June 2005 Issue
Opiate Of The Masses: China's War On Religion
Brendan McGowan '06On December 4, 1982, the Fifth Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress in Beijing amended the constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In a revised section entitled “Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaimed religious freedom for all Chinese citizens: “No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion.” Yet, as is so often the case in “revolutionary” societies, reality did not square with professed ideals. To this day, religious freedom in China remains yet another socialist fantasy; the CCP continues to incarcerate individuals and persecute entire religious groups.
Increasing numbers of Chinese are finding the spiritual life, however, and international analysts have generally concluded that trying to stop movements deemed by the government to be “reactionary” or otherwise threatening is ultimately futile. Constant abuse by a government against its own religious citizens is not strictly a religious issue—it is a human rights issue, also. China, the most populous nation in the world, the laughable exemplar of socialist idealism and egalitarianism, is waging a silent war of attrition against its own religious citizens.
It goes without saying that China’s history is steeped in religious and spiritual tradition. China is, of course, the birthplace of Confucianism, and the land where Lao Tzu penned the Tao Te Ching. Buddhism from India, Christianity from the trading ports, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism—all have made their marks on Chinese spiritual life over the centuries.
Yet the People’s Republic of China is today an officially atheist nation. Four out of ten Chinese do not practice any religion whatsoever. Government secularization programs from the dawn of revolution in 1949 until the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s have made religious indifference a safe option for a sizeable portion of the population. Another third of the Chinese people fall under the nebulous category of “folk religionists,” and often maintain Confucian principles while engaging in ancestor worship and ancient shamanistic practices. Christians (primarily of “independent” or indigenous denominations), Buddhists, and Muslims are the three largest “recognized” religions in China. Falun Gong, a nonviolent spiritual system of meditation, healing arts, and physical exertion, has attracted millions of adherents since the early 1990s but has been condemned by the CCP for “spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances and jeopardizing social stability.” Its members have been ruthlessly persecuted since 1999.
According to Marxist theory, religion offers an illusory happiness to the suffering masses, blinding them to the harsh realities of the capitalist system. In many regards, CCP policy has reflected a “faith,” of sorts, that continual revolutionary progress will eliminate the need for any religion at all. A much-heralded document, The 1982 Policy Paper Concerning Religion, underscores this certainty on the part of the Chinese Government:
Religion is seen as a result of social frustrations and exploitation and as a tool to manipulate the masses. In China’s socialist society, this base has been destroyed so that with the advances in education, culture, science, and technology, religion will gradually disappear of its own accord.
The Communist concept of religion as lingering pathology is, however, divorced from reality. Conversions to all faiths – Christians of all denominations, the country’s nineteen million (mostly Sunni) Muslims, and especially Buddhists – continue to rise annually and dramatically. The government claims that only 100 million believers, less than ten percent of the population, profess some kind of faith. This statistic has been used consistently since the 1950s, however, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The CCP has obviously tried very hard over the decades to minimize the perpetual problem of belief.
With no way to check the evident need for religious fulfillment on the part of millions of Chinese, the CCP has instead attempted to appropriate and facilitate religious life itself. The Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) is a monolithic arm of the bureaucracy devoted to controlling the types of religion permissible on the mainland and registering “eligible” practitioners. Many of China’s faithful find the various intrusions of the Bureau alienating and repressive. The RAB limits the number of religious sites in order to “maintain order,” and it freely installs its own Party functionaries into religious hierarchies. Corruption, so endemic on the national level (an astounding thirteen to seventeen percent of China’s $6.5 trillion Gross Domestic Product is devoured annually by a rapacious few) makes itself apparent in state-sanctioned religious organizations as corrupt officials “skim off the top.”
The government’s repression is made manifest in a variety of ways. There are only five “official” religions in China – Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. Followers of other faiths must petition their government for recognition (and subsequent subjugation) or face harsh reprisals. The Vatican is not recognized at all by the CCP, and priests who pledge allegiance to Rome above Beijing face years of detention. A vast underground system of churches, reportedly claiming many more members than those run by the state, exists somewhat outside government interference. Roughly 100,000 Christian missionaries – denounced by the CCP as the remnants of Western imperialism – flow throughout the country, contraband Bibles in tow.
