The Never Ending March E-Book

Sergio Ticozzi

• Herausgeber: Chorabooks
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

Sergio Ticozzi

THE NEVER ENDING MARCH

Copyright © 2018 Chorabooks, a division of Choralife Publisher Ltd.

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First Ebook edition: October 2018

ISBN: 9789887896791

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Indice dei contenuti

Preface

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

II. Recent Events of the Catholic Church in China, 2016-2017

III. Present Socio-Political Context of the Catholic Church in China

IV. China's Present Official Trends toward Religions

V. Attempts for Diplomatic Relations

VI. Ups and down of Sino-Vatican Negotiation

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 the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, has been to further restrict the public worship and religious manifestations.

Elimination Policy

Late in the 1950s, the Communist top authorities wanted to achieve the ‘ideal Communism’ as quickly as possible, and therefore, they launched the Great Leap Forward and the Commune System in 1958. These initiatives, combined with natural disasters, caused grievous economic and human tragedies. Then, on August 16, 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Great Cultural Revolution. During its years, advocating the elimination of the Four Olds (ideology, culture, costumes and traditions), the policy of the religious freedom was, in practice, totally rejected, and all religious activities were considered as crime.

In the following years, later called “ten years of catastrophe”, Religions were considered belonging to the ‘old or feudal culture’, that is something to be totally swept away. So ‘Control’ turned out to be understood as ‘Elimination’. Efforts on this direction registered extremist endeavors, such as material destruction of religious buildings, burning of books and articles, persecution, imprisonment and even capital execution of religious believers. Religious operators, including those belonging to the patriotic associations, were attacked, paraded and condemned to prison or labor camps, if not killed on the spot. Not only temples, monasteries, convents and churches were invaded and even destroyed with all their religious decorations and articles set on fire, but also private houses were searched and robed of all ‘feudal and superstitious’ objects: images, ancestors’ tablets, domestic altars, candles, books, everything was burnt.

Contemporarily, the Cultural Revolution transformed Communism in a ‘religious’ faith, with the cult to Mao with his portray hung everywhere, the worship of the Red Book as scripture, the morning and evening rituals, the demand to ‘total self-surrender’ (“revolution from the depth of the heart”) to its cause.

In 1970, the end of the hardest period of the Cultural revolution marked a more relaxed climate of greater tolerance, even in the religious sphere.

On July 10, 1970, the American bishop, Mgr. James Walsh (1891-1981) M.M., was liberated in the coincidence with the visit to China of the USA President, Richard Nixon. In 1971, on November 20, an Italian delegation asked and obtained to have a Mass celebrated in the Nantang Cathedral for its members and other diplomatic personnel. The Church remained the only one reopened mainly for the diplomatic personnel, until 1977.

On October 1, 1974, for the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the P. R. of China some religious personnel were left out of prisons and labor camps.

The year 1978 saw other improvement. In February 1978, 16 “representatives of the religious circles”, among whom some Protestant leaders and two Catholic bishops, for the first time since the years 1960s, took part to the 5th Chinese People's Political Consultive Conference (CPPCC).

On March 16, 1978, the United Front Department, and the Religious Affairs Bureau (later renamed State Administration for Religious Affairs, SARA) were rehabilitated and reopened, as well and a new Research Institute for the Study of World Religions.

On December 18-22, 1978, the 3rd Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP launched liberalization and opening policy, and restored freedom of religious belief.

Liberalization Policy

The second period from 1979 up to now, started from a situation that appeared as a ‘religious desert’: a few Buddhist and Daoist temples were kept open mainly for tourism as ‘cultural relics’, a couple of Christian churches were reopened for diplomats and expatriates, worship was frowned upon. Then, with the ‘liberalization’ policy launched by Deng Xiaoping, Religions also could enjoyed it, and the desert started to bloom.

Officially the shift was considered a ‘return to the correct policy before the Cultural Revolution’: in other words, the new policy consists in “freedom of religious belief” and in a limited liberalization of only the “normal religious activities”, but always under the full control of the Government.

In February 1979, a national meeting on religious work was held in Kunming to plan its 5 year development. The policy on Religion was strictly linked with the policy towards national minorities. The guidelines and the spheres of the liberalization were set up:

liberation from prison or labor camps, and rehabilitation of religious personalities; restoration and reopening of temples and churches; re-establishment of the religious organisms and structure, mainly the Patriotic Associations;Formation of the new religious operators, both male and female, were started, with the reopening of seminaries, monasteries and convents and the start of courses. Publication of religious scriptures, spiritual books and official bulletins, fostering historical and doctrinal research;Restart of the contacts with coreligionists abroad, as well as the participation to world religious initiatives.

All these new initiatives were set in the context of the public debate on religious topics, and motivated not only by the open policy, which allowed contacts with outside world, but also by the need for the national unity especially in regions of religious minorities.

From then on, each of the five officially recognized Religions underwent changes on the above listed directions.