Hello and welcome back to What China Wants. Today I’m publishing a newsletter that was originally set to coincide with Easter last week, before Taiwan got in the way.
Christianity has long played a part in Chinese life. There have been Christians there for fifteen hundred years and although the CCP has made life difficult for believers, it is today flourishing across the country. The question to ask is, what does this mean for the future of the country? And can Christianity play a role in galvanising the country as it has in Russia, rather than being a source of official angst?
Fun fact: Chiang Kai-shek, the former Generalissimo of China and founder of modern Taiwan, was a Christian (although he was a staunch Buddhist before that, so it’s unclear how devout he was).
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Over the last few years, international attention has rightly turned to the plight of the Muslim Uighur minority of the far western Chinese province of Xinjiang. Amidst evidence of mass incarceration, and cultural limitations like the banning of long beards and veils, one of the most keenly sensed losses has been the crackdown on their religion. Thousands of mosques have been damaged or destroyed in the largest assault of places of worship since the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and in 2020 it was reported that Uighurs under the age of 65 have been banned from conducting their daily prayers.
Yet it is not just Muslims who are being persecuted in China. Christianity is also under immense strain in the People’s Republic.
Christianity has a long history in the Middle Kingdom. According to an inscription, the faith first appeared in the country in AD 635 when a Nestorian monk named Aluoben, probably Persian in origin, reached the city of Xi’an. Christianity then flourished in a number of cities across the Empire until the 840s, when it fell foul of a Tang Dynasty emperor’s decision to rid China of foreign influences. Although the principle objective of the decree was to limit the power of the Buddhist establishment, by destroying the monasteries and diverting their substantial funds to government coffers, Christianity was caught up in the national purges and subsequently all but faded away.
There was a brief revival in the thirteenth century when the Mongols captured and ruled China, stemming in part from the Mongol Emperor’s desire to form an alliance with Rome. As the Mongol’s power declined, so did Christianity once more. It wasn’t until Western missionaries of both Protestant and Catholic persuasion started to arrive in the mid-nineteenth century that modern Christianity started to take root.
Despite decades of atheistic Communist rule Christianity is now flourishing in China. Official government estimates state that there are 44 million Christians across the country, mainly Protestant but with approximately 10-12 million Catholics too. The actual overall number is probably much higher; because of the risk of persecution, many underground churches have sprung up in recent years.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not been historically warm towards Christianity. During just one anti-Christian purge in 2014, and in just one province (Zhejiang), 1,500 crosses were removed from places of worship, Bibles were confiscated, and pastors imprisoned. Elsewhere churches have been bulldozed and worship actively disrupted.
But with China now host to so many Christians, at some point the CCP is going to have to a question on its hands. Is it better to purge harder and rid the country of this troublesome cult once and for all, or to give up and co-opt the religion for the state’s use?
China’s new best friend Russia might provide the answer. Under the Tsar, the Church was a key pillar of the regime’s support, and so provided a practical reason for the Soviet leaders to destroy its power aside from their ideological hatred. When the USSR fell, the church was able to resume its traditional role at the heart of both family and nation partly because it suited Russia’s leaders to have its blessing once more. Putin has been a strong supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church, and has received in turn its backing for his rule.
Unlike Chairman Mao, President Xi is not said to be anti-religion per se. There are suspicions that he is supportive of Buddhism, if not an actual a practitioner himself, and in the past he has overseen the rebuilding of an important Buddhist temple. It’s even reported that Xi is considered to be a living Buddhist deity in the eyes of some (very loyal) Tibetans.
If Xi is theoretically open to the idea of religion playing a role within modern China, then why not Christianity? It certainly seems that there are attempts being made to bring the faith to heal. “The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina. To emphasise the point, the official head of China’s Protestant churches says religions in the country must be purged of “Western influences”.
This last point is highly ironic given the role that national churches have played in boosting the power of the church in the West, but the sentiment is understood. A national church of China that exists to support the CCP cannot maintain close links to a West that stands in confrontation to Beijing.
Assuming for a moment that this works, and the country’s Christian congregation is free to grow so long as does so in line with CCP policies, is it possible that at some point the example of Roman Emperor Theodosius I is followed and Christianity declared the state religion? Probably not, with native Taoism and the long-popular Buddhism waiting in the wings. But co-opting Christianity into the national rejuvenation strategy will at least put a leash on the fastest expanding religion in the country - even if many might choose to reject any links to the state.
Under Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855), the official ideology of Russia was declared to be Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. The CCP already has autocracy and (Han) nationality in place; it may be a matter of time before a “Christianity with Chinese characteristics” is bought to life too. Even if this official blessing doesn’t come, the growth of the faith in China means that there will probably be more Christians in China than in America in the coming decades. How this will play out geopolitically, particularly in the strongly Christian continents of Latin America and Africa where both sides are pushing for influence, will be interesting to watch.