CCP Power vs. Individual Spirituality

One of the famous sayings from Mao’s "Little Red Book" stated that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Since the era of Mao many things have apparently changed. China has opened up to the international market. It became a member of the World Trade Organization. Before that, it had become a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations, therefore with veto powers.

Recently China’s new President, Hu Jintao, has been trying to persuade western companies to invest in China. The 2008 Olympics seem to be the most important achievement of another "long march" for China, in the direction of the world’s democracies.

But has China really changed? We believe that its power still grows out of the barrel of a gun, even though Hu Jintao exalted the growing process of reform in his recent speech at the CCP Congress. Hu Jintao also declared to "repudiate the erroneous theory and practice of the eternal class struggle" of Marxism as sustained by the Great Helmsman, foreseeing a future Chinese government open to criticism and sensible to people’s needs, grievances and demands; a democratic future in which the most important laws will be publicly discussed. Such ideas have led the CCP to conceive of the new theory of the "Three Represents" according to which:

1 Representing the development trend of China's advanced productive forces. "China must vigorously develop its productive forces and improve its economy so that it can gain greater initiative and a more favorable position in future competition in science and technology and solve its present economic and social problems."

2 Representing the orientation of China’s advanced culture. "In present-day China, developing advanced culture means developing a national, scientific, and popular culture that is geared to the needs of modernization, the world and the future."

3 Representing the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people.
"Whether the line, principles and policies the Party formulates conform to the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the people must be taken as the highest criterion for judging them."

In a huge but fundamentally poor country such as China, all this leads to a race for material well-being, of the realization of the myth of Western development, which has remained just that for the huge majority of the Chinese population. It is truly a miracle that this desire for material well-being coupled with anti-religious ideological propaganda, persecution, torture and executions, has not caused the complete death of spirituality. Spirituality in China has survived, due to both individual determination and to family tradition.

Further, the inevitable descent of Marxist ideals into a system of corruption, violence and privilege has favored a rebirth of religious sentiment, even among some former members of the Red Guard.

Present Chinese government propaganda concentrates on this CCP ideology of economic power, completely ignoring the value of the individual as such. The dissatisfaction of Chinese youth has caused many of them to dedicate themselves to the study of religions, though this rarely leads to a professional career.
The party responds to this desire for spirituality with arrests and torture for evangelical Christians, Falun Gong, Muslims, Tibetans, and Catholics who do not submit to government control. The Chinese communist party willingly renders itself ridiculous, and dictates religious orthodoxy, at the same time proclaiming itself to be atheistic.

Why are those in power in China unable to tolerate religious freedom? Why is the figure of the Dalai Lama so totally unacceptable, up to the point of the systematic genocide of the Tibetan people?

We theorize that the Chinese government cannot tolerate the existence of any authority except for its own, whether the alternative authority is of a political nature or of a religious nature. The fact of even admitting the existence of another authority means to question the authority of the party itself. Further, personal spirituality is something with a force of its own which cannot be controlled by the Party. Nor can it be substituted with mindless patriotism.

We may call this "Solidarnosc syndrome," in honor of the religiously-based social renovation which, at a certain point, erupted in Communist Poland and submerged the rusty party machine. Faced with this syndrome, the conditioned reflexes of the Old Guard have kicked in, which they of course cover up with words which speak of renewal, progress, and the people's interests.

The truth is that they have gone back to oiling the barrels of the guns, while Mao smiles down (up) at them.

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