THE COMMUNIST PERSECUTION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN CHINA. (FIRST PART)

 

Note from E. At the time I talked about the Catholic Church in Russia today, in that article I talked about the terrible reality of the Catholic Church in that country. The Catholic Church does not exist in Russia, in its place is the schismatic Orthodox Church. Now I find myself with another terrible reality in China where I have realized, through this writing that fell into my hands, the great communist persecution suffered by the Catholic Church in China, I hope you enjoy it and pray for the few Chinese Catholics.

October 1, 1949: Communism triumphs in China after thirty years of fierce struggle. From that moment on, the Catholic Church becomes the target of an oppression that will soon turn into persecution.

It is not the first time that Chinese Christians have suffered for their faith. Less than fifty years ago and only during the year 1900, 191 missionaries and six thousand Christians were massacred by the Boxers, under the orders of Empress Cixi. (1)

But, under the communist regime, the persecution takes a form that surpasses all previous ones: slavery. Slavery of souls, slavery that tries to subdue the Church itself. We can imagine the concern of the popes before the events that unfold during the fifties in that nation of the Far East. Hence, the regularity of relations between Rome and China is not surprising. It is worth following the stages of such relationships.

Beyond the historical data and outside the borders of China, what  is the scope of the reactions of both powers? That is what we intend to discover in this little work. We'll start by taking a look at the history of communism in China. Afterwards, we will study the responses, decisions and clarifications of Rome throughout the evolution of the persecution. Finally, we will analyze the consequences of the different ways of responding to such decisions.

China, victim of communism

With the "May 4 Movement" of 1919, Pekingese youth demonstrated against the Japanese occupation. From that day on, communism gradually penetrated China, taking advantage of the Sino-Japanese war that would mark the country throughout the first half of the 20th century.

In 1927, the Chinese communist movement was nearly defeated thanks to the victory of General Chiang Kai-Shek. However, during World War II, as Chiang's army desperately fought to drive out the Japanese invader with British and American support, "the Chinese experienced the unpleasant sensation of being infiltrated, over thousands of square miles, by obedient communist agents of Moscow. The Chinese Communist Party, on the brink of defeat, had found a new ally.

in the confusion of war an unexpected opportunity for a spectacular revival." How did this happen? «Roosevelt trusted the experts of him ibid. Washington on Far Eastern affairs, who advised him on these types of issues. And the advice of the "experts" was that, to appease the communists, Chiang needed to integrate some of them into the government and form a coalition. It was Roosevelt who financed Chiang's army, so his opinion had to be considered; Chiang Kai-Shek had no choice but to accept."

In Yalta, the administration of the Manchurian railways, which were a key piece in the strategy against Russia, was entrusted to a Sino-Soviet company. "An ibid., p.38 Once Japan was out of the picture, the complete conquest of China by the communists was merely a matter of months."

The advent of Mao Tse-tung

On October 1, 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed. The purges began immediately. In a June 1957 speech, Mao Tse-tung acknowledged that, between October 1949 and early 1957, more than eight hundred thousand people had been "liquidated" for political reasons. Just like that!"

Millions of "counterrevolutionaries" were arrested: some were executed after being convicted by "people's courts" in summary trials where anyone could publicly denounce them. Others were sent to political re-education camps.

The agrarian reform eliminated the landlords and completely pulverized agriculture. Social cooperatives were established in which the expropriated land was distributed among families of poor peasants who were nothing more than the workers of the land. 140 hectares were occupied by an average of 150 families.

However, these summary executions (2), expropriations and cruelties did not constitute the most serious act of the new regime. Certainly they were atrocious things, but they were only one more means for the establishment of a much more terrible system: moral slavery.

"As modern slavery, communism is worse than ancient slavery. First, because the latter was progress, a relaxation of the columbres aimed at raising awareness of the rights of the person: instead of massacring prisoners of war, their lives are spared in exchange for their work. [...] On the other hand, in ancient times, the slave was the personal property of his master: he could be freed, he could receive humane treatment if he had a human master. In the communist regime, the worker is a slave to a collectivity, the leading card of the Party, and even more is a slave to the ideological system, of which this card is itself the instrument and victim.

The Communist Party of China was only 2% of the total population. “This is not a failure of communism. It is its normal execution, attached to the theory. The Communist Party that holds power is a hermetic letter of privileged people who are recruited by co-optation. It is not a hereditary letter,

but sociological. […] The Communist Party is not the people, nor does it want to be. The Communist Party is the organism created to dominate and exploit the people. If the people could be the Party, the Communist Party would lose its meaning and its reason for being. The Communist Party is a closed system of absolute domination.

Very soon, executions were no longer enough. Mao practiced brainwashing. What use is it, said he, to kill evil beings? There will always be more. The only solution, he insisted, is to heal the thought: better than the body, we can heal it. Experience simply proves that the brains have not been well washed. We must restart and expand. And this spiritual purification will be accompanied by intense physical labor that will humble people and destroy their guilty individualism."

The outbreak of the persecution

The system of control and information of the social gears, even of the minor ones, took the form of an open persecution against the Catholic Church: since the month of August 1950, the Central Committee of the PCC (Communist Party of China) declared that Christians were a potential spying force for imperialist operations 3.

Beginning in 1951, priests were arrested en masse, smear campaigns were unleashed against nuns, foreign priests were expelled. In certain provinces (for example, in Canton), an excessive tax was levied on all religious buildings: bishoprics, seminaries, temples, presbyteries...

In 1952, all Catholic missionaries were expelled, except for one American bishop, Monsignor James Edward Walsh, who was falsely accused of being a spy anyway.

Very soon, this persecution of slavery was added, for the Church, the fact of being reduced to silence: «The Church can say that it does not accept the atheistic ideology of communism. The Church of silence can talk about this at length. This does not cause communism any discomfort: it is in accordance with what communism itself says and with what communism wants to be said and taught. But this Church is completely submerged in silence because it cannot publicly repeat and transmit the fundamental teaching that is summarized in the words of Pius XII: We reject communism as a SOCIAL system, by virtue of CHRISTIAN doctrine.

»The Church of silence can say that it believes in God, provided that it does not distract its faithful from collaborating in the construction of the economic and social regime that is the fundamental atheistic purpose of communism. [...]» “Communism is an atheism, but it is an atheism whose particular purpose is not to destroy faith primarily through ideological means (although it does that too): its particular purpose is to destroy faith by attacking it on the ground of social organization and civilization (Divini Redemptoris, (3)».

The Three-Self Movement

It is difficult to identify the origin of this powerful movement that took the name of the Three-Self Movement. Emerged towards the end of 1950 with the support of Su Dingyi, head of the CCP's Propaganda Department, this movement sought to ensure the independence and survival of Protestant communities in China. Its three official goals were to allow Protestants to support themselves (rejecting funding from abroad), to govern themselves (rejecting direction from abroad), and to propagate themselves (rejecting the diffusion of the faith from abroad). : hence the name of the three autonomies. The main leader of the Movement was an eminent Protