China can still step back from repressing religion - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China's central government has been cracking down on both Protestantism and the Islam over the past year. The direct future looks grim, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at Foreign Affairs in an addition to a piece he wrote two years ago. The government can still go back to its previously pragmatic take, but Johnson is not sure it will.

Ian Johnson

The government’s attitude toward Islam has been even more problematic. Ten of China’s 55 non-Chinese minority groups, primarily the Hui and Uighurs in the country’s northwest and far west, are Muslim. Here, the issue isn’t just control but the forced assimilation of these peoples. 

Officially, the state is pursuing a war on terrorism in its far western province of Xinjiang.  

Although the problem of violence there is real, all independent observers agree that the main cause of unrest is the heavy hand of the state, which for decades has pursued a policy of resource extraction and resettlement in order to increase the population of ethnic Chinese. 

The resulting downward spiral of repression and violence has culminated in a recent campaign of repression aimed at the very practice of Islam. State authorities have forced Xinjiang stores to sell alcohol and tobacco, for example, and forbidden students from fasting during Ramadan. The repression seems to be spreading beyond Xinjiang to Hui communities in other parts of China, where authorities are tearing down Islamic domes, removing Arabic-language signs, and silencing the outdoor call to prayer. 

Most shocking has been the return of something that indeed has echoes from the Mao era: reeducation camps. At first, the notion of such camps seemed like an unbelievable rumor, but the state has confirmed their existence, justifying them as needed to control extremism. In them, Muslims are essentially secularized by force, forbidden from anything seen as too religious. 

Until now, if one thought of large Asian countries where the mixing of religion and politics has caused strife and violence, India, Indonesia, or Pakistan might come to mind. In the future, this list could include China.

This need not happen. If the state steps back and takes a deep breath, it could avoid the conflicts that its current policies seem bound to create. One has only to think of the years of protest caused by the crackdown on Falun Gong to get an idea of how banning even one sect can become a messy, protracted affair. House churches have also been equally stubborn—just banning the Shouwang Church in Beijing in 2009 resulted in years of protests. And the inevitable backlash against such misguided policies as forcing Muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol is scarcely imaginable. 

Up until now, I’ve always believed in the pragmatism of China’s reform-era leadership, despite the brutality of many measures taken during that period. Yet China is no longer in the reform era. Instead, it is entering a new period, one that may make observers look back fondly on the relatively light touch of the country’s past leaders.

More at Foreign Affairs.

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.

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How Protestants and Roman-Catholics get a different treatment - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Islam has been high on the hitlist of the central government, but Christian faiths seem to get a different treatment. journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, dives for the Independent into the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Ian Johnson:

The government seems to be handling Christianity in two different ways. It has pursued diplomacy towards Roman Catholics, forging a deal with the Vatican that would have Rome recognise government-appointed bishops in exchange for the Vatican gaining some say in how they are appointed. 

This, in theory, would bind all Catholics to the government-run church and make underground churches unnecessary. 

Protestantism, which lacks a centralized structure, has had several important churches closed or destroyed, apparently as a warning. 

These include a large unregistered church in Beijing, the Zion church, which was closed in September, and whose leader was placed under house arrest. 

The crackdown in Chengdu appears to be of another magnitude, partially because Mr Wang is so outspoken and nationally famous. 

Before converting to Christianity in 2005, he was named one of the 50 most prominent public intellectuals in China. 

In 2008, Mr Wang founded Early Rain, and his sermons were often extremely topical, touching on what he saw as rampant materialism in Chinese society and the political compromises made by the government-run church. 

He also opposed the common use of abortion in China, a practice pushed by the government as it sought to control the country’s population. And he staunchly opposed female pastors, expelling one couple from his church because the wife had studied theology and wanted to preach. 

His statements on these topics landed Mr Wang in and out of custody, and he was forbidden from travelling abroad on several occasions. 

But he also advocated radical transparency, making his sermons available online and giving police names of people who attended Early Rain — an effort, he said, to avoid acting as if the church had something to hide. 

After the new religious regulations were promulgated last year, however, Mr Wang’s criticism of the government became increasingly strident. 

Earlier this year, when China’s Parliament put President Xi Jinping’s name in the Constitution and lifted term limits on his office, allowing him to serve beyond his current term, Mr Wang was scathing. 

“Abolishing the term limit on the leader of state does not make a leader but a usurper,” he wrote. “Writing a living person’s name into the Constitution is not amending the Constitution but destroying it.” 

Most recently, he waded into even more sensitive issues, such as the unrest in minority parts of the country. 

In one sermon, he said that the government was waging war on “the soul of man” in Xinjiang, Tibet and Chinese parts of the country, but that it would fail because people would ask themselves: “In the middle of their pitiful and wretched lives, ruled by despotism, and money and power, where is your honour? Where is your dignity? Where is your freedom?” 

