1995-04-16: The Orient Expressed: Religious and Ethnic Turmoil In Asia (part 1)

Vol. III, No. XVI

Transcription:

Peale, {LC)
Pickett, {MWC)
Tease
The Orient Expressed: Religious
and Ethnic Turmoil in Asia
With Good Reason
Volume III, XVI
Next on With Good Reason, a look at religion in two volatile
political contexts. Christianity in communist China, and Muslim
upheaval in Hindu India. I'm David Andelman.
Music
Why does religious repression and political upheaval seem to
increase in major developing countries just as those nations
reach the brink of economic prosperity? Iran in the last days of
the Shaw and the first days of the Ayatollahs. Bosnia, a part of
Yugoslavia, once the most prosperous of communist nations, today
is torn by bitter religious civil war. Today we look at two such
countries, China and India, each have religious and political
circumstances peculiar to their history and culture. What they
share is a common goal which is on the verge of being realized,
to lift their people from the depths of subsistence economics
that's marked their entire recorded history and start them on the
road to prosperity. We'll talk about India in the second half of
our show. Joining me in the studio now is Dr. John Peale,
professor of philosophy at Longwood College. Together with his
father, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, he has followed the
often crippled fortunes of Christianity in modern China for many
years. Professor Peale is writing a book, To Be Chinese and
Christian, and will make his fifth visit to the orient this
spring. Professor Peale, welcome.
Peale
Nice to be here.
Andelman
Professor Peale why don't we start out by talking about the
origins of the repression of christians in China, how did this
begin?
Peale
Well, christianity has had a long history in China and there
has been more than one kind of repression. I think the
repression that is of most interest to us now is the repression
that really began under the communist who started in China in the
very eariy 1920's and continue on today. And there's been a
continuous history of repression of one degree or another
throughout this period of time.
Andelman
How important is the christian community in terms of size
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and in terms of power and so on in China? Talk to us a little
bit about the scope of christianity in China today.
Peale
Well the numbers game is very hard to play, it's probably,
the official count of the official mainline churches in both the
protestant and catholic traditions probably is under ten million
people out of a population of 1.13 billion people. Other than
the main line protestant and catholic open public churches you
have house churches. Among the house churches you have
unregistered house churches and meeting points. Now as you get
into the house church population, that gets harder to count.
Many of the house churches are semi-clandestine. Many are
totally secret. In many of the books one reads, you come up with
a figure maximum of fifty to sixty million christians total out
of a population of 1.13 billion, so it's a tiny minority.
Andelman
How much of that is attributable to the repression and how
much is attributable simply to a Chinese concept of religion and
its role in people's life and society and the whole structure?
Peale
How much of the amount of Christians?
Andelman
The small amount, right.
Peale
Well, there is so much in contemporary society under the
Communist party that militates against being Christian. There is
a process of being schooled for young people that militates
against one becoming Christian. The missionaries who came to
China in the protestant tradition beginning with Robert Morrison
in 1807, and ending in Frank Price in 1952, and including my
wife's parents for a number of years, did very fine work not only
in churches but in social projects particularly schools,
hospitals, orphanages and such. And there were many Christians
that were, Chinese, that were converted to Christianity during
that time.
Andelman
Now these people were converted though, as I understand it,
as much for economic or medical or social reasons ...
Peale
Rice bowl Christians they were called!
Andelman
Right! So, are there different motivations now,
particularly since Tiennamen square and the massacre there and
the protest there that Christianity could now be seen as kind of,
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you know, "In your face" sort of concept and could be embraced by
the younger people especially for that reason alone?
Peale
Yes, we talked to them and this is a very private matter.
We talked to many Chinese who were somewhat agonized about taking
to us about it. They always will remember Tiennamen in their
hearts, and I think for many Chinese the moral force of the
government was lost that had to resort to that kind of power. AS
far as I've been able to determine, everybody or almost everybody
among educated Chinese, forty years of age or younger, has become
to a degree disillusioned with the current ideology. They
basicly don't care about or accept the received view that they
were brought up to accept. So there is a belief crisis, a
spiritual vacuum, and many, many people, particularly younger
people, are turning to Christianity probably because of this
reason, and that's a genuine matter.
Andelman
Is it your sense that not just Christians or Christianity is
a religion that's repressed but in fact all religions are?
Peale
Oh yes, oh yes. I think all religions are. Certainly the
Christian is and certainly the religion of Islam is. Now the
persecution connected with the religion of Islam is also
connected with minority peoples who live in Tibet and northward
in the far northwest and the northern inner Mongolia country
where there is a repression by virtue of keeping the minority
populations down. Now these minority populations are also
Muslim. The repression of Christians is a repression of Han
Chinese or majority Chinese who are Christian. That's a
different matter. Now I have in my possession a document dated
June of 1993 published by Asia Watch of religious persecution in
China, it's I think eighty-three pages long. And it talks about
the repression of Christians and of Daoists and Buddhist and
Muslims.
Andelman
Now what are the reasons though for the need for this kind
of central control. It seems to me as it, the political control,
is the fact that there was so little wealth basicly to be shared,
initially among the whole broad mass of the 1.3 billion or 1.13
billion Chinese people. As wealth begins to spread more
prominently, will the need for this control lessen? As more
people become confident that they can achieve prosperity and
economic prosperity and so on, will the regime, do you have a
sense, the regime itself begin to relax in areas like religion
