The Chinese Christian NGO ChinaAid has just sounded the alarm. In the heart of summer, from August 21 to 22, 2023, the Shandong Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee – an organization in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – met in order to carry out an evaluation of the sinicization policy of religions, understood to be the bringing into line of all the confessions present on Chinese soil, particularly Christianity.
The 30 people present shared the results of a brand new method of evaluating “religious personnel,” including priests, among others, which had been launched a few weeks earlier.
It is a method that combines three types of data: basic information on the identity of the cleric, a census of behaviors deemed “negative,” and another of those deemed “positive” with regard to the ideological criteria of the CCP.
It is a more elaborate form of “social control” which allows religious personnel to be classified into five distinct levels: excellent, good, mediocre, poor, and very poor. This is all designed to “promote an ideological consciousness” of those responsible for religion, with the aim of applying the directives put together by the master of Beijing during the 20th congress of the CCP which was held a year ago.
This kind of grading, which regresses the clergy to the rank of children who must be trained by applying a scale of good or bad points, is characteristic of the Marxist method, whether Soviet or Maoist. The party does not want citizens, but executors of its aims, who must at most accept the role of puppets.
And it is with such a party and its supreme leader that the Vatican signed an agreement, still kept secret, while forgetting the intrinsically perverse character of the doctrine which animates the party. For the proponents of such a doctrine do not consider an agreement as binding on them in any way, but they intend to remind all involved that the opposite party must keep his word. It’s a fool’s market, where the victim manages to be deceived.
If bringing Chinese Catholics into line seems to be one of the executive’s priorities, the latter also has much to do with the old Confucianism customs. From mid-August to mid-September, communist repression tried to attack – with difficulty – “Spirit Month,” a period during which the Chinese make offerings to their ancestors, burn bank notes in their favor and set off numerous firecrackers and other fireworks.
There are many “uncivil practices” that certain provinces want to ban, notably that of Sichuan where the authorities encouraged followers of “old feudal superstitions” to “break old habits” by making digital donations rather than consuming banknotes.
In the campaign to sinicize religions implemented by President Xi Jinping, a new experiment has just begun in the eastern province of Shandong, combining the now omnipresent digital control with a real report card issued by the communist administration.