China veteran Ian Johnson describes how faith and value systems in China have been developing over the past century and how the government and the communist party acted on religion at the USCCA.
Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking for more experts on cultural change at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
Scholar Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao
Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.
Are you looking at more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
 |
| Ian Johnson |
Johnson spoke before a crowd of about 50 students and faculty Monday about this six-year venture.
“I’ve been thinking about writing this book for over 30 years, since I first went to China in 1984,” Johnson said. “I had gone to China to learn Chinese and look at this country that was just opening up.”
During China’s period of economic reform, foreign media mostly focused on the nation’s rise as it joined the World Trade Organization, hosted the Olympics and came into the world as an economic superpower, Johnson said.
However, he explained that these global perceptions failed to accurately represent the national sentiment at the time.
“For many Chinese people, I think China was already entering a newer era, an era of uncertainty and anxiety,” he continued.
At the start of the 21st century, Chinese citizens’ excitement about their massive gains in material wealth began to fade, Johnson noted. As scandals about tainted food and political corruption hit the country, Chinese people began to question cultural values, he said.
At the same time, China’s economy was soaring and rates of urbanization were picking up. Racked with uncertainty about the grounding of their society, moving from agrarian lives with familial and community support to big cities, some Chinese citizens began to see religion as a means of adjusting to a more complex world.
“What religion is for a lot of people in China is a way to recreate community,” he said.
“People are moving to these big, anonymous cities, and they feel that they lack something. These religious communities, whether they’re Christian or Daoist or Buddhist, in some way help recreate structure.”
 |
| Ian Johnson |
Fo Guang Shan is perhaps the most successful of these groups. Since coming to China more than a decade ago, it has set up cultural centers and libraries in major Chinese cities and printed and distributed millions of volumes of its books through state-controlled publishers. While the government has tightened controls on most other foreign religious organizations, Fo Guang Shan has flourished, spreading a powerful message that individual acts of charity can reshape China.
It has done so, however, by making compromises. The Chinese government is wary of spiritual activity it does not control — the Falun Gong an example — and prohibits mixing religion and politics. That has led Fo Guang Shan to play down its message of social change and even its religious content, focusing instead on promoting knowledge of traditional culture and values.
The approach has won it high-level support; President Xi Jinping is one of its backers. But its relationship with the party raises a key question: Can it still change China?Fo Guang Shan is led by one of modern China’s most famous religious figures, the Venerable Master Hsing Yun. I met him late last year at the temple in Yixing, in a bright room filled with his calligraphy and photos of senior Chinese leaders who have received him in Beijing. He wore tannish golden robes, and his shaved head was set off by thick eyebrows and sharp, impish lips.
At age 89, he is nearly blind, and a nun often had to repeat my questions so he could hear them. But his mind was quick, and he nimbly parried questions that the Chinese authorities might consider objectionable. When I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by spreading Buddhism — proselytizing is illegal in China — his eyebrows arched in mock amusement.
“I don’t want to promote Buddhism!” he said. “I only promote Chinese culture to cleanse humanity.”
Much more in the New York Times.As for the Communist Party, he was unequivocal: “We Buddhists uphold whoever is in charge. Buddhists don’t get involved in politics.”
