Something of value: the religious response to de-Maoization in China

An earlier version of this manuscript was presented to the Western Social Science Association Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico in April 2002.

Abstract

The title of this paper is taken from a novel written by Robert Ruark several decades ago concerning the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Ruark's contention was that when the British conquered and colonized Kenya, they destroyed the indigenous culture but failed to replace it with an alternative. The result was an ineffective search by the native population for a value system and the barbarism of the Mau Mau uprising. A similar phenomenon has been occurring in China over the past nearly 25 years.

Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping became China's paramount leader. He launched a series of economic reforms which allowed for a limited capitalism. This required formal ideological justification by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The Resolution on CPC history in 1981 was duly adopted. It attempted unsuccessfully to separate Mao Zedong Thought from Mao Zedong the man. Consequently, the Party's legitimacy rests solely on economic success and power. However, many people in China find this lacking and are searching for new belief systems. This paper seeks to establish the hypothesis that this search is the primary reason for the formation of new religious movements in China (Christian and other, such as Falundafa) which have not been officially recognized and accepted.

Notes

An earlier version of this manuscript was presented to the Western Social Science Association Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico in April 2002.

1 Some might suggest that Lin was not prosecuted because she was not guilty. However, an informant in Hong Kong told this writer that the investigation was dropped to avoid collecting evidence confirming the guilt of Lin.

2 Gauging the growth in the number of adherents to religion in China since 1979 is difficult since figures, reliable or otherwise, on such people in 1979 and the early Eighties are hard to come by. However, it was estimated by a leading Chinese Protestant official that in 1983 there were 1.5 million Protestants in the Mainland (Scherer, 1983). In 1999, according to Chinese Government statistics, the figure had grown to 10 million Protestants (Jiang et al., 1999). The actual number was probably far larger since the official figures exclude those practicing in secret outside the officially sanctioned religious bodies. See below. Yet, if we accept the official figure, the number of Protestants increased by about 567%. During the same period, China's population increased from 1,024,950,000 (China Statistical Yearbook, 1984) to 1,259,090,000 (China Statistical Yearbook, 2001). This represents an increase of 23% which is far smaller than the increase in the number of Protestants. Clearly, the growth rate in Protestants far outstripped the population growth rate in general. While not perfect, this figure does convey a meaningful sense of the phenomenal increase in the growth of religion in general in China.

3 This distrust of organized religion precedes the birth of the Peoples Republic of China. It originated in the Rites Controversy which began near the end of the Ming Dynasty in the 1630s and was settled early the next century during the reign of the Qing Dynasty Emperor Kang Xi (Cordier, 1999). In the 1630s, missionaries from the Dominican and Franciscan orders arrived in China to find the Jesuits already well-entrenched and even acting as advisors to the Emperor. A dispute arose between the newcomers and the Jesuits over the latters accomodating attitude to Chinese customs. For example, the Jesuits did not insist that Chinese who converted to Christianity cease ancestor worship. The Jesuits reasoned this was not truly worship but a display of respect for ancestors. The Franciscans and Domicans disagreed and appealed to the Pope. The Jesuits also appealed to Rome to settle the dispute (Cordier, 1999). In doing so, they asserted the primacy of the Pope over China's Emperor (Reischauer & Fairbank, 1960). From the perspective of the Emperor, these appeals should have been directed towards him since he was the ruler of China, not the Pope. The loyalty of these missionaries as well as Christians in general became open to question since the appeals to the Pope showed they had a loyalty that transcended the Chinese state. Consequently, in the early 18th century, Christianity was banned from China. It was only when China's weakness was exposed by defeat in the Opium War that Christianity returned.

4 Not long ago, the Hong Kong Government was embarrassed when it claimed to be modeling such legislation on anti-cult legislation in France. However, a French official concerned with this legislation stated that in his country Falundafa would not be in violation of the law (Cheung & Lee, 2001b; Hon, 2001).

5 These elements, such as the idealized once and future monarch Setkya-Min and the messianic Buddha Mettaya, were culture symbols. Culture symbols like these were reorganized in such a way as to produce an ideology which depicted the world as being morally corrupt and in inevitable decline. Therefore, revolution was justified and even encouraged (Sarkisyanz, 1965, pp. 151–156).

6 The plausibility structure need not be a warm emotive group providing emotional support. Within the Watchtower Society, there is a dearth of affective bonds among the members of the sect due to the overriding pre-eminence of the sect's goal of massive proselytization as well as its bureaucratic organizational structure. So emotional support from fellow religionists is only of peripheral importance to the plausibility structure. However, emotional support originating within the individual himself exists due to the sense of security he derives both from acceptance into a primary group and the discovery of a belief system which answers all his questions (1975, p. 170).

7 Li Chang-shou (Li Zhangshou) founded ‘The Shouters’ in the USA in 1962. This group penetrated China in 1979 (Lev, 2002; Li, 2002).

8 These views come from Li Hongzhi's (2001) commentaries on a poem by Shao Kangjie. Shao Kangjie is regarded by Falundafa believers as the Chinese Nostradamus (Ching, 2002).

9 It is not clear that the source of these views is a Falundafa member. However, Falundafa members endorse the views in this commentary. I received this article from Fiona Ching and in our discussion she made it quite clear that Falundafa members agree not only with the content of the article but also the mode of analysis.

10 This profile likely applies to the other groups in this study. However, there is insufficient data available to make such an assertion.

11 The only thing all these groups had in common was that none possessed degrees obtained through the Confucian Civil Service Examination System. So one can say that the traditional elite did not support these sects. This is only logical since the goal of these sects was to overthrow the traditional structure of authority on which the Confucian bureaucratic elite thrived (Naquin, 1976, pp. 38–39; Overmyer, 1976, p. 18). The White Lotus tradition, like the Burmese Setkya-Min movement, emphasized the concept of Kalpic decline and the appearance of the Maitreya (future) Buddha, a messianic figure. He would aid the forces of good in their final battle with the forces of evil.

12 In the mid-17th century, the Chmielnicki Cossack Massacre of Jews in Poland and Russia ushered in a period of great repression of East European Jewry (Scholem, 1974, pp. 244–245). A sense of crisis ensued, messianic expectations rose, and a sensitivity to inward spirituality was enhanced. At this time, Sabbatai Zvi claimed to be the Messiah Jews had long been awaiting. He would be ushering in the return of the Jews to Israel and the culmination of the apocalypse. One could perhaps say that Jewry at this time, as a whole, represented a single social group which was oppressed by hostile Christian and Islamic worlds. While in some sense actually constituting a single group, in spite of the class divisions within it, such a position on these Jews would be misleading because many did not suffer persecution. There were many Jewish centers which enjoyed peace and prosperity. Furthermore, the Sabbatian movement had just as much momentum in these areas as in those where persecution, or a potential for it, had existed (Scholem, 1973, p. 3). Therefore one cannot claim, as Worsley does, that the formation of Millennial sects is a function of oppression.

13 Others outside China have taken note of this new awareness by the regime (Aikman, 2000).