Religion is alive and thriving in the Communist China

[michaela]

Although China is still officially a communist country, the government is increasingly loosening the restrictions on religious organizations. They even subsidize religious practice under the guise of “preserving traditional culture."


Religion is alive and thriving in officially atheist China

The communists who took the reins in China in 1949 viewed religion as backward and superstitious. Authorities did their best to wipe out religious life. And by the end of the 1970s, they'd been very successful.

"There were basically no functioning places of worship in the entire country. This is a place that had over 1 million temples and scores of churches and thousands of mosques," says Ian Johnson, the author of the new book "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao." "They were all closed down or destroyed."

But these days, Johnson says, religion has not only survived in modern China, it's thriving.
"(Karl) Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses, and sometimes I think that the (Chinese) government is a little cynical and thinks, 'Yeah maybe it is the opiate of the masses, but for us, now, we'll use it as the opiate to keep the people in line.'"

President Xi Jinping has called on China's citizens to continue to be "unyielding Marxist atheists." He insists that the country's 85 million Communist Party members remain atheists. But increasingly, he's loosening the restrictions on religious organizations. These days, Chinese authorities even subsidize some religious practice under the guise of backing what the government calls "traditional culture."

Johnson writes about the myriad ways religions are practiced today in China. He describes walking in an elaborate Buddhist-inspired funeral procession in the Beijing neighborhood called the Temple of the Tolling Bell. He delves into the small sect, Eastern Lightning, a cult-like group that will remind some readers of Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual practice. Eastern Lightning dared to attack China's Communist Party.

"They feel it's them against what they call the 'Great Red Dragon,' which is the Communist Party," Johnson says. "They operate illegally, and they almost try to hijack church congregations. They sometimes resort to violence; and their very secretive nature, their proclivity for violence, in some ways, this also reflects how the Communist Party runs China," Johnson says.
The "red line" for the faithful is foreign involvement.

"If people are part of a religion that has a strong foreign component, if they're getting money from abroad, if they're getting training, this is a problem for the government," Johnson says.

But ultimately, all religions are global. And that may increasingly pose a problem for Chinese authorities.
"It's a double-edged sword for the government," Johnson says. "They think religion can maybe provide some stability in a society that is racing forward and doesn't have a center of gravity. ... But religion creates values that are above any government values, ideas of justice, of righteousness, of truth and these things can come back to haunt the party."

This article originally appeared on PRI.org. Its contents were created separately to USA TODAY.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/05/03/religion-atheist-china-communism/101238320/

[Ringo Starr]

Thank you michaela for highlighting the article.

I would like to, if I may, explain the difference between what we today loosely label as communism; Stalinism and Maoism. Maybe it might explain the transition we see in China today.

Communism is a socio-political-economic theory expounded by the great philosopher Karl Marx, advocating class war (bring down the capitalists and feudalists) and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. Marx's economic hypothesis believes that it is this type of system that would provide each and every citizen his fair share of economic spoils. He also believed that it maximized economic output whilst maintaining fair distribution.

Stalin the politician co-opted Marx's popular philosophy and turbo-charged it but clearly it was a failed experiment.

Stalinism is the means of governing and related policies. Stalinist policies in the Soviet Union included state terror, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country, a centralized state, collectivization of agriculture, cult of personality in leadership, and subordination of interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Stalinism promoted the escalation of class conflict, utilizing state violence to forcibly purge society of claimed supporters of the bourgeoisie (the educated and intellectual "middle class"), regarding them as threats to the pursuit of the communist revolution (because they were able to think deeply) that resulted in substantial political violence and persecution of such people. These included not only bourgeois people but also working-class people accused of counter-revolutionary sympathies.

Mao took a page from Stalin's book and generally did the same in communist China, with a Chinese touch. This was when religion and academia were destroyed including in such places as Tibet.

So China under Mao was Maoist/Stalinist rather than communist but that brand of communism has somehow got stuck in our minds as communism.

China today looks much more capitalist rather than communist albeit the state (inclusive of the many cronies) has a big market share in business and a monopoly of socio-politic-economic policy making. Clearly China has learnt that Maoism just does not work but they still have to idolize Mao as the father of modern China just to keep that story line.

China has to reinvent China and it has proven very capable of that, albeit much more so economically and this has and will bring on its set of problems. To dampen the effects of this problem (materialism, unequal economic distribution, corruption, etc.), a culture counter to materialism has to be encouraged. Step in Buddhism.

One style or type of organized society creates or gives birth to the next, a demand-creates-supply dynamic. Cause and effect. We are seeing this progress in China. This time around, Buddhism wins!

[grandmapele]

China of today is not the China of Mao's time. They have shifted from being hardliners to more middle way. They acknowledge that fro China to move forward in this modern world, they have to be economically sound. And, they  have taken steps to rectify that.

They also realize that the the people need a spiritual anchor to be able to move that little bit more and have that little bit more drive and direction.  So, I guess someone else need to look at that too.

[Rowntree]

China has realised they lacked the spirituality in their system. They have started to revive various morals teachings and reeducate the Chinese to be once again a sophisticated, educated and well mannered ethnic group. The grandeur of their royalty and their long existing culture have proven how powerful they were. They were also practising Buddhism and many of its kings and leaders were strong supporters of Buddhism and this has helped to preserve much precious Buddhist texts to be available today.

Looking at the change of the Chinese directions, one cannot deny that China is slowly getting back on their feet and igniting their previous glory. Buddhism will once again be alive in the country and through China, it will once again spread far and wide to benefit many more people!