If the drama over Mr. Chen’s fate has placed a harsh spotlight on China’s capacity for repression and created a diplomatic migraine for the White House, it has also been something of a boon to Mr. Fu, 44. His organization, ChinaAid, is at the crossroads of a growing movement among American Christians agitating for religious freedom in China and the wider dissident network inside the United States, as well as members of the underground church in China trying to practice their faith in a hostile environment ….

But some critics say that Mr. Fu’s high-profile role as an advocate for religious freedom is a double-edged sword. It has raised awareness of human rights abuses. But his close association with Republicans and evangelical Christians, the critics say, risks stoking China’s fears that foreign forces are plotting to subvert the ruling Communist Party.

“Bob’s heart is in the right place, but sometimes in his zeal to bring attention to his cause he gets sucked up into the partisan maelstrom of Washington,” said one American human rights advocate who works closely with ChinaAid and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend Mr. Fu.

Fu speaks for himself at Foreign Policy, explaining “why I’m working to save my homeland, one soul at a time.”

ChinaAid, the organization I run, attempts to advance religious freedom and rule of law in China, softening the soil for the Gospel. We provide money and training for legal activists and sponsor the only nationwide house-church magazine, of which 80,000 copies are distributed nationwide.

We aid non-Christians as well; through our network of supporters, we helped Chen — who by God’s common grace advanced the rule of law and protection of life in China– take his case to the American people ….

In the Bible, the book of Romans says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil and cling to what is good and always serve each other in love.” With this kind of message, Christianity will blossom. This is the only way freedom — both individually and nationally — will spread in China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CECC, Chen Guangcheng, China AId, China Aid Association, Christianity, Christopher Smith, house church, religion, religious freedom, religious persecution
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The shift spells the end of China as the world’s factory. The apparently endless stream of cheap labour is starting to run dry. Despite pools of underemployed country-dwellers, China already faces shortages of manual workers. As the workforce starts to shrink after 2013, these problems will worsen. Sarah Harper of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing points out that China has mapped out the age structure of its jobs, and knows for each occupation when the skills shortage will hit. It is likely to try to offset the impact by looking for workers abroad. Manpower, a business-recruitment firm, says that by 2030 China will be importing workers from outside, rather than exporting them ….

In the absence of predictable institutions, all areas of Chinese society have relied on guanxi, the web of connections that often has extended family relations at the centre. But what happens when there are fewer extended families? One result could be a move towards a more predictable legal system and (possibly) a more open political culture. And, as shifts in China’s economy lead to lower growth, Chinese leaders will have to make difficult spending choices; they will have to decide whether to buy “guns or walking sticks”.

The second article explains one change already taking place, as authorities concede that religious organisations may have a useful role to play in the care of the elderly.

Mr Zheng’s nursing home draws together within its walls two profound changes in urban China: the growing number of old people whose children cannot or will not take care of them, and a government willingness to allow religious groups to take on the task. The Hangzhou home enjoys a subsidy from the local government of 10,000 yuan ($1,600) for each new bed. Funding has also come from Christian donors, and the deputy director, Zhou Wenjie, says any new resident must be a Christian or at least open to becoming one ….

Mr Sun, the care-home director, believes the government should encourage more private nursing homes, including those run by religious charities, because the need is so great. Central-government policy may be helping. In late February the government issued a document that seemed to encourage religious groups to do charity work. The proposal applies only to officially approved religious organisations, and the Communist Party remains cautious about the influence of religious groups. But it is also aware of the growing needs of society, and its own inability to meet them.

China editor Rob Gifford and Globalisation editor John Parker also discuss China’s demography in a video at The Economist’s Analects blog:

Read more about China’s demographics via CDT.

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Post tags: aging, demographics, elderly, one-child policy, population growth, religion, workers
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I saw a statistic somewhere that apart from Beijing, Sichuan has more political dissidents than any region in China. Sichuan doesn’t have the largest population of a Chinese province and it’s not the poorest; nor is it, like Guangdong, near Hong Kong and the freer media there. So why is there so much going on here?

