Bater, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), led a team to Central China's Hubei province from May 19 to 23 to inspect local work on religious talent cultivation.

The team visited Shiyan city, Shennongjia Forestry District and Suizhou city, where they went to religious organizations, schools, venues, and local townships and talked with local religious figures, scholars and grassroots officials and residents. 

The team acknowledged Hubei's efforts in prioritizing religious work, enhancing capacity to manage religious affairs, and improving the working mechanisms. The law-based governance of religious affairs has seen significant improvement and the team on the Marxist study of religions and related research has continued to expand. Efforts have also been made to guide the religious community to uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the principle that religions in China must be Chinese in orientation. Additionally, the province has worked to increase the role of religious organizations and religious schools, and to cultivate grassroots clerical personnel as well as talents who are both well-versed in religious scriptures and doctrines and proficient in China's traditional culture.

The team emphasized that the cultivation of "three teams" - a team of Party and government cadres, a team of representatives in the religious field, and a team of researchers in religious studies - is of great importance for advancing religious work in the new era. They proposed further leveraging the CPPCC as a specialized consultative body to organize CPPCC members to conduct in-depth research, engage in discussions, and build broad consensus and support for cultivating the "three teams" for religious work.

CPPCC members in the religious sector vowed to lead by example in improving self-education, self-management and self-discipline, striving to be politically reliable, religiously accomplished and morally sound, so that they can better help religions adapt to socialist China.