chinese really than these two things. But so we understand that the cynicization really means to render religious organizations into conformity with Marxist ideology and socialist values. That's was the point. This produced some strange effects, like model Daoist, for example. Liang Xinjiang is a model Daoist who, after extensive reeducation, became an important media figure who declared things like we came to the defense of China in international controversies, like the South China Islands and the expansion in that area, or who declared publicly that Daoists didn't believe in heaven or in the afterlife and was therefore in conformity with socialist values and furthermore that Daoism was not suitable for children. Now this was another issue, another policy issue released in that Congress, that minors would not be given access to religious education or to worship activities. So if Daoism was not suitable for children, that's what this means. They should be excluded from early indoctrination as it was considered. Of course, with foreign religions, Christianity, Islam, the question of sinicization has some sense. And as far as the Christians are concerned, they still largely organize their own sinicization sessions and training and reeducation. As for Islam, China did not take such risks. As you may know, the 1 million Uighur Muslims are in detention now in internment camps in Xinjiang, which is their main native area. The mosques are obliged to fly the national flag and to provide training to their children in Chinese culture, Chinese language, and things like that. This is not just Islam that is concerned, but the internment program, yes, which has raised a lot of controversy. This was first noticed by the press, then picked up by the United Nations Human Rights Organization, and all came to the conclusion that this figure of 1 million is about correct. China first denied the existence of these camps, but when aerial photos showed them, we have recently changed their strategy and have legalized the system. So now they exist and the detainees, they are legally detained. Now, these measures have continued beyond 2017 and 2018. In February, a new guideline was issued, which is especially insistent on Chinese religions having to be inspired by Chinese traditional culture. This is an older measure of desacralization, if you like, that was already practiced in the Cultural Revolution. China temples into museums and make them part of Chinese cultural heritage, which are worth visiting on that account and, by the way, also become tourist attractions. So this idea of accepting, tolerating religion under the condition that it is a manifestation of traditional culture, primarily. Then, yes, in addition to that, religious doctrine was to be reinterpreted in the light of guidelines issued by the Chinese Communist Party. So you see all of this reflected in the statements of the model Taoist priest. In April of this year, a white paper was published on religion in China, which explains that all of these measures were ultimately to protect religious freedom. Now, this could be a page from the French book of secularism of laïcité, that ultimately restrictive measures taken against this or that religious organization serve to guarantee the religious liberty of all. So you see that the very acute arguments are being used here. The White Book also specifies that civil servants and Communist Party members are forbidden any kind of religious activity or participation in worship or visits to temples. They're liable to prosecution for corruption if they're seen doing these things, because it is a breach of their contract as communists to be exemplary atheists. If you want to measure the potential for social conflict arising from these kind of policies, it's good to think about it for a moment what actually drove the renewal of religion in post Maoist China. I think one big issue was the question of values. After a century and a half of disorientation of systematic destruction of traditional values, there was a real sense that this was needed. Also in the field of morality, especially in the light of government negligence in some of these areas like consumer protection, food safety, infant formula being adulterated with substances which put lives at risk, infant inoculations to vaccinations. So this raises question of how far in society can really this kind of immorality be tolerated? And what has gone wrong with the Chinese value system? I think a lot of people felt that this was one motivation for them to re-explore the world of religion. Other attractions are to introduce an element of diversity, perhaps, in a society which is largely uniform and that practices a strict thought control. Have a diversity of thought, a diversity of practice, a diversity of ideals. Of course, linked with that is also the identity building aspect that you have in any religious community. The sense that this was a way of affirming and defining your own identity vis-a-vis an extremely intrusive state. To share these communities with like-minded people, who share the similar values and similar personal aspirations, which were not subject to social or political control. Also to find an outlet for social engagement. This was again an area where the state was in some ways deficient in education and in dealing with poverty and charitable issues and so forth. And it has to be said that before this recent turn of events, this was an aspect explicitly recognized by the Communist Party that religious movements had a useful function in that regard. I would say also the religious doctrines, especially Buddhist and Christian, of universal justice, a sense of justice which proceeds from a law that applies everywhere, even beyond the human sphere. And within the human sphere applies equally to everybody. This is an extremely attractive idea and their own experience, in terms of their own experience. And also doctrines which seek equity that are egalitarian. Remember that China has one of the highest coefficients of inequality in terms of income distribution in the world. So I think these were attractions that drew people into religions. Confrontation versus cooperation is, of course, the age-old issue in the state-religion relationship. Since I'm an historian, if I still have a minute or two, let me just look backwards a little bit on this issue. I would say that China is and has been fundamentally a religious state. The emperor was the son of heaven. Some Chinese rulers became bodhisattva emperors. Others were ordained Taoist priests. The rise of Taoism as a large-scale social organization in the later Han dynasty in the second century took place against the background of the declining political power of the Han dynasty. Fast-forwarding a bit to the 19th century, a similar situation prevailed in the Taiping rebellion, which was a Christian-inspired insurrection whose leader believed himself to be the younger brother of Christ, which an insurrection which attained a very large proportions and very nearly toppled the Qing dynasty. Why are these questions of political legitimacy and insurrection linked so much with religion in China? I think it's ultimately because the state and