Christians 'Standing in the Way' of China's Xi Jinping's Totalitarian Rule

It was 40 years ago this week that China opened its doors to the world and launched a series of ambitious reforms that would create one of the world's largest economic engines.

"China is now the world's second largest economy, the biggest manufacturer, top trader of goods, and the second largest consumer of goods and recipient of foreign investment," Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a speech in Beijing celebrating the 40th anniversary of the landmark reforms.

"December 18, 1978, was an important day to be remembered in the history of the Chinese nation," Xi added, saying that it marked the "start of a great journey of reform, opening-up and socialist modernization."

But unlike Deng Xiaoping, who helped launch the country's reforms 40 years ago and wanted to reduce the power and influence of the Communist Party over civil society, China's current leader believes in the absolute power of the Party and wants his government to exert control over every aspect of Chinese life.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has severely cracked down on human rights, religious freedom and freedom of expression. Christians are experiencing some of the worst persecution in decades.

"Under President Xi, the government has further tightened control over Christianity in its broad efforts to "Sinicize" religion or "adopt Chinese characteristics," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.  "In other words, to ensure that religious groups support the government and the Communist Party."

Christians are not alone. Muslims, Buddhists and other faith groups are also coming under intense scrutiny.

"The Chinese government has also ratcheted up restrictions over Buddhism in Tibetan areas and imposed unprecedented control over religious practices in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang," Human Rights Watch added.

The recent arrest of a prominent church pastor underscores the level of persecution against Christians.

On December 9, authorities in the city of Chengdu, in China's southwestern Sichuan province, arrested pastor Wang Yi, along with his wife and 100 members of Early Rain Covenant Church.

Authorities shut down the church and charged pastor Wang with "inciting subversion of state power."

Ian Johnson, who has written extensively on Christianity in China and knows pastor Wang personally, said, "One can only hope and pray that he will come out of jail or that the sentence will be light, but given the current climate I'm not so sure."

< rest of story @ link >

“Human rights and morality with Chinese characteristics”

The last time Christianity took off in China, it killed 30 million.

No surprise the state keeps it in check.

lol

The Pope also threw every underground Catholic in China under the bus by making his literal deal with the devil.

The Pope is CEO of the Catholic Church, not the Chief Christian.

Big difference.

TC

Explain how that many people in China were killed by Christianity please.

LOL, no.

Meh. At least they’re not being persecuted like the Muslims are.

The Taiping Rebellion? The players in that rebellion were concerned with human rights. To say it is the fault of Christianity is historically disingenuous.

The Taiping Rebellion. I wrote an undergraduate thesis paper on Western missionaries and their role in it but that’s been a while.

There was a feeling that “free trade is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is free trade”,that if Chinese adopted Christianity they would adopt Western culture and traditions and therefore be an enormous market. Rather than becoming good Protestants with the associated work ethic,a pretty awesome cult got a lot of traction and things went downhill.

Either way, he took the work of Catholicism in Hong Kong and among Chinese exiles and lit it on fire for nothing in return.

We have enough totalitarian rule on the horizon right here at home to worry about what's going on in China.

was this the Chinese Gordon era..?

Jesus' brother failed the civil exams, so he sparked 15 years of total civil war. The highest casualty estimates stretch up to 100 million, more than some figures for Mao. I think most western Christians would deny that it was "real" Christianity, like modern communists disavow Stalin, but the Chinese remember.

commies going to commie

Jesus brother is his name?

Simple. After reading the 22nd chapter of the gospel of Matthew they felt divinily inspired to murder the masses. If “love thy neighbor as thyself” doesn’t inspire you to violence I don’t know what will!

That was disgusting and sad.

LOL

As contrasted with the Chinese State which has killed over 300 million since 1949.

A bunch of entrepreneurs, physically in that country have bailed. That should tell you something.

I wouldn't worry about China too much honestly. Their history is just one never-ending cycle of collapse over and over again. They're due for another collapse soon, which is why Winnie the Pooh is becoming more authoritarian in desperation.

Totalitarian ideologies don't like competition.

No doubt when the current western economic/social order falls apart we'll all play another round of Hu wants to rule the world.

One thing about the oriental nations is their ethnicity, nationality and cultural identity are all tied together. That's actually a huge advantage if you want to mobilize a nation for war.

Can't have different belief systems or allegiances mucking that up.

It’s China. Everything is an obstacle that The Party needs to crush to further advance their commie utopia.

China’s treatment of it’s human property isn’t that high on my list of things to give a fuck about, to be perfectly honest with GD, until such time as the Vatican says it’s time to go Crusading to make the world safe for Christendom again... I’m not holding my breath.

If China gets too squirrelly Russia will be our friend again, what is the new Spam meat?

There are more Christians than communists in China- it’s well over 10% of the population. Persecution, historically, has strengthened and and spread Christianity.

Not too long from now, I suspect that Xi will be forced to retire by senior members that don’t want to see anothe Mao, and the communist party, full of Christians who want jobs in government, will gradually morph into something approximating an authoritarian, but more tolerant, nationalist ruling party like Singapore’s.

This is all assuming that China doesn’t spark WW3 or just collapse. Those are two really likely outcomes.

So this is what Google got in bed with, with their restrictive search engine program?

Control what the people can say and see, so they can’t organize and have freedom.