Du Zhonglian, a member of the Russian Orthodox Church who claims a dual Cossack and Chinese heritage, is one example of a believer marginalized by the CCP’s restrictive policies. A 66 year-old native of Beijing, he lived through the bloody Cultural Revolution, in which religious people of all denominations were tortured and sent to psychiatric wards and labor camps by zealous Red Guards. He is still petitioning the government for recognition of his religion, according to the South China Morning Post : “When asked if he meets with other members of the Orthodox community to practice his religion, Mr Du replies firmly: ‘I won't do anything illegal.’ Asked if he still prays at home, he responds simply: ‘In my heart.’”
The governmental repression of the Falun Gong religious sect remains, arguably, one of the most poignant contemporary examples of government paranoia and intolerance vis-à-vis spiritual practice. In 1992, Li Hongzhi, a former government official, first began practicing a nonviolent series of physical and mental exercises, many culled from ancient disciplines without much government interference. His training method was quickly adopted by thousands, then millions, over the course of the decade. On July 25, 1999, some 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners surrounded Zhongnanhai, the CCP central compound in Beijing, in two solid lines. The government, astounded not only by the numbers but also by how quickly Falun Gong practitioners could be mobilized, somehow detected a threat – perhaps in the same vein as the Boxer Rebellion nearly a century before – and declared Falun Gong a dangerous and potentially violent cult. A June 20, 1999, edition of Renmin Ribao (People’s Daily), the mouthpiece of the communist regime, further attempted to justify the impending crackdown by underscoring the need to abolish superstition and pseudo-science, though in reality a need for political stability was obviously the critical element.
That July, Falun Gong was officially declared illegal; numerous Falun Gong websites were jammed and hundreds of thousands of books, tapes, and meditation guides were destroyed. More distressing, of course, is the human element. Tens of thousands (it is impossible to find exact statistics) have been detained, arrested and convicted of “undermining the public order,” and sent off to prison or transformation centers for the standard three-year term for “reeducation.” Maria Chang argues in Falun Gong: The End of Days that it is the viciously defensive CCP that is the true cult, not the peaceful and decentralized Falun Gong. The hypocritical and zealous “cult” of the CCP, devoted to adoration of a leader (Chairman Mao Zedong, and other luminaries such as Deng Xiaoping) and devoted to “brainwashing” (or “reeducation,” call it what you will) is far more cult-like than Falun Gong, which is devoted primarily to deep breathing exercises known collectively as qigong. Yet the label remains, and tens of thousands continue to suffer for it.
What, then, can human rights activists do? We must recognize that China, according to the State Department, is one of six nations “of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act,” alongside countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. We must petition our representatives for further investigation of some of the most ruthless governmental repressions against people of faith in the world today. Currently, Chinese exports to America have a monetary value of well over $9.5 billion dollars annually; if the United States were to reduce its Chinese imports by an economically significant margin, say ten percent, while demanding measurable improvement in human rights for all religious Chinese by the CCP, then Beijing might well make some steps towards progress. Naturally, given the Chinese government’s record of hypocrisy and manipulation, any concessions or promises that are offered must be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. But promises and concessions are the first step towards accountability. It would be in the CCP’S self-interest to make them for the world to see, and it would be in the interest of the Chinese people as well.
[Eds. note – Many articles and monographs have been written on the communist assault on religious practice in China. This article would be incomplete without some reference to the works used to write it—not only to justify the claims made in the piece but also to allow readers to probe the depth of the crisis for themselves.
Human Rights Watch has published several highly informative pieces on religious life in China. Dangerous Meditation and China: State Control of Religion are full of primary source documents, cross-checked statistics and personal accounts.
Chang's Falun Gong, aside from providing some much-needed historical context, explores the theoretical basis for communist reservations about an evidently pacifistic sect. Luo Zhufeng's Religion Under Socialism in China is a translated work, written by an obvious adherent to "the party line," and is therefore intriguing in its own right. Saich's Governance and Politics of China offers a satisfying overview of the Party bureaucracy, while Yijiang Ding's Chinese Democracy After Tiananmen provides further context. The 2005 World Almanac and The World Christian Encyclopedia, published by Oxford University Press, provided statistics on China's religious diversity and its economic vitality. Transcripts of the hearings and roundtables of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Washington, D.C., over the past two years proved invaluable when researching this article. They are available in most libraries in pamphlet form or on the Internet at <http://www.cecc.gov>.]