Seemingly sensing that he could be detained at any time, Mr Wang months ago wrote a declaration to be published 48 hours after his detention. 

In it, he said he was “filled with anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by the Communist regime.” 

It was not his role to overthrow the government, he said, though he predicted one day its rule would end.

More at the Independent.

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.

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Why Catholicism is shrinking in a increasing religious China - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Protestantism, Buddhism and Taoism grow fast in China, but followers of the Catholic faith are dwindling.  Author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao reports from the countryside on why Catholicism finds it harder to find a solid footprint among Chinese looking for moral values, for the America Magazine.

Ian Johnson:

A key reason for this divergence goes back to the issue of localization. The church’s reluctance to indigenize until the mid-20th century contrasts with the explosive growth in the number of indigenous Protestant leaders as early as the 1920s and ’30s. Many were jailed by the Communists, but their followers formed the basis of today’s huge Protestant “house church” movement. For better or worse, Protestantism in China travels lightly, with self-taught pastors forming churches and attracting large congregations in only a few years. 

This sort of spontaneous institution-building is harder to realize in a more formally structured faith like Catholicism. This is especially true because of China’s state control over religion. In the 1950s, the Communist government set up patriotic associations to control all five religious groups in China—Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Taoism. These committees now manage mosques, temples and churches, appoint key clergy, and run seminaries. 

For groups like Protestants, government control is a burden, but they are more decentralized, so they can ignore hierarchies and flexibly respond to demand. Put simply, any pious believer can form a Protestant church and declare himself or herself head of it. 

That is harder for Catholics to do. After the Communists set up the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association in 1957, state officials began appointing their own bishops. Many Catholics began to feel uncomfortable about attending churches under government control and some stopped going. Others set up an underground Catholic Church in certain parts of China. This church does not recognize the “patriotic” church’s legitimacy. But even the underground church has a fairly rigid hierarchy, with appointments requiring approval by highers-up in China. 

Over the years, the split between the “open” and the underground church has become less pronounced, especially after Benedict XVI’s letter to the church in China in 2007. In it the pope essentially said the underground church should not be a permanent institution (“the clandestine condition is not a normal feature of the Church’s life”) and that Catholics can participate in services offered by the state-recognized church. 

But state control over religion is still problematic, hampering growth and regularly spilling into public view. In 2012, for example, the government appointed Thaddeus Ma Daqinauxiliary bishop of Shanghai. But Bishop Ma announced his resignation from the Patriotic Catholic Association at his episcopal ordination Mass—apparently a protest against the government’s regulation of religion. He was put under house arrest at the Sheshan Seminary, where he largely remains today, a situation that shut down one of the country’s most important seminaries for over a year.

More at the America Magazine.

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.

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China's search for happiness - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Most of China has left poverty behind, but people are still not happy. The search for moral values is now taking over the desire among China's citizens, says author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in PRI. How turning to religion can change the country.

PRI:

“As one guy who told me, 'We used to think we were unhappy because we were poor. Now, we’re no longer poor, but we’re still unhappy,'” says Ian Johnson, a long time correspondent in China, most recently writing for The New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and author of the new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. 

If it’s tempting to pull out the old saying "money can’t buy happiness," many Chinese are more interested these days in figuring out what can. And so, a search for meaning has intensified in recent decades, as the descendents of those who once revered Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, and Chinese emperors before that, now embrace new centers of meaning, and new communities that share their values... 

“A lot of it is driven by this feeling that there are no shared values in Chinese society anymore,” says Johnson. “People constantly talk in social media –—and this is uncensored (by the Chinese government), it’s OK to talk about it — this lack of minimum moral standards in society, that anything goes, as long as you don’t get caught.” 

Another driver, Johnson says, is a desire for community in a society that has rapidly urbanized, with rural Chinese moving to new cities, and old urban-dwellers losing their neighborhoods to demolition and construction of new developments. 

The Communist Party officially recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam, and tries to control each under the umbrella of the state, forbidding most ties with foreign centers of power, such as the Vatican. The party has long been wary of competing parallel power structures, including "house churches," gatherings of Protestant Chinese who seek to practice their faith outside of the strictures of Communist Party rules. Many such adherents still remember and respect Watchman Nee...

Turning to religion or spiritual practice is one way Chinese are now looking for meaning, but, as in the past in China, what starts with finding a new moral center, can lead to a yearning to shape new relationships and rules in society. China is still finding its moral compass and its direction, some 40 years after Mao’s death, and what started as a search for meaning may yet lead to more sweeping societal change. It’s a prospect that makes the Communist Party nervous, and keeps it vigilant. 

“I think all religions have an over-arching idea of justice and righteousness, and heaven, ‘tian,’ that ‘s above all else,” Johnson says. “It helps create among people that it’s not the government that gives us rights and laws. It comes from something higher. And I think that’s the change that could come to China in the future.”

More in PRI.

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 China's cultural change? Do check out this list.