The Never Ending March: China's Religious Policy and the Catholic Church

By Sergio Ticozzi and Stephen Baskerville

Father Sergio Ticozzi, a prominent Italian missionary, has produced an important new account of the religious policies of the Chinese Communist government.  It is clear from his account that religion has long been a central preoccupation of the Communist government and that it continues to be so today.  The government has long engaged not only in suppression of Christian and other religious beliefs but, increasingly, in campaigns to manipulate those beliefs and channel them into serving the political purposes of the state and Party.
Striking in his account is how the Chinese Communist Party continues trying to make ideology function as a political religion.  This has an old pedigree, going back to the personality cult of Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung).  Today’s campaigns appear to be more sophisticated but perhaps equally repressive and futile.  Alongside his own personality cult, President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s “eight-point frugality code” ostensibly attempts to control “formalism, bureaucratic behavior, hedonism and extravagance” and to “ensure that workers have clear political beliefs, high professionalism, commitment and discipline.”  As others have discovered, these aims can be achieved much more effectively by simply allowing people to choose their own religious beliefs from the marketplace of ideas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chorabooks
• Release date: Oct 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9789887896791

Book preview

APPENDIX

Preface

Religious freedom is finally emerging as a major factor in international politics. In some cases, the implications involved our good intentions and to the consciences and welfare of religious believers. With China, however, the stakes are potentially much greater. The world’s largest country is still Communist. The possibility that it may be becoming Christian, and that its government is determined to devise whatever policies are necessary to prevent this from happening, must be taken seriously as a major factor in the global balance of power.

For as elsewhere, religion in China is not abstracted from issues of society, economics, and politics.

Father Sergio Ticozzi, a prominent Italian missionary, has produced an important new account of the religious policies of the Chinese Communist government. It is clear from his account that religion has long been a central preoccupation of the Communist government and that it continues to be so today. The government has long engaged not only in suppression of Christian and other religious beliefs but, increasingly, in campaigns to manipulate those beliefs and channel them into serving the political purposes of the state and Party.

Striking in his account is how the Chinese Communist Party continues trying to make ideology function as a political religion. This has an old pedigree, going back to the personality cult of Chairman Mao Zedong (Tse-tung). Today’s campaigns appear to be more sophisticated but perhaps equally repressive and futile. Alongside his own personality cult, President and Party General Secretary Xi Jinping’s eight-point frugality code ostensibly attempts to control formalism, bureaucratic behavior, hedonism and extravagance and to ensure that workers have clear political beliefs, high professionalism, commitment and discipline. As others have discovered, these aims can be achieved much more effectively by simply allowing people to choose their own religious beliefs from the marketplace of ideas.

Some inkling of this may be beginning with a more utilitarian approach to religion. This appears in the nationalistic trend which seeks to Sinicize both its own Marxist ideology and all competing systems of belief, such as religion, insofar as they are permitted at all. Knowing (as Stalin did) that Communist ideology has very limited appeal, the Party now aims, as Father Ticozzi writes, to attract the support of the general population, playing on their patriotic and nationalist feelings. Tapping into nationalism offers the ideological flexibility (or opportunism) and the multiple benefits of building support for the regime, ensuring the continuing role (at least pro forma) of Marxist ideology as a support for that regime, and keeping religious beliefs private and quiet and preventing them acting as a check on government power.

For Xi Jinping, the ‘Sinicization of Religions’ has mainly a political reference. But as Father Ticozzi also makes clear, this works only in one direction: the state control of religion (government commands, religion serves). If religious believers have any say in the policies of the state, it is only to approve those established by the Party. Father Ticozzi quotes the words of those who have accepted the need to do so as the price of being allowed to meet and worship openly. The aim of turning church leaders into state functionaries or civil servants is not inconsistent with this approach – strikingly reformulating the role of religion from a tool of imperialism into a tool of communism."

Yet if Chinese leaders are developing a more pragmatic approach toward religious belief in some sectors, as opposed to simple repression, the continued use of re-education camps to punish religious and other dissenters, and their expansion into the Uighur Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province, should caution us against excessive optimism. So should the repression of Buddhism out of fear of the political aspirations of Tibet.

Father Ticozzi is not an armchair observer of these matters. His experience in China is long and deep, having lived there for 50 years and fluent in Chinese, both written and spoken. He is considered a foremost expert on China and the Catholic Church there, with an especially deep knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong. Most important, he has a nuanced understanding of the dynamics involved. This extends not only to the workings of the Party machinery and government policy, but also the various possible responses available to Western Church leaders and religious believers within China itself and the resulting uncertainties, tensions, and conflicts among and between believers. For Communist leaders in China and elsewhere have proven themselves adept at creating and exploiting divisions among religious believers.

Finally, his account – which is both historical and also provides an up-to-date understanding of the current situation in China – demonstrates the value of Christian leaders who are both engaged with current sufferings and able to write in-depth scholarly or semi-scholarly works. At a time when a disconnect often separates the work of missionaries from the overly theoretical writings of Christian academics, this book is especially welcome and would provide a valuable resource that both educators and researchers could put to good use.

Prof. Stephen Baskerville

Patrick Henry College - August 2018

I. Communist China's Religious Policy: China's Religious Policy from 1949 to 2009

On October 1, 1949, after four years of civil war, Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, proclaimed the foundation of the People’s Republic of China.

