Paul KeenanChristians are being targeted in wave of demolitions
If there is a scale by which to measures China’s numerous actions against the collective Christian community since the rise of its Communist regime, the recent destructive actions in Zhejiang province must surely rank high.
One reason alone for this contention is that world media, infrequently excited by Chinese religious affairs, has paid much coverage of the destruction of the mammoth Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a city of Zhejiang just over 370kms south of Shanghai on China’s Pacific coastal rump.
It was here, in a city known as the ‘Jerusalem of the East’ (both for its great number of churches and Christian population well in excess of one million, China’s largest concentration), that police moved in on May 2 to break a month-long deadlock over Sanjiang church in an operation to remove a human shield of Christians and allow local officials citing planning breaches to wave the bulldozers in to demolish the structure.
Though gaining the greater share of media time, Sanjiang was not the first church in Zhejiang to suffer the wrecking ball. Since the start of the year, and under the guise of a campaign against illicit buildings (most often churches and church-owned premises), armies of workers have moved against places of worship to tear down parts or all of earmarked structures. In Zhoushan, Baiquan church reportedly witnessed the destruction its outer walls and the removal of its rooftop cross. In another incident, brick walls were built to hide stations of the cross from public view.
Insecurity
Yet something much more than planning regulations is clearly at play, evidenced by the fact that Sanjiang church had stood, untouched for 12 years before local government officials ‘noticed’ the 8,000-square-foot building was four times bigger than they had, apparently, originally agreed. (Local Christians have protested that it was the wish of the local authorities to see such a large church completed to act as a draw for ‘religious tourism’ to the area.)
The best explanation for events in Zhejiang is found far from the province itself, however, and in a new mood of insecurity among Communist Party officials in Beijing which has been growing since early last year.
Following reports of whispered warnings and internal discussions at the highest level regarding perceived threats to the ‘Communist dream’, Party chiefs issued a memo in April 2013 clearly identifying seven clear threats to be definitively countered.
The so-called “Noteworthy Problems” included in the memo – known as ‘Document 9’ – included promoting western constitutional democracy; promoting universal values; promoting civil society; promoting neoliberalism; promoting the West’s idea of journalism and questioning the socialist nature of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Document 9 subsequently became a source of discussion at the November congress of the Party, a gathering which culminated in the formation of the National Security Committee (NSC), a body mooted as China’s response to terrorist threats coming with the country’s greater engagement with international affairs but identified by China-watchers as a centralised authority set to defend against all threats to the People’s Republic, foreign and domestic – ‘noteworthy problems’ included. The NSC held its inaugural meeting last month.
Demonised
The place of religion in all of this comes via a report compiled separately to Document 9, but which may yet have a major part to play in its aims. On May 5, China’s University of International Relations and the Social Science Academic Press issued its ‘Blue Book’ which identified “severe challenges” to the country’s security, citing four: the exporting of democracy by western nations, western cultural hegemony, the dissemination of information on the internet and religious infiltration. Specifically, the report states: “Western hostile forces are infiltrating China’s religions in a more diverse way and in a wider range; deploying more subtle means either openly or secretly; and are strongly seditious and deceptive in nature…“Foreign religious infiltration powers have penetrated all areas of the Chinese society.”
Crucially, the Blue Book authors insist that the publication would be of great assistance to the NSC in its work.
Thus, religions which already suffer opprobrium for daring to offer spiritual loyalty to an authority other than the all-powerful Communist Party, now look set to be further demonised as channels of duplicitous Western penetration.
We must watch this space for any hints of further increases in persecution of Christian communities in China. In the meantime, it is worth watching too, if a prediction made just days before Sanjiang’s destruction also comes to pass.
Coming from Prof. Fenggang Yang, director of the Centre on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, the prediction is for a growth of Chinese Christianity to 160 million adherents by 2025 and 247 million by 2030. Dramatic indeed, but based, according to Prof. Yang, on recorded growth data from 1950-2010 (leading to the question of how much greater the numbers might be had the oppressive years of the Cultural Revolution not figured).
Such future numbers must be viewed as probabilities and not certainties as this point, of course. Yet, having had the effect of drawing accusations of “unscientific and an exaggeration” from Beijing, Prof. Yang’s study appears to prove that China’s Communists are unsettled by the Christians in their midst.