Mao once said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” It seems the Chinese people are on a drug spree as religious practice in China is on the rise.
The Chinese Communist Party regulates the practice of religion in China, and recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism. The Party enforces a separation of the Chinese Catholic Church from the Catholic Church in Rome. Although, only a small segment of the overall 1.3 billion population, the Party ignores 23 million Muslims.
Tom Watkins
Not only has the number of adherents to the five state-approved religions increased, but the practices of both communal religions and new religious movements have also become increasingly visible. As research by anthropologists and sociologists over the last four decades has made clear, religiosity in China today is alive and well, notwithstanding the reports of persecution against Falun Gong followers, clampdowns against house churches, or harassment of Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims, all of which still happen all too often.
The Council On Foreign Relations points out that Article 36 of the Chinese Constitution says Chinese citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief.” It bans discrimination based on religion, and it forbids state organs, public organizations, or individuals from compelling citizens to believe in, or not believe in, any particular faith. But religious freedom is still not universal in China. The state only recognizes the five official religions and considers the practice of any other faith illegal. Religious organizations are required to register with one of five state-sanctioned patriotic religious associations, each of which is supervised by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). Religious groups that fail to affiliate with one of the five official religions are denied legal protection under Chinese law.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the number-two Republican and the highest-ranking Jewish Republican in the US Congress recently said: “Religion is something that’s constitutionally protected for us, and we want to be able to promote that as a human right across the world.”
Cantor was in China leading a bipartisan congressional delegation as President Obama concluded his trip to Asia, and believes China should act to ensure religious freedoms. Chinese officials claims their constitution allows for religious freedom and believe US officials should not be sticking their nose in China’s internal affairs.
Internally — Chinese Grasp Religion
According to a recent report in The Telegraph, “China, officially an atheist country, is on the fast track to being home to the world’s largest Christian congregations – surpassing the US, Mexico and Brazil – with its total Christian population expected to exceed 247 million within the next 15 years.”
When Mao took control of the Country in October 1949, foreign missionaries were expelled or jailed, churches closed and their schools, hospitals, and orphanages taken over by the newly installed government.
Fenggang Yang, Chinese born American sociology professor at Purdue University and author of “Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule” said, “Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this … It’s ironic – he didn’t. Ultimately, he actually failed completely.”
China A Twitter/Weibo About Religion
According to data taken from search results on the platform in April, the Chinese Communist Party appears far more willing to allow Christian terminology to appear on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter) than Communist argot. For example, a search for the word “Bible” yielded over 17 million recent results, while the iconic Quotations of Chairman Mao, received fewer than 60,000 mentions. “Christian congregation” was mentioned over 41.8 million times, whereas “the Communist Party” clocked in at just 5.3 million mentions.
In a country that is losing its historical cultural and spiritual moorings as change comes to its citizens at warp speed, many of the 1.3 billion Chinese are seeking meaning in life at a time when neither the communist state or its new-found capitalist values are offering any direction.
Scholars have pointed out that most Chinese people take a pragmatic view towards religion. Even if one is not in fact religious, he or she might visit temples on special occasions, or pray to Buddha to ask for blessings.
In a recent article in the Gospel Coalition, they state: “Part of the reason for the exponential growth of religion is attributable to the sheer size of the population of China. With 1.3 billion people in the country, Christians comprise only 5 percent of the country. If current trends hold, in 2030 Christians in China will make up almost 9 percent of the total population. While the ratio of Christians to population would still be small, the total numbers are astounding. By mid-century, China may have more citizens who identify as Christians than the United States has citizens.”
Christian Appeal
In his book, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, author Rodney Stark concludes “that Christianity was a success because it provided those who joined it with a more appealing, more assuring, happier, and perhaps longer life.”
Stark’s provocative book challenges conventional wisdom and finds that Christianity’s dominance of the Western world arose from “its offer of a better, more secure way of life.” For many Chinese coming from the disasters of The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, and now roaring industrialization and hyper-change, they are left with seeking the meaning of life: religion may be just the plug to fill this void.
Follow The Yuan
There are economic reasons that “faith” is spreading. Having crisscrossed China over the past quarter of a century, I have witnessed some local Party leaders use religion for economic benefit. They are keen to build and re-build temples and restore religious artifacts, all while disregarding government religious policies in the name of tourism and fattening local government coffers.
Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven set the stage for an Emperor (today’s modern President) of China to determine if he was sufficiently virtuous to rule. If he did not fulfill his obligations as Emperor, then he lost the Mandate and thus the right to rule.
There were four principles to the Mandate:
1) Heaven grants the emperor the right to rule,
2) Since there is only one Heaven, there can only be one emperor at a time,
3) The emperor’s virtue and how he handles himself determines his right to continue to rule, and,
4) No one dynasty has a permanent right to rule.
So, with all this talk of religion, those seeking to hold onto the Mandate of Heaven may justly seem nervous.
Chinese rulers, going back centuries, did not like to share power. China’s current President, Xi Jinping, is no different. How will he and the Communist Party react to a Christian Chinese population that may well grow to nearly 250 million by 2030?
The Party, at its founding in 1921, had just 50 members, but it grew to 4.5 million when the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. Today, according to latest figures from the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Communist Party of China (CPC) exceeds 85 million.
By 2030, unless the Party goes on a significant membership drive, organized Chinese Christians will outnumber Party members by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.
China is undergoing profound changes. Daily, the Communist Party is facing tests to their governance of the country, in implementing reforms, addressing corruption, and shifting the export market economy to a consumer-based economy. All the while they face the challenges of environmental degradation, a bubbling housing market, a banking crisis, and dealing with their external environment that now include tensions in the South China Sea with Japan.
Commentary in the People’s Daily newspaper captures the challenges going forward: As the Chinese proverb goes “Be mindful of possible danger in times of peace.”
While the gospel is spreading in China, nervous local and Provincial officials are literally ripping down churches, as they have recently did in Wenzhou.
Chinese leaders do not appreciate outsiders meddling in China’s internal affairs. Erecting churches and organizations that are viewed as antithetical to the Communist Party will always cause friction.
Pragmatism, economics, searching for universal truth and meaning, a desire to be part of something bigger than self — all point to more Chinese people engaging in organized religion.
Seems the Chinese leaders may need to say a prayer themselves — asking that they maintain the Mandate from Heaven, because, after all, the masses are getting religion.
Tom Watkins has had a lifelong interest in China sparked by a great fourth grade teacher. He has worked for over three decades to build economic, educational and cultural ties between the US and China. He is advisor to the University of Michigan Confucius Institute, Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation and Detroit Chinese Business Association. He can be reached at tdwatkins88@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @tdwatkins88.