October 2009 constitutes the 60 th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic. December 2008 was the 30 th anniversary of the liberation policy launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. It appears quite clearly that the 60 years of the history of the People’s Republic of China are divided into two periods, 1949-1978, and 1979-2009.

From the perspective of the Religions, these two periods can be respectively characterized with two general terms: control for the first period and liberalization for the second one.

Control Policy

Following the Common Program, held in September 1949, by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference [1] , and the 1954 Constitution, which both affirmed ‘freedom of religious belief’, the official formula, repeated whenever the religious question is raised, is that Religious freedom is a fundamental and consistent policy of the Communist Party in China. The practice, however, shows different interpretations of such an ambiguous formula.

In the first period, from October 1949 to December 1978, the Communist authorities tried their best to put every dimension of the life of the Chinese people under their ‘full control’. On February 12, 1951, the Religious Affairs Bureau was established, with the duty, together with the already existing United Front, to oversee the implementation of the religious policy and of the achievement of this objective through the movement for the autonomy of the various Religions.

Different steps were adopted.

From May 2 to 20, four times Zhou Enlai spoke to the representative of the five officially recognized Religions, namely Taoism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholic Church and Protestant Churches (all other religious manifestations were considered ‘superstition’), underlining that they should be administered by Chinese people and liberated from any foreign ‘imperialist’ influence and control.

The first step was taken on June 28, 1950, with the launching of the Land Reform for the distribution of the land: within the landlord class accused of ‘counter-revolutionary activities’, many religious leaders in charge of religious properties were attacked, temples and churches were closed or used for other purposes. In autumn, religious universities and several high schools were nationalized. On December 20, 1950, all the properties of the Western countries, included those of the Christian Churches were congealed by the Chinese authorities and registered under the name of Chinese persons.

Towards Taoism and Buddhism, in particular, the policy followed two lines: on one side, many properties, temples and monasteries, were taken by the Government and turned into school, factories or residences, and on the other side the Buddhist and Taoist clergy was forced to ‘take part to production’, that is to do manual work joined together in rural cooperatives. In Tibet and in Muslim areas initiatives on the same lines were slower.

For the Catholic and Protestant Churches, who had many foreign personnel in their ranks, the policy to ‘liberate’ Religions from all kinds of foreign control, was enforced by sending out of China all their foreign personnel. For this purpose, the Movement for the Three Autonomies was launched within them. On September 24, 1950, for the Protestant Churches, the Manifesto for the Three Autonomies was published: autonomy of propagation (self-propagating, independence from foreign personnel in the evangelization work), of administration (self-governing by local people), and of financial support (self-supporting, no economic help from abroad). On the following November 30, in Guangyuan, Sichuan, about 500 Catholics signed the Manifesto advocating the reform and the ‘autonomy of the Catholic Church’.

Under the accusation of opposing the autonomy movement, the foreign missionary personnel was imprisoned, put on trial, condemned and expelled. The most notorious case happened on September 5, 1951, when, after two months of house arrest, Mgr. Antonio Riberi (1897-1967), the Apostolic Internuncio of the Holy See, was forced out of China. By the end of 1951, 14 Catholic Bishops and 1,136 foreign missionaries have been expelled.

In the meantime, as far as the local Religions such as Taoism, Buddhism and Islam, as well as all the local religious believers were concerned, the official policy was to either win over their collaboration, or to eliminate the opposition of the non-cooperators, by sending them to re-education camps and even to prisons, since they were considered guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes. The means to control and win them over was through the fostering of the Three Autonomies Movement and to establish the Patriotic Associations in all Religions.

In fact, the efforts to spread the movement for the autonomy increased day by day. In 1952, the China Islamic Association was founded, followed in 1953 by the China Buddhist Association. In summer 1954, the 1 st Protestant National Council officially established the Patriotic Christian Association of the Three Self Movement. In 1956 the Russian Orthodox Church was turned into China Orthodox Church. The year 1957 registered the foundation of the China Taoist Association and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (from July 17 to August 2, by the 1 st National Congress of Chinese Catholic Representatives).

The establishment of provincial and local branches of all these patriotic associations soon followed, as an instrument in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to relate with and control the members of all Religions.

By the end of 1952, the foreign Catholic priests still remaining in China were 537, while the number of Chinese priests held in prison ranged between 200 and 300. On September 8, 1955, in Shanghai there was the arrest of the archbishop Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei (Gong Pinmei, 1901-2000), together with 27 priests and about 300 lay Catholics. Many other arrests followed in Baoding, Hankou, and elsewhere. Throughout the whole 1955, about 70 Chinese priests and 3,000 lay people had been arrested, because they did not cooperate with the authorities. In 1958, April 13, at Wu’an, the ordination of two Franciscan priests, Dong Guangqing (1917-2007) and Yuan Wenhua (1904-1973), of the first ‘self-chosen and episcopal ordained Bishops’, was carried out against the explicit denial of the Holy See, soon followed by other ordinations.

At the end of 1958, the religious activities of all traditions were under the official control. Tibet, considered by the Communist Government integral part of China, was ‘liberated’ by the Chinese army on March 10, 1959, forcing the Dalai Lama and his government to take refuge in Dharamsala, North India.

The following trend, until