It’s a lot of things. There is this teahouse culture here—you have these places where you can meet publicly. Not a lot of Chinese cities have these. Everywhere there are tea houses and people meet and talk. There are signs not to talk about national affairs but everyone does.

And then there’s the paoge culture (the mafia-type associations that used to regulate daily life rather than official laws and rules). People are accustomed to thinking independently of the government. Also, we’re just far away from Beijing, separated by rivers and mountains. Even the guobao [State Security police] are different. They sometimes say, “I’m just doing this to have my rice to eat.”

The interview as a whole is very, very highly recommended reading. See also Ran Yunfei’s blog and Twitter and Weibo accounts.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, detention, education, Lei Feng, Nanjing Massacre, Ran Yunfei, religion, self-immolation, Sichuan
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[...]Reincarnation is, after all, the belief that the soul of a person returns to reside in a new human body, either as a human being or even as an animal or a plant. One either believes or does not believe in reincarnation. It’s ridiculous for a nonbeliever to claim the right to decide who can or cannot be reincarnated.

And if, in the minds of the faithful, a holy man has indeed been reincarnated, who is the Party to decided that such a spiritual event hasn’t taken place? The party operates on a material level – it has no authority at the spiritual level.

Of course, the Party’s claims to such authority are rooted in politics. It cites precedents dating back to the time of Mongol and Manchu rule in China. But the Mongols and Manchus were believers who revered Tibetan lamas. Today’s Chinese leaders are atheists who can by no stretch of the imagination be considered patrons of the faith.

Ching goes on to describe how the political reality of China’s relationship with religion directly contradicts the Chinese Constitution’s declaration of religious freedom:

 The Chinese Constitution declares: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religion. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion.”

And yet this is patently not the case. The state doesn’t allow its citizens to believe in any religion. Rather, it only recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism.

Moreover, despite the seemingly evenhanded wording of the Constitution regarding believers and nonbelievers, the Communist Party clearly discriminates against religious believers in favor of nonbelievers. People who believe in religion aren’t even supposed to be allowed to join the party, the locus of all power. (For the past decade at least, the Communist Party has even absorbed capitalists into the party but still excludes religious leaders).

The Dalai Lama’s entire September 2011 statement on reincarnation can be found on his website. Also see Dalai Lama Says China to Have no Say on Successor and China Warns Dalai Lama About Choosing Successor, via CDT. For coverage of recent attempts to keep religion out of the CCP, see Party Members Warned Over Religion, also via CDT.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dalai Lama, reincarnation, religion, religious freedom
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As evangelical schools capitalize on the desire of affluent Chinese families for the prestige of an American education, many Chinese students are learning first-hand how the Bible Belt got its name.

While proselytizing is banned in China, Protestant — and, to a lesser extent, Catholic — high schools are doing their missionary work on this side of the Pacific Ocean. Through placement agents and religious networking, they’re recruiting growing numbers of students from China, most of them atheists, and encouraging them to convert, in the hope that some of them will spread the faith back home.

Plunged with little preparation into an intense religious environment, Chinese students often struggle to fit in. Some shed their skepticism and become Christians, delighting school officials and dismaying their families in China.

Eighty of Ben Lippen’s 108 international students come from China, up from hardly any five years ago, said Emery Nickerson, director of the boarding program. A “large minority” commit to Christianity, he said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christianity, overseas students, religion, study abroad
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The concern appears quixotic, but China is now in the grips of a moral crisis. In recent months, the Chinese Internet has been full of talk about the lack of morality in society. And the problem is not just associated with the very rich or the political connected—concerns shared in western countries—but with the population at large. This has been precipitated in part by a spate of recent incidents in which people have failed to come to aid of fellow citizens caught in accidents or medical emergencies. A few weeks ago, a two-year-old girl in Guangzhou was hit by a car and left dying in the street while eighteen passers-by did nothing to help her. The case riveted China, causing people to ask what sort of society is being created.

