Category: China – Praying Without a License

Defending Freedom of Religion

C’mon, admit it.  You too, raised an eyebrow when the Dalai Lama proposed that his successor might be democratically chosen from a field of monastic candidates.

In today’s paper, Beijing plays the part of reactionary:

"The Chinese government has a policy of religious freedom and respects Tibetan Buddhism’s religious rituals and historic conventions," said [Chinese Foreign Ministry] spokesman Liu Jianchao.

"The Dalai Lama’s related actions clearly violate established religious rituals and historic conventions and therefore cannot be accepted," he told a regular news conference, without elaborating.

It’s a bad thing to violate established religious rituals and historic conventions?  Well then, I’m sure Mr. Liu is outraged by Beijing’s recent decision to ban reincarnation without government approval.  Yes sir, any day now we can all expect Mr. Liu to publicly denounce that little violation of "religious rituals and historic conventions", can’t we?

Mr. Liu, you say Beijing believes in religious freedom?  THEN BUTT OUT.  If Buddhists want to change their traditions, let ’em hash it out amongst themselves.  The State has many legitimate jobs – but micromanaging religious affairs isn’t one of them. 

Government Overstretch

From the TimesOnline (via The Drudge Report):

Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.  [emphasis added]

“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.

Check out some of the fun comments there, too.  As Eugene from Heidelberg says, "Permission to reincarnate, sir!"

I look forward to hearing of further attempts by Beijing to regulate the afterlife.

File under China – Praying Without a License.

Friendship

How does the joke go?  A friend is someone who’s always there to help you; a true friend is someone who will stick around afterwards to help bury the bodies.

By that measure, Taiwan’s KMT must now be counted as a true friend of the Communist Party of China:

The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus [on May 2nd] blocked a legislative resolution that would have asked the UN and international human-rights groups to investigate China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

[…]

According to the Taiwan Falun Dafa Association, China has stepped up persecution of Falun Gong members, imprisoning them in concentration camps — including one in Liaoning Province where some are said to have had organs removed for transplant.

I’m SO disillusioned.  The China Post has written countless editorials extolling the KMT’s love of sweet veritas.  President Chen beat the KMT in an election after being shot.  Give us the truth, the China Post repeatedly states – we have to know how Chen orchestrated the assassination attempt on his own life in order to win crucial sympathy votes!

But now, despite that kind of idealistic commitment to the truth, the KMT helps the CCP bury corpses.  Say it ain’t so!  Someone wants to look into whether the Communists murdered members of a religious minority and harvested their organs?  Why, a trivial little matter like that, and the KMT’s appetite for investigations vanishes.  Let’s just quietly kill this in committee instead, they whisper.

What’s remarkable about the entire affair is that even members from the People First Party (a heavily pro-Communist political group) were in favor of the measure.  Their allies in the KMT would have nothing of it, however.  An investigation like that would destroy all of the KMT’s hard work to cozy up to the Communists.  An investigation like that would look bad when China makes a grab for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.  An investigation like that would make the Taiwanese reluctant to hitch their wagon to China’s star.

Dare I also point out that shining light on the subject might also reduce the available supply of fresh kidneys, hearts and corneas for members of Taiwan’s KMT?  Maybe it’s just a coincidence that a large number of them happen to be a tad on the geriatric side.

Beleaguered

Poor China.  Under attack from all sides.  First, Taiwan cruelly and heartlessly abolished a defunct council with a $30 a year budget, and now Benedict XVI mistreats China even further by appointing Joseph Zen, a Hong Kong anti-communist bishop, as cardinal.

Imagine that.  Benedict XVI appointed someone cardinal.  Just who does that guy think he is, the pope or something?

But Beijing isn’t taking THIS lying down.  No, sir.  The "pontiff" of the Chinese government-directed "Patriotic Catholic Church", Liu Bai Nian, stepped up to the plate and denounced the move as "an act of hostility to China".  Jack Fowler over at the National Review had this to say about the new cardinal, and the basis for the Chinese government’s opposition to his appointment:

[Cardinal Zen is] a revered figure on Hong Kong, and increasingly around the world, except in Beijing, [and] is well known for his outspoken defense of religious freedom and the democracy movement.  [He is despised] by the PRC, which banned Zen from the mainland in 2000 when he defended Pope John Paul II for canonizing Chinese martyrs. Nian based his attack on Zen’s appointment on the Bible: “China’s socialist system comes from God. We should all protect it and obey it. This is what the Bible tells us to do.”  Of course, Nian is referring to Paul’s Letter to the Cantonese, 3: 7-11. [emphasis added]

What, you can’t remember Paul’s Letter to the Cantonese from Sunday school?  Don’t be so lazy, then – look it up in your Bible.  It’s probably there in the back, somewhere.

Mr. Bush Goes to Church

A Chinese Christian church, that is.  Not one of the underground churches (that is to say, a REAL church), but a state-registered "patriotic" one.  Still, it was a nice show of support for religious freedom in a country that desperately needs more of it.

One story I read had this to say:

"I think we’re at a turning point.  In years past, (underground) family churches were mostly in the countryside, but more and more intellectuals are turning to Christianity…We also believe that the churches will play a role in China’s democratization."

(From the Nov 21st ed of The Taipei Times, Bush’s visit shows plight of underground churches.  Sorry, no link.)

This is markedly different from the West, where it seems that the intelligensia bears open hostility towards Christianity.  Another story I read some time back talked about China’s intellectual "Christian sympathizers" – intellectuals who are not Christian but nontheless look favorably upon Christian thinking on morality.  There are currently 40-80 million Christians in China, and it’s entirely possible that they could help to reform the country in positive ways.

That is, if the Butchers of Beijing don’t come down on them like a ton of bricks, like the North Koreans:

…five (Christian leaders), accused of being "Protestant spies" and who refused to abandon their religious beliefs, were bound hand and foot and made to lie down before being crushed  by a huge steam roller…

Some of their fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution "cried, screamed out or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steam roller."

US releases sickening testimony from North Korea

Axis of Evil?  What makes you think that?

Spiritual Criminals

The Nov 9th editions of The Taipei Times and The China Post both had a story about 3 people in China who were convicted of the crime of printing Bibles.  The technical crime for which they were found guilty was "illegal business practices"; it is illegal in China to print Bibles without special approval from the "State Bureau of Religious Affairs".  They could each face sentences of up to three years in prison.

Sorry, neither paper had a link on their websites.