China's Religious Freedom Policy

File:free religion ed-final1 China’s Religious Freedom Policy: The Art of Managing Religious Activityi Beatrice Leung, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Sociology Lingnan University Tuen Mun, Hong Kong. E-mail:[email protected] i The author is grateful to the Graduate and Research Committee of Lingnan University which gave her a research grant for this study. She is very grateful to Leo F. Goodstadt who gave very valuable comments and suggestions at different stages of writing the research. She also owes her gratitude To Ben Blain who proof read the manuscript, and two of anonymous reviewers who gave valuable suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. 1 China’s Religious Freedom Policy: The Art of Managing Religious Activity Introduction The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted a “Religious Freedom Policy” soon after it came to power in 1949. However, restrictions have been continuously imposed on religious organizations, religious personnel and religious activities.1 In discussing this paradox, I explore the State’s official interpretation of its Religious Freedom Policy and examine how the policy is implemented in practice. In the course of study, I find out that the “Religious Freedom Policy” is only instrumental to control religions. The purpose of this study is to discussion how “Religious Freedom Policy“ has been used as an instrument to elucidate the CCP’s desire to retain institutional and ideological control over this particular sector of Chinese society.2 The findings also highlight twists and turns of the ideological clash between religious idealism and the dialectic materialism of the CCP of Maoist period plus the economic materialism (e.g. to get rich is glorious) of Deng-Jiang era. World Religions and the Chinese 1949 Revolution When Mao came to power in 1949 he proclaimed that no other ideologies except his and Marxism-Leninism would be allowed.3 Social reforms were launched to eliminate imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratism, and prepare the soil for the growth of the Democratic Centralism in which the CCP could control every aspect of life.4 Apart from the ideological incompatibility between the atheist orientation of 2 Marxism-Leninism and religion, the Chinese leaders believed religion was closely linked to “foreign cultural imperialism”(Christianity) and “feudalism”(Buddhism and Taoism).5 Thus, any religious system was regarded as a contradiction to the socialist system.6 It sets the tone of the China’s church-state relations in the context of conflicting in teaching authority between dialectic materialism and religious idealism in the coming five decades. The religious freedom policy has its origin from Mao and lasts for the last fifty more years. There were changes and continuity in the implementation of the policy. The continuity of the policy rooted at the basic thrust of the ideological incompatibility between dialectic materialism and religious idealism. However, the complexity of religions involves problems in minority nationalities, international relations, and national security7. Also the change of political landscape in Dengist China both internally and externally called for changes in the application of the policy. When Mao decided to lead the mass of Chinese people marching towards the socialist utopia, no other ideology except that of dialectic materialism was allowed. Therefore the implementation of Religious Freedom Policy aimed at the extinction of religion preparing the ground for the will-be-coming of the social utopia. In the atmosphere of relaxation of ideological matters under the open door policy of Deng Xiaoping in 1980s, the relaxation of control of religion was necessary to create a liberal atmosphere to encourage people engaging in the national reconstruction, and invite foreign investment. However, the resurrection of religion coincided with the Party’s crisis of faith, and the proliferation of religion alarmed top Party leaders8. The June 4 1989 Incident in Tiananmen Square triggered off ideological control including religion. The Party’s fundamental contradiction in ideology by introducing market economy worsened the crisis of the faith, and the appearance of Falun Gong prompted the Party to have more control on religious matters. On the other hand, the more opening to 3 the international community, China has to face more international criticism on the violation of human rights which including freedom of religion. To strike a balance, a tight control with a sophisticated approach through “accommodation” and ”legality” suggested by Jiang Zemin was adopted becoming the guideline of the recent implementation of the Religious Freedom Policy. Being a revolutionary party with a combating nature, the Bolshevik party had its organizational strategy and tactics to weaken the target organizations for the interest of the Party. The CCP adopted the Bolshevik tradition of organizational control on civil organizations once it became the ruling party.9 Buddhism and Taoism have long been part of Chinese culture.10 Without strong institutional structures, the activities of these religions, apart from some mass movement and secret society participation, have been relatively easy for the CCP to monitor and manage.11 Among the 91 millions Chinese national minorities there are 17.5 millions Islamic adherents which Chinese called them Hui JiaoTu (believers of Islamism).They widely spread over the vast but strategically sensitive territories of northwest (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia) and southwest (Kunming) with different language and ethnic-religious traditions from that of Han12. Thus Muslim question in China has its own characteristics because it has been associated with national minorities and national security. In the founding of People’s Republic of China government recognized 10 Muslim nationalities in China: Hui, Uygur, Kazakm Dongxiang, Kirghir, Salar, Tadjik, Uzbek, Baonan and Tartar. Except the Hui, most of them have their own Altaic-Turisk, Indo-European languages, and they have their own counterparts scattered in the Inner Asia. Apart from ideological clash between materialism of Marxism- Leninism and religious idealism, organizational strength of some structured religions i.e. Catholicism also attributes to CCP’s control in religion 4 following the Bolshevik tradition on organizational manipulation. China’s Religious Freedom Policy Defined When formulating the Religious Freedom Policy, the CCP’s theorists separated the two major components of a religion, namely, religious organization and religious beliefs.14 As the CCP was made up of nonbelievers, it had no means to deal with religious beliefs and doctrine.15 It therefore adopted Bolshevik mechanism and united front tactics to manipulate the religious organizations.16 The Bolshevik strategy aims at annihilating the enemy. The strategic emphasis would be on changing its nature, structure and function, of the organization being manipulated.17 Weapons, tactics and strategies including assassination and defamation, to access to the target groups and institutions, neutralization of the opposite force, and legitimization of the communist influence, mobilization of subversion, then mobilization of the target groups for the interest of the Bolshevik.18 The Religious Affairs Bureau, was first set up to deal with religious affairs under the Bureau of National Minorities. Later, in 1951, the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) was transferred to the Educational and Cultural Section of the Home Affairs Department. The United Front Department of the Party Central was also involved in religious affairs19. It soon became apparent to the CCP that religious affairs were much more difficult and complicated than expected, when Li Weihan, the head of United Front admitted that religions had five characteristics e.g. nationality, longevity, internationality, complexity, and communitarity then a long- term policy was set up by the Party to response to the situation.20 The United Front Policy has long been set up as the basic tactical task of the CCP by uniting the secondary enemy to combat the primary enemy for the interest of the Party21. In 1937, the CCP united with the Kuomintong (KMT), to resist the Japanese invasion. When the revolutionary situation underwent a change, Mao suggested that revolutionary tactics and methods must change 5 accordingly.22 After the crashing of the Japanese, the CCP united the non-Party members to crack down the KMT. That means, the revolving of the United Front tactics changes at various stage in Chinese politics according to the needs of the CCP. In religious matters, it was with the united front tactics that in Maoist era the “patriotic” religious association were established and staffed by renegade religious believers to monitor religious personnel and religious activities so as to split and weaken religious organizations. In Deng’s modernization, the Party requested religious believers to engage more actively in national reconstruction as well as to promote unity among national minorities.23 On international relations, Chinese believers of world religions were asked to play a diplomatic role to promote the national image in the international community. It revealed that religious work has been an important ingredient of the united front work in the modernization period.24 However, the united front work in religious affairs were handled according to the general interest of the Party as well. In 1990s, China perceived that the western anti-China force mobilized religion to westernize

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