and so forth?
Peale
Good question. One thing that needs to be said is the
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economic development is spotty. Along the populist east coast of
China, particularly in the large cities, there is rapid economic
development that we all know about. Now that's mixed with
countryside areas of even east coast provinces and large swatches
of provincial and other regional areas that are not only not
progressing economicly but even perhaps moving backwards. And
then in China you've got to draw a really fairly clear cut
distinction between the opening economicly and the opening
politically. Now among party workers and government officials in
various localities you have leftist oriented "cotters" or party
workers and rightist oriented "cotters" or party workers and the
leftist oriented is still strong and they are Maoist doctrinaire
type thinking emphasizing central control politically and if
we're going to see an opening then we're going to have to see a
lessening of the leftist influence which we have seen in many
parts of China.
Andelman
But as these wraps come off if you will, and as these
influences abroad come in more and more and as the economy begins
to build, are we going to see, is it your fear that we are going
to see some of the same kind of religious unrest that we've seen
in other areas where, for instance Yugoslavia as I mentioned in
our opening, or in Iran under the Shaw, after the Shaw rather,
and in India now even. Are we likely to see unrest like this
spring from these religious passions or is religion so little a
part of the Chinese mentality that other forces would be more
likely to drive the progress?
Peale
That's interesting too. It seems to me that the way the
Chinese have been successful to continue the repression so far is
to keep a distinction between economic development and opening
and political development and opening. Now the question is, can
you continue to do that? Can you continue to open up economicly,
let this economic development spread more or less uniformly
across China, but also keep the political doors shut. By the
opening you have all sorts of westerners there, you have all
sorts of ideas of initiative and creativity that come with doing
business in China. You have all sorts of cultural exchanges, you
have teachers such as me and my wife who go and teach and also
are Christian and talk with other people. So that opening forced
by cultural and economic circumstances certainly is going to
contribute to the development of Christianity in China. On the
other hand you have an extremely strong network of control that
for Chinese people is very restrictive. Each and every person
who goes to school in China or who works in China is a member of
a work unit, and the work unit is under the control of a
leadership that is analogous in structure to the way that the
People's Republic of China, the government is structured. So on
the local level, I mean on the work unit level, there's a high
degree of control and they're very few secrets about who is,
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believes in what. If they can keep the political control while
continuing to expand economicly and develop economicly, then
there's going to be no significant change.
Andelman
Over what time frame?
Peale
God knows, maybe. God knows, I don't.
Andelman
When we talked before we began, you talked principally about
some of the old southern provinces, what used to be called Canton
and obviously the integration of Hong Kong will presumably, in a
couple of years, will affect this.
Peale
That's right, it's in 1997, I think it's the summer, I'm not
exactly sure when.
Andelman
Talk to us briefly about your new book, which I believe is
to be called To Be Both Chinese and Christian.
Peale
Right, that's a working title.
Andelman
What's the theme of this, talk a bit about what your thesis
is.
Peale
The idea is to have a sensitive and accurate understanding
of the situation that Chinese people are in who are religious
people in general and in my particular interest Christian people,
in particular. It seems to me there's a fundamental conflict
between being Chinese and being Christian. To be Chinese is to
have in the deepest recesses of one's soul some sort of drive or
need to work together with other Chinese in so far as possible
for the health and development of China. Now however, if you're
a Christian you're drawn away from the common ground towards the
fringe, toward the minority. Toward the minority which is still
under, at least originally foreign dominated influences of forms
of worship, theological ways of thinking, the Catholic mass,
Pentacostilism. So there's a tension, between being Chinese and
being drawn to the common ground and being Christian and being
drawn to the fringe.
Andelman
How should the United States behave in this situation? In
other words we've taken some very strong steps in recent weeks
and months with respect to economic and trade issues. We've
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really hammered the Chinese on, we've tried to hammer the Chinese
in certain human rights areas although they've been somewhat
successful in avoiding the harsh penalties that some would like
to impose on them. But what should our role be, with respect to
the government, in trying to liberalize particularly religion
since that's your focus, but other aspects of Chinese society as
well?
Peale
Well, we established normal relations with China under Mr.
Carter in 1979. We went through an annual ritual since then of
extending to the Chinese the MFN, or most favored nation trading
status. And during the Bush administration and during the early
years of 'the Clinton administration this became an annual ritual.
The ritual was to make threats to cut off the MFN unless the
"poor human rights record of the Chinese" was improved. Now it
seems to me that this policy failed. And it seems to me Mr.
Clinton and maybe some few advisors of Mr. Clinton saw the wisdom
of disassociating our multi-sided policy with China from out
concerns with human rights. And we have done that. Now Mr.
Shattuk I think his name is, correct me if I'm wrong, was the
leader of a state department report that criticized human rights
in several places, and particularly in China. So we're
continuing to try to put pressure on them one way or another but
we've disassociated that with the economic pressure and it
remains to be seen how effective the pressure can be developed in
other ways.
Andelman
Well Dr. Peale thank you very much. I wish you another good
visit to China this spring.
Peale
Thank you.
Andelman
My guest has been Dr. John Peale, Professor of philosophy at
Longwood College. He's currently writing a new book, To Be Both
Chinese and Christian.
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BRIDGE