10 ms·
China cracks down on religion, crosses burned at Christian churches
- mc32 8y agoIt's simple. They cannot allow any ideology to subvert the party (CCP) ideology. They don't hate religion for the sake of hating religion. They don't hate FG/FD, Christians or Muslims (or Buddhists for that matter) for being who they are. They do hate and will remove anything which may subvert the supremacy of the state. Simple as that.
- torgian 8y agoYeah this is pretty on point. They don’t hate the religions, they just want to minimize any gatherings that could potentially set off a movement to up-end the current rule. Funny thing is, a lot of students that I teach here talk about how they feel like they will have more freedoms in twenty years than they do now. I’m doubtful. People are happy where they’re at right now. As long as that continues, China will do what China does. I’m actually more surprised nothing has happened back in the States yet
- colechristensen 8y ago>People are happy where they’re at right now. Are they though?
- mc32 8y agoThey have experienced unrelenting growth for over 30 years and counting. Greatly improving their lives along the way. They are in a better place than ever before. Of course they are happy. More than anything, Chinese are pragmatic. will that continue into the future as the population ages? Remains to be seen.
- thisgoodlife 8y agoGDP annual growth rate in China averaged 9.6% for the last 30 years. So I guess they have a reason to be happy.
- colechristensen 8y agoI am not trying to convince anybody to be unhappy, but I have my doubts that GDP really has a lot to do with it one way or the other.
- dagss 8y agoGDP is not just a number you know. If one were previously hungry and cold and are now well fed and comfortable, of course that affects happiness. Why do you doubt that?
- mc32 8y agoAs Bill Clinton strategist Jim Carville once said, "it's the economy, [----]".
- Apocryphon 8y agoThe U.S. GDP has increased greatly since 2008, and yet there is widespread discontent in America.
- close04 8y agoWealth only really matters to the point where you can support a good living. That "good" will vary but beyond that increases in wealth bring diminished returns. Think about a salary: if it's below a threshold you are unhappy no matter what. Above that any raise brings more marginal increases in satisfaction, you start looking at other things for that. The US is past that point so now it needs more than wealth.
- yourbandsucks 8y ago.. that statement doesn't really have a lot to do with how things are/were in China. Americans don't even know what real poverty looks like.
- jessriedel 8y agoMy anecdotal experience talking with Chinese nationals is that they basically approve of the government and would not choose to switch to democracy.
- marcv81 8y agoFor what it's worth my anecdotal experience is exactly the opposite. Sample size = 4 people.
- echevil 8y agoYes they are. Especially younger generations in China nowadays are much more likely to be pro-Chinese government and less agreeing to western values. Plenty of young students who came to study in America for a few years also have a tendency now to become more agreeable with Chinese government
- bliblah 8y agoPeople who have never seen the grass on the other side can't make a judgement as to whether it is greener. I have visited countries where personal freedoms are curtailed but the general population had food, water, shelter and luxuries so they were content. It is only the moment they realize that those things are in danger or they covet what other nations have that problems arise. You can't miss what you never lost.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- EGreg 8y agoYep. For example see what they have done to the peaceful Falun Dafa practitioners after they showed up in large numbers. This almost makes me think of mind viruses duking it out using expendable hosts - and studying it epidemiologically.
- epynonymous 8y agofunny, recently in hk i saw an anti-flg next to a flg advocate.
- epynonymous 8y agoyes, the ccp does not discriminate.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoDoes this view have to be contrasted as being primarily about persistence of the state? Consider social media for a minute as an increasingly appropriate metaphor for religion. Instead of uniting people, social media has mostly driven people into various ideological echo chambers. And these echo chambers tend to engage in typical cult-like in-group out-group behavior behavior, aggression towards perceived ideological enemies, ousting of followers whose faith wains, etc. And as these groups begin to interweave with politics, it's driving a major wedge in society. The point of this is that since we live in a society that values freedom above all, it makes sense that we allow these sort of organizations and associations. At the same time, I think it's increasingly difficult to argue that things from religion to facebook to twitter are having a net positive impact on society. In times when we were more homogeneous, this was different. When most of everybody holds a common and shared identity, there is no real out-group, and the identity can help create unity and unitedness. But as we become more diverse, the lack of a shared identity means we end up splintering off into a variety of large ideological cliques which view themselves as mutually incompatible (even if that's not necessarily entirely true). And that causes a lot of problems. And so if we had a governmental system that was based more about utilitarianism, rather than ours which is based more on the fundamental value of freedom, it seems to be logical to work to prohibit these sort of things - even with 0 consideration given to the fate of the state itself.