So, no sooner was the plenum over than the party indicated that it would limit the amount of entertainment shows on television and possibly set limits on popular microblogs. While it is easy to read this move simply as censorship, which it certainly is, it also reflects the new preoccupation with morality: many of the banned shows are pure entertainment—the party now wants more news programs—and Chinese microblogs have long been a forum for anonymous character assassination. Meanwhile, though it has been far less noted, Beijing is giving new support to religion—even the country’s own beleaguered traditional practice, Daoism.

After decades of destruction, Daoist temples are being rebuilt, often with government support. Shortly after the plenum ended, authorities were convening an International Daoism Forum. The meeting was held near Mt. Heng in Hunan Province, one of Daoism’s five holy mountains, and was attended by 500 participants. It received extensive play in the Chinese media, with a noted British Daoist scholar, Martin Palmer, getting airtime on Chinese television. This is a sharp change for a religion that that was persecuted under Mao and long regarded as suspect. What, exactly, is gong on here?

On his blog, Useless Tree, Sam Crane argues that the lessons of Daoism actually run counter to those the government wants spread among the population:

Long story short: there’s more to Daoism that the “1,800 year old religion” moniker reveals.

And that more complex history, and the secular, philosophical, political readings of Daoists texts, most notably the Daodejing, could pose some problems for the effort to make Daoism into a soft power resource for the PRC state.

One problem is that the Daodejing, rather like the Analects and Mencius, can rather easily become a source of critique of any state that attempts to use it for political purposes. What might Politburo Standing Committee member Jia Qinglin have to say in response to passage 75:

The people are starving, and it’s only because you leaders feast on taxes that they’re starving.

The people are impossible to rule, and it’s only because you leaders are masters of extenuation that they’re impossible to rule.

The people take death lightly, and it’s only because you leaders crave life’s lavish pleasures that they take death lightly,

they who act without concern for life: it’s a wisdom far beyond treasuring life.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: morality, religion, spiritual vacuum, taoism
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“China is an economic powerhouse,” Mr. Li said at Alibaba Group’s annual summit for small to medium-sized business owners in Hangzhou. But the world’s most populous country has little cultural influence compared to the U.S., South Korea and Japan, he said ….

Mr. Li, who has starred in major movies on both sides of the Pacific including the 2002 Zhang Yimou epic “Hero,” lamented that Hollywood and other cultural industries make up a significant portion of GDP in the U.S. but represent only a fraction of China’s economy. “Italian coffee is better than Starbucks,” but consumers around the world recognize Starbucks more than Italian coffee “because it’s a cultural experience,” he said.

He did not disclose financial details of his partnership with Mr. Ma, but said the company will be called Taichi Zen International Culture Company.

For China not to have a contribution to the rest of the world would be a “pity,” he said. “I feel shame before my ancestors,” he added, saying he wants kids to be proud of their “national culture.”

Martial arts have long been one of China’s most prominent cultural exports, producing sometimes incongruous cross-pollinations. From Jamil Anderlini’s interview with Shaolin abbot Shi Yongxin at The Financial Times:

With my iPod headphones plugged in, the abbot of Shaolin keeps his expression perfectly neutral as his eardrums are assailed by the thumping beats of the Wu-Tang Clan.

“I don’t get it,” says Shi Yongxin in his heavily accented Mandarin, after politely listening to the pioneering 1990s rappers from the New York borough of Staten Island who, in homage to kung fu movies of the 1970s, described themselves as coming “straight from the slums of Shaolin.”

The interview goes on to discuss the “CEO-monk”‘s management of commercial interests, protection of the Shaolin brand, and the tricky relationship between temple and state: see also a video report at FT.com. The temple’s ventures include more than forty kung-fu and meditation centres abroad, though these have apparently not achieved the sort of soft power critical mass for which Jet Li hopes.

A long way down the family tree, the 9th Edition of China’s official radio calisthenics program aims to combat the physical ill-effects of contemporary office work. From The Wall Street Journal:

“Chinese are facing more pressure than ever before and they need a way to release it,” says He Fengxiang, the director of the administration’s “Sports for All” division, after stubbing out a cigarette in his office. “They need the hoohah.”

