According to observers, we have just seen the worst year for religious persecution in China since the Cultural Revolution. To put that in perspective, during the upheaval from 1966 to 1976 all public expressions of religious life were effectively banned. Thousands of Christians were imprisoned and tortured for their faith, Bibles destroyed, churches looted and unregistered religious meetings broken up.
Compare that to today: in just one province, Zhejiang, authorities have destroyed 1,500 churches in the past two years. Despite a paucity of news coverage in the West, the state has launched an aggressive cross-removal campaign, in which whole churches have been reduced to rubble, causing deep dismay among Christians. In Wenzhou, a city known as “China’s Jerusalem” because of its devout population, officials tore down a Catholic church, leaving it a horizontal mess of shattered bricks and twisted girders.
The threat to the faithful is even more shocking, with one prominent activist, Bob Fu, reporting that many Christians have been hospitalised after being injured by the authorities.
Back in 2014, Fu, who converted to Christianity following the Tiananmen Square protests, told Christian Today: “There has been forced demolition, the removal of crosses, over 300 churches have been attacked and government-sanctioned church pastors sentenced to 12 years in prison. Multiple believers have been attacked and
hospitalised, and thousands of police were mobilised to attack a church. That has not been seen since the time of the Cultural Revolution. It’s overwhelming.”
Why is China cracking down like this? According to official documents seen by The New York Times, the aim is “to reduce Christianity’s public profile”. In other words, the government is specifically targeting Christians because of its growing prominence in Chinese public life.
The newspaper reported: “An internal government document reviewed by The New York Times makes it clear the demolitions are part of a strategy to reduce Christianity’s public profile. The nine-page provincial policy statement says the government aims to regulate ‘excessive religious sites’ and ‘overly popular’ religious activities, but it specifies only one religion, Christianity, and one symbol, crosses.
“‘The priority is to remove crosses at religious activity sites on both sides of expressways, national highways and provincial highways,’ the document says. ‘Over time and in batches, bring down the crosses from the rooftops to the façade of the buildings.’”
But the repression is backfiring.
When the Communist Party seized power in 1949 there were fewer than a million Christians. After more than 60 years of often intense persecution, there are now as many as 100 million in China. If that’s true (and no one knows the real figure), there are more Christians in the country than members of the Communist Party, which currently stands at 87 million.
This significant increase in the number of Christians means that by 2030, according The Daily Telegraph, China may have more churchgoers than the United States.
Andrew Brown, the Guardian’s religious affairs commentator, has put it like this: “China is on course, over the next 15 years, to become the world’s most populous Christian nation.” He noted: “It is also home to the largest population of atheists in the world – according to Pew Research, 46 per cent of the world’s atheists are based in China. There are Muslims in the west of China and Buddhists in Tibet, for both of whom religion is also an expression of national or ethnic dissatisfaction with the Han Chinese. Traditional religion is also returning. But there’s no doubt that Christianity is growing the fastest.”
Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University, Indiana, and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, agrees. He told the Telegraph: “By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon. It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.”
Last year may have been the worst for the oppression of Christians since the Cultural Revolution but this will not stem the tide of converts.
Meanwhile the Chinese state faces profound challenges. Commentators say the economy is facing a “perfect storm” and that 2016 could be a “nightmare”. With the combination of a sickly economy and the presidential elections in the US and Taiwan, China’s position looks precarious, according to some analysts. The Diplomat predicts that “in the space of a few months in 2016 … Beijing will see the leadership of two of its key partners change, with the real possibility that this will bring about a more confrontational environment”.
Another observer forecasts that China’s GDP growth could slow to six per cent in 2016, making it the slowest since 1990.
If the pundits are right, officials will have far greater things to worry about than the rising popularity of Christianity. They should drop their imprudent and unjust campaign and focus on their true civic responsibilities.
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