- bencollier49 8y agoWe're not becoming more diverse, what is largely happening is that communications and transport technologies have made geography irrelevant. Now your cultural opposite may live next door, rather than in another city or country. This has led to the degradation of real community; you could equally argue that transport is the issue. The point is that if you enable people to maintain cultural identies across geographical boundaries, you will cause the breakdown of local solidarity. To argue that we must therefore develop some sort of bland global monoculture is as terrifying as it is depressing.
- thecopy 8y agoThey want the communist party to be the primarly religion. Just like in the Soviet states where religion were systematically eliminated in favor of state religion[1]: > USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of existing religion, and the prevention of future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism (gosateizm). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union
- reitanqild 8y agoSeems very similar to the reign of terror during the French Revolution though?
- thecopy 8y agoWhats your point?
- dragonwriter 8y ago> They want the communist party to be the primarly religion. They are quite satisfied with religion that supports the Communist Party; like earlier Communists they see religion subservient to the elite as the opiate of the masses in capitalist society, and have very much included that among the elements of capitalism that they have reintroduced. OTOH, they are extremely concerned that the churches remain subservient to the existing elite, reinforcing its rule, since otherwise they would simply by existing challenge it.
- beerlord 8y agoI think its also partly to take the attention away from their Uighur camps, and to paint the idea that they are 'anti-religion', rather than explicitly seeking to rid Uighur culture and religion from China.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- singularity2001 8y agoThe might underestimate the backlash of 4 billion Muslims and Christians being unitedly antagonized by such transgressions.
- candiodari 8y agoThey dealt with the "cultural revolution". I don't think they are currently afraid of losing control to religion.
- dragonwriter 8y agoIf they weren't afraid of exactly that, there would be no reason for the crackdown.
- torgian 8y ago4 billion muslims and christians don't live in China.
- singularity2001 8y agothey can still be antagonized and act on that
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 22c 8y agoThis seems off-topic, but I don't have the ability to flag. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mymythisisthis 8y agoIn 1538, the chief minister Thomas Cromwell pursued an extensive campaign against what was termed "idolatry" by the followers of the old religion, culminating in September with the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. As a consequence, the king was excommunicated by Pope Paul III on 17 December of the same year.[84] In 1540, Henry sanctioned the complete destruction of shrines to saints. In 1542, England's remaining monasteries were all dissolved, and their property transferred to the Crown. Abbots and priors lost their seats in the House of Lords; only archbishops and bishops remained. Consequently, the Lords Spiritual—as members of the clergy with seats in the House of Lords were known—were for the first time outnumbered by the Lords Temporal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Shrines_destroyed_and_monasteries_dissolved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England#Shrines_...
- vackosar 8y agoI cannot believe this is happening in todays China. Even if the gov doesnt like the christianity how is it significant that they cant just ignore it?
- std_throwawayay 8y agoThe Romans ignored, ridiculed and fought Christianity and then they converted to it.
- lurcio 8y agoThey created it
- zokula 8y agoLike the Chinese created Islam.
- partycoder 8y agoAfter killing martyr after martyr after martyr, the Romans saw in this belief something useful that they could control. Before converting to it, they standardized it and shaped it to their convenience in the First Council of Nicaea. They also decided which books made it into the bible, and which ones were "apocryphal". The Bishop of Rome became the Pope, and after the fall of the Roman empire, the Vatican still exerted a tremendous control: the pope could excommunicate anyone, including kings.
- geowwy 8y agoWe still have records of what happened at Nicaea. Basically they standardised the date of Easter and condemned Arianism (against the will of Constantine who wanted a compromise position). The Council of Nicaea actually didn't have anything to do with the Bible, despite what a lot of people say. By that point the Church had more or less reached a consensus on the canon after a couple hundred years of debate.
- 8y ago
- lerie 8y agoa little extreme but they are moving in the right direction. religion restricts the growth of knowledge.
- mc32 8y agoOn the other hand, CCP/PLA ideology stifles the growth of knowledge as well. All you have to do is look at the work of the Red Defense Soldiers[1] (Red Guards). Communist ideology does not ensure that knowledge seeking will not be stifled, as amenable to the science as they may be. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Guards
- learc83 8y agoYes because burning religious icons and replacing them with nationalist icons is a step forward with respect to freedom of knowledge.
- mrleiter 8y agoThe are not moving against them because of "religion restricts the growth of knowledge".
- mieses 8y agowow. the chinese internet propaganda warriors are all over this thread.
- dang 8y agoThis breaks the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so please don't do it again. Specifically: "Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The comment was also lazy, since a glance at the history of the account refutes it. Not that they've been great comments, but someone who has been posting about Python, web apps, organic batteries, web assembly, and carbonated soda for over a year is obviously a regular Hacker News user. Edit: it looks like you've been using primarily for ideological battle. That's also a bannable abuse of the site, stated in the guidelines as explained by https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20line https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... So please stop doing that.
