China Aid Association
China’s Leader Puts Faith in Religious
Hu Sees
Growing Spiritual Ranks as Helpful in Achieving Social Goals
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday,
January 20, 2008; A21
(BEIJING — Jan. 19) There was Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese Communist Party, warmly shaking
hands at a party-sponsored New Year’s tea party with one of the country’s main
Christian leaders. To make sure the message got through to China‘s 68 million party faithful, a large photograph of the
moment was splashed across the front page of the official party newspaper,
People’s Daily.
Hu’s display of holiday courtesy to Liu Bainian, general secretary of the
Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, was one in a series of recent signals
that China’s rulers, despite the party’s official atheism, are seeking to get
along better with the increasing numbers of Chinese who find solace and
inspiration in religion. The shift in tactics does not mean the Politburo has
embraced religion, specialists cautioned, but it indicates a desire to
incorporate believers into the party’s quest for continued economic progress and
more social harmony.
The move away from traditional Marxist attitudes evolved from Hu’s campaign
for what he calls “a harmonious socialist society.” The concept, in effect an
appeal for good behavior, was designed to replace the moral void left when the
party long ago jettisoned historical Chinese values and, more recently, loosened
the zipped-tight social strictures of communism under Mao Zedong. Religion, the
party has decided, can also be useful in encouraging social harmony because it
urges its followers to hew to a moral code.
“We must take full advantage of the positive role that religious figures and
believers among the masses can play in promoting economic and social
development,” Jia Qinglin, a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, told
a meeting of government-connected religious officials Wednesday.
Hu presided over a special Politburo study session last month on the
expanding role of religion in China. Two of the party’s religion specialists
were called in to explain the phenomenon to China’s 25 most powerful men, most
of whom grew up with the Marxist idea that religion is a hostile force and, in
China, foreign infiltration with ties to the colonial past.
In a speech to the group, Hu seemed to break with that tradition, suggesting
the moral force of religion can be harnessed for the good of the party. “We must
strive to closely unite religious figures and believers among the masses around
the party and government,” he said, according to the official account, “and
struggle together with them to build an all-around moderately prosperous society
while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism.”
Liu, the Christian leader shown in the photo with Hu, noted that the
president also for the first time included discussion of religion in the party’s
17th National Congress in October. Religion should no longer be considered
sabotage of the party’s economic and social plans, Hu told fellow party members,
but rather a positive force that can be enlisted to help put the plans into
effect.
“This tells people what the party’s attitude toward religion is,” Liu said.
“The party is now more concerned about the active role that religion can play in
society.”
The number of religious believers in China has long been difficult to
determine. Faced with the party’s traditional hostility, many believers have
kept their faith hidden. But a government-sponsored survey last year found the
number may reach 300 million, nearly a quarter of the population.
Most of those professing belief said they identified with China’s traditional
religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. But those identifying themselves
as Christians accounted for as many as 40 million, the survey found, most of
them Protestants. Specialists have estimated the number of Catholics at 12
million, divided between those in Liu’s government-sponsored Patriotic Catholic
Association and those in informal churches who look on the pope as their
leader.
“Religion has become such an important concept in China that the party can no
longer try to understand it in the traditional Marxist framework,” said Chan
Kim-kwong, executive secretary of the Hong Kong Christian Council.
Part of the problem, Chan said, is that government decisions have
traditionally been based on reports from the State Administration for Religious
Affairs and local-level religious affairs bureaus, which often have their own
interests in land or other issues connected to churches. In addition, many
bureaucrats in the religion administrations ended up there after being
demobilized from the military with little to go on other than Marxist
doctrine.
“It’s a dumping ground,” Chan said.
Anthony Lam of the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, who has studied the church in China for two decades,
warned that the current warming is a tactic that could easily be reversed. “For
me, it’s a good thing, but it doesn’t mean very much,” he said.
Over the years, he added, the party’s treatment of believers has varied, but
its overall attitude is that religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, is a
portal through which foreign ideas and loyalties can make their way into Chinese
society.
In the same vein, Ren Yanli, a religion specialist at the
government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the party’s
recent overtures were aimed at enlisting religious beliefs as a force for
economic and social progress. Nowhere did the party acknowledge faith and
religion as ideals to be pursued in their own right, he said.
Nonetheless, government controls over religious activity have loosened
markedly in recent years. Political connotations, such as those attached to
Buddhism in Tibet or Islam in the autonomous Xinjiang region of northwestern
China, have become the major targets of police surveillance in most areas.
Despite the trend, China and the Vatican have been unable to renew diplomatic relations, with China
holding firm to the power to name bishops. Hu himself led a special committee in
2005 to end the hostility; at that time, progress was so rapid that a bargain
seemed within reach. Those hopes fell through, however, with the appointment of
several bishops who did not have Vatican approval.
In recent months, the momentum toward friendly Vatican ties seems to have
revived. Two bishops were ordained with papal approval last month, following on
the appointment of a Vatican-approved bishop for Beijing in September. Regular quiet contacts have been made
between Vatican and Chinese diplomats.
But behind the scenes, Patriotic Catholic Association churches and local
religious affairs bureaus have proved to be formidable obstacles, according to a
knowledgeable religious source. Their positions — often including state
salaries, apartments and prestige — would be endangered if the church fell
under Rome‘s authority. Moreover, the source added, some local
jurisdictions have been involved in land deals with compliant bishops in
arrangements that might be disturbed by Rome.
Pope Benedict XVI displayed eagerness to mend the split soon after
taking over the Vatican. But his zeal seems to have waned, Lam observed.
Meanwhile, conservatives in the Chinese party leadership, backed by local
bureaus, have prevented a final deal because they are hesitant to abandon the
doctrine that the Vatican is a foreign power that should have no authority in
China.
Only a strong Chinese leader willing to take a bold initiative could shake
the situation loose, Lam predicted, and Hu has never been noted for that kind of
leadership. The handshake in the tea-party photo, he noted, was with a leader of
the government-run patriotic church, not a Vatican-approved bishop with loyalty
to Rome.