Mr. He is referring to the vocal elements, or rather tribal-like chants, that he and other sports authorities have added to the 9th Edition of the People’s Radio Calisthenics.

This government-promoted 40-minute workout, full of kung-fu-type lunges and kicks, was established by Chairman Mao in 1951 to train China’s proletariat in the fight against the capitalist West. And now, while still broadcast over the radio, the exercise has been overhauled to prepare the masses for the next stage of the fight—a long, a healthy future in front of their computers.

Even Maoist calisthenics have not always resisted the taint of American cultural imperialism:

Officials … hope not to repeat the disaster of the 7th Edition, which caused an uproar when it was released in 1990. It incorporated disco steps that even John Travolta in his prime would have struggled with and the program was just too hard to follow. “It was a blow to the establishment,” said the Sports Administration’s Mr. He.

Sources:

Jet Li Ashamed of China’s Soft Power – China Real Time Report – WSJ
Lunch With the Abbot of the Shaolin Temple – Financial Times (via Slate)
Putting the cash into kung fu – FT.com
China’s Remedy for Stressed Workers: ‘They Need the Hoohah’ – WSJ.com

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Post tags: exercise, health, Jet Li, kung fu, martial arts, religion, shaolin, soft power, starbucks
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“They may stem from Jewish ancestry, but they aren’t Jewish,” says Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, who runs the orthodox Chabad House in Beijing. “There hasn’t been a Jewish community in Kaifeng in 400 years.”

Except there is one, though it’s divided and diminished. Somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people in the city say they are descendants of Kaifeng Jews and cling to at least some Jewish traditions. A canvas poster at No. 21 Teaching the Torah Lane announces the street as the site of a synagogue that was destroyed in an 1860 flood and never rebuilt. Inside a tiny courtyard house, “Esther” Guo Yan works as a tour guide and sells knick-knacks decorated with Jewish stars.

When tourists stop by, she quizzes them on Jewish ceremonies, like what prayers to say when lighting Sabbath candles. She says she hasn’t yet managed to fast a full day on Yom Kippur, though she is trying. As the granddaughter of a Kaifeng Jew, she says the orthodox standard on Judaism is unfair: “We read the Torah with Eastern thoughts; deal with it.”

Source: Chinese Jews Face Existential Questions – WSJ.com

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Post tags: israel, Jewish, jews, kaifeng, religion
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The amiable Mr. Zhang had a propensity for spitting on the lapel of his dark gray suit coat as he preached in a coarse Henan accent about the need for greater religious openness. He founded in 2005 the Chinese House Church Alliance, an organization that brings together dozens of underground church pastors from across China. Unlike in Beijing and other large cities, where the embrace of Christianity is stylish for young and upwardly mobile Chinese, many of the Christians served by Mr. Zhang’s House Church Alliance are those left behind by the country’s newfound economic power.

… At another service at the Beijing Zion church, about 500 miles northeast of Nanyang, … the scene was strikingly different. Women decked out in floral summertime dresses clicked away on iPhones as they waited for Pastor Jin Mingri to begin. At least one Mercedes, Audi or BMW is parked most Sundays outside the office building where Zion is housed ….

The government wouldn’t likely oppose much of what Mr. Jin preaches. He talks a lot about morals and family. Occasionally, however, he’ll delve into politics, at times using biblical allegories to explain repression of Christians in China today.

There are no purely religious questions in China, Mr. Jin told me in one of our conversations, because faith and politics remain deeply intertwined.

Read about suppression of house churches and the parallel resurgence of other religions in China via CDT.

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Post tags: Christianity, house church, religion, religious freedom, religious persecution, underground churches
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Besides some tourism destinations that feature religion, such as the Wudang Mountain in Central China’s Hubei province, which is rich in Taoism culture, the Beijing-based China Sunrise Travel Service has also launched religion-themed routes to Nepal and China’s Taiwan in recent years, Zhang Rui, a manager for the company’s religious tourism sector, said.

Such tours usually include stays in temples and other religious activities like meditation and Buddhist lecturing, she said.

Also, tourism has become a major income source for places of worship, experts said.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: religion, tourism
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