- dschuetz 8y agoIt appears that China's government doesn't like organized Christianity, or any organized religion. It doesn't really matter what you personally believe. What matters though is anything that can influence people emotionally and philosophically, which basically means having control (thus power) over peoples' emotional and rational states of mind. Any place of congregation is potentially doing just that. It's worrisome to see though that China has decided to go that extremely rigorous way, like burning crosses publicly and the like. Wow.
- flukus 8y agoChina in particular has a good reason to be weary of organized Christianity ever since a guy claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus started a civil war that killed at least 20-30 million people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
- mieses 8y agoYet China had good reason to be impressed by Marxism, also a Western import, because it killed 45 million. In that sense, I understand why Marxism would be more impressive than Christianity to a people who never had freedom. It won and killed more people.
- zokula 8y agoThat's funny since China has never been Marxist in it history.
- mieses 8y agono true scotsman? perhaps another 45 million would have done it.
- dang 8y agoPlease stop using HN primarily for ideological battle. This is in the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- contingencies 8y agoFor a counter point, I saw a huge group of people happily doing yoga out in a square the other day. Also this was shared in the open across domestic electronic media. This would have been unthinkable around the Fulun Gong period. It looks to me like things are opening up slowly but surely. What was the quote? "Religion is poison". Well, yeah. I'll take yoga over millenial cultists any day. But it'd be nice to see something like Taipei's desperately underappreciated Museum of World Religions[0] here in the mainland, to celebrate the human journey and common perspective rather than denominational religion per se. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_World_Religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_World_Religions
- paulcarroty 8y agoCommunism countries always fear relegion 'cause want only 'clean hands' of his citizens for their shitty ideology.
- VvR-Ox 8y agoMaybe they are just smarter in some way. Religion is one of the greatest evils of mankind. Stop using it as an excuse. Start taking responsibility for your own thoughts and actions.
- chrisco255 8y agoChina's Orwellian social credit system is among the most evil and insidious things I've ever seen. It's mental slavery.
- ghostDancer 8y agoExactly the same as most religions, fear of punishment if you don't obey and behave according to the rules of the government/book, one delivers punishment here and now and the other delivers eternal pain in hell. Both are mental slavery. Both are used to control the population by the powerful.
- chrisco255 8y agoI think that's a stretch. That's not the teachings of Christianity, for example, where "sins are forgiven". Yeah there's fire and brimstone types but it's not typical. And no one compels you to continue going to the same church. There may be social pressure to, but people switch churches as often as people switch relationships.
- reitanqild 8y agoWas tempted to flag you or downvote you, but even if you present it in a very one sided way you have a good point, so have I'll instead just add some nuance: Yes. Religion has been used to control populations, but for me and many others they've been a tool for empowering individuals and for many it has also been a uniting force to stand up to oppressive regimes. It has also been a powerful tool to unite and bring peace. I'd be happy if we as a community of what I think of as mostly reasonable people could manage to be a little bit nuanced.
- yason 8y agoI sometimes wonder why do they want to protect the state by cracking down churches instead of using religion, a powerful tool of control, to their advantage. It would take more time to build a Chinese branch of Christianity (and others) but be a lot more efficient.
- yorwba 8y agoThe last time someone tried to build a "Chinese branch of Christianity", it resulted in the Taiping rebellion [1] trying to turn China into a theocracy and millions died. The Communist party definitely doesn't want any parallel hierarchies outside their own ranks. Where religious imagery could benefit them, it has already been incorporated into party worship/Chinese nationalism. Propping up minority religions would not be an efficient way to exert control they already have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
- NotAmazin 8y agoI assume that's it's harder to create a religion for a billion people. Christianity ranks in at #1 and Islam is #2, the new religion if followed by all would be #3. I would love to hear what they could come up with tho.
- pandapower2 8y agoWithin China there are approved churches of various denominations. For whatever reason that is apparently no longer sufficient.
- geowwy 8y agoThere are 3 state sponsored churches in China. The trouble is they don't experience much growth compared to the underground churches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Self_Patriotic_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Self_Patriotic_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Christian_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Christian_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Ass...
- 8y ago
- jhkjhu23123123 8y agoGroup of politicians fighting other politicians reported by website aligned with a third batch of politicians. Being critiqued without much rigour by the otherwise logical community here. It's like reading a netmums forum debating p2p file sharing architecture based on a story about pornography they heard.
- dang 8y agoThat's possible, because it's not a topic the majority of this community has detailed knowledge or personal experience of. Still, it would be better to provide substantive correction than to post a shallow dismissal, which the site guidelines ask you not to do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- yourbandsucks 8y agoShallow article, shallow dismissal. The forum you moderate has been teetering towards nationalist "othering" of China ever since the Google thing was floated. 90% of the people hurling invective clearly know nothing about the country. It's not "boo China" vs "yay China", it's "boo China" vs "try to understand China".