religion are conceived on the same model, the same cosmic model. They form part of one organic whole. And if one of these two elements is in decline or in trouble, then this calls into question the viability of the other, since in times of dynastic decline the rise of these kind of religious movements. During the, in between these two incidents that I mentioned, there were of course periods of union and of disunion in China. And these were moments where religion stepped in as a legitimation for political power, as interpreters of the heavenly mandate. And you see how religion was played very astutely in that regard also by foreign leaders. After the unification of the Tang dynasty, the Tang emperors declared themselves descendants of Laozi, thereby merging the imperial cult with the Daoist cult. After the Tang, it was the neo-confucianism which arose as the state, as the ideology of the late imperial state. So you see that the politics and religion are very closely intertwined throughout the entire history. If you take some later examples of foreign powers like the Jenghis Khan, the Mongol ruler of China and most of Asia. The question of religious policy was very acute for Jenghis Khan because he needed to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people. And he opted for Daoism, thinking that this was the quintessential, this was the soul of China. This was a way into their mentality and perhaps their affection. The Manjus and the rulers of the Qing dynasty from the 17th century chose the opposite path, being foreigners that chose Lamaism, the Tibetan form of Buddhism as the state religion. So rulers came to different conclusions, but this was always an issue which religious policy to adopt to win political loyalty and the hearts and minds of the people. Another objective among the stakes of religious policy is engineering modernity. In the 19th century, you see this starting, that the Chinese intellectuals and statesmen felt that the backwardness of China then was due to its belief system. And getting rid of superstition would help China modernize. The Republic after the revolution, the Republic of China continued in this way and with the movements of iconoclasm, destruction of temples, persecution of religious followers, which is exactly, of course, what you saw continued in the Cultural Revolution after the communist revolution. So I mentioned this to show that what we're seeing now, what we've seen throughout the communist period of government in China, is not something entirely new. Finally, an issue in religious policy is international relations. And the sensitivity about Chinese sovereignty, which has always been there, has, of course, become particularly acute in recent years. And it's an issue with the, with sanitization, of course, and with the foreign religions in China. The question of how to bring foreign religious organizations in China to heal of the authorities and how also to regulate the religious activities of foreigners in China. So, of course, the foremost things that come to mind is the Catholics, the fact that the Catholics in the entire world are under the authority of the Vatican was a sore issue, which Chinese thinking about sovereignty could never very well tolerate. Of course, very recently, an agreement has been formed on this subject, which is quite controversial. And especially many of us observers in Hong Kong have felt that this was not a very propitious time in China's relationship to religion, to reach out for an agreement in this area. The interpretation you get from the Vatican is very different. If you're interested in this subject, perhaps we can return to that also in the discussion. Islam, of course, is obvious. The fear that Islam is connected with Islamist movements around the world and prone to become part of worldwide terrorist organizations, which is obviously also used in part as a pretext to move against these groups. There are ethnic groups, too, because Islam in China is strictly identified with ethnic groups, especially the Uyghurs, I mentioned earlier, and the Hui, which is also a way of saying that Islam is not something suitable for Han Chinese. So this foreign dimension, too, is important. So to sum up, I would say the issue of religious policy is to do with the question of a civic space that religions are capable of organizing within the communist state, which is, of course, part of the aspiration of people who pursue this kind of activity, which is very much part of their dream. I must say that, beside values that I mentioned, and morality, there's also more metaphysical questions which express themselves in these spaces, like, who am I? What is the meaning of life? Are the Deng Xiaoping said, to get riches glorious also? But also, I think he meant, in addition to displaying ideological zeal and seeking happiness there. So, OK, now there's a vast middle class which has attained this kind of wealth. And they're beginning to ask, well, are there also other sides to happiness beyond ideological zeal, getting rich, and pure materialism? These kind of questions that religious followers of the world over ask themselves, of course, present in China, too. And creating these spaces within the state is one of the motivations. Along with creating these separate spaces comes, of course, offering alternative models of society. And you can see that all of these subjects are anathema to the authorities in China. A third one I might mention is the power of mobilization, especially in the age of social networking. We're talking about very large numbers of people. The statistics about religious practice in China are very difficult to come by. One could say that 80% of all of Chinese people follow some kind of, or believe, or practice some forms of Taoism or popular religion and subscribe to Confucian values. So this is something very vast. The authorities and academics in China agree that something like 300 million Chinese are practicing members of religious organizations. So compared to that, the Communist Party is 90 million. And when you're talking about these kind of numbers and the power of mobilization of modern networking, then this is certainly a question for some concern. Now, I'm not saying, and I think the Vatican, and coming to an agreement right now, is not saying that this whole situation is carved and marble and necessarily unchanging. And Chinese rulers have also famously hesitated in adopting their religious policy. Even Jenglis Kanhu, as I said, opted for Taoism. Later changed his mind and ordered the burning of the Taoist canon. I believe that Xi Jinping may not be somebody so fundamentally and ideologically driven on this question either. It is known that at an earlier time in his career, he said that religious activity is an integral part and religious activity and aspiration are integral parts of human civilization. Early in his career, too, he befriended and supported a Buddhist community. So you see that the things are not so black and white. The question now, I think, is why has religious policy in China taken such a radical turn? And I think this is something to do with the present political context. And there, I will pass to my co-pamilist.