- dang 8y agoYou're talking about macro social/political trends. Obviously HN can't be immune from those. Perhaps you've noticed us trying to moderate it—in the literal sense of that word—as best we can. That's hard to do and we have few resources to do it with. So if you care about HN, could you please avoid harming it further by kicking at a situation that's fragile and getting worse? Instead, assuming you know more, you could contribute some of what you know. If you'd do that in a non-inflammatory way, it could be helpful. Calling names just strengthens the ignorance you're complaining about, which makes you partly responsible for it. (Not to pick on you personally; we all do this.) Even if you don't care, we need you to follow the site guidelines if you want to keep commenting here. They say: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) This comment and others haven't been meeting that bar, so please do better. I would not call this article shallow. It's full of details. Better questions to raise would be whether it has been corroborated (as pftburger did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18227679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18227679), and what relevant information it may omit. It also seems legit to wonder why so many such articles have been appearing lately, though because there isn't much evidence one can point to, there probably isn't a non-flamey discussion to be had there. Even when an article is shallow, a shallow dismissal still breaks the guidelines. Commenters owe better not to the article, but to the community they're participating in. p.s. You've mischaracterized my line about booyay by misquoting it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18214633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18214633). Those phrases are not objective descriptions—they're how each side feels to the opposite side (hence the 'fuck you' bit), which explains why they react so badly to each other.
- ganzuul 8y agoAt a recent funeral I was shocked and disgusted at how the preist manipulated the emotions of my relatives. That a nation state shares my suspicion is something positive in my view. I am not opposed to spirituality. I think organized religion subverts people from their own quest.
- mieses 8y agoorganized religion keeps the organized state that you worship from organizing us to death.
- lolc 8y agoPreventing people from doing some of what they want is actually an important function of society. I made my peace with religions after reading Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson. To me it explained very well how religions were a tool for organizing ever larger societies. We wouldn't be where we are as humanity if we hadn't had the power of religion. There is no society without religion. That is, every society needs tenets that all members share. Now we should ask ourselves what religion is adequate for today's world.
- dschuetz 8y agoDon't forget that religions kept people from doing what they want for centuries. They also can be tools of oppression and terror. Christianity did all that and beyond. Societal value systems don't need any religion at their base, but obviously people have need for faith and belief for emotional support which is not a given in any society. Let's not mix all that up.
- lolc 8y agoBut it is already mixed up! Trying to disentangle society from religion will leave you with a poor understanding of either. Common beliefs prop up societies. And as I said before, preventing people from doing some of what they want is a prerequisite for any society. In the end I think our main disagreement here is how broadly we define religion. To me, if you take take the narrow view of religion, you're leaving huge human catastrophies to be explained outside religion. What do you think of the Stalinists' belief system, for example? Their terror wasn't justified by a god but still by rules they demanded blind acceptance of. And they had ceremonies and rituals. To me, it is easier to understand the Stars and Stripes behind every politician's head in the U.S. as a religious symbol than to invent a whole new category over it. But I see how people could be irritated by that.
- Jedd 8y agoI'd be happy if in the west we just stopped the state from financially subsidising religions - though I could imagine the uproar against any formal proposal to do so.
- moviuro 8y agoEven though sponsoring still happens (think: renovating buildings; assisting communities to build their own churches/temples/whatever), State and Church are seperated in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separation_of_the_Churches_and_the_State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_French_law_on_the_Separat...
- baud147258 8y agoOne important thing is that the state in France owns most/all the churches built before 1905, so they end up paying a lot for renovation. Also keep in mind that the Alsace-Lorraine was not part of France in 1905 (part of the German empire), so the separation was never applied there.
- Jedd 8y agoThat's really interesting, thank you. Property taxes - along with local council rates - are an area that religions obtain significant financial benefit from the state (definitely in AU, and I believe UK and US also). It seems to be one of those things that fits the category 'this is how it's always been done', so it's tremendously difficult to initiate any policy change.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pftburger 8y agoDo we have any other sources for this? The article seems quite inflammatory.
- lgregg 8y agoChristianity in China has always been under threat. The Eastern Church in China thrived upon arrival for awhile until the 9th/10th centuries when it died out publicly. It became underground, now trying to resurface it seems like history is repeating itself.
- alain_gilbert 8y agoI think it's one thing to remove the religious symbol, and a complete other thing to burn it publicly before removing it. The later seems to indicate that this symbol is "hated" by the people who are removing it (government in this case). I can "kinda" understand that they don't want religious symbols in public. But the fact that they shame and uses fear against the people is what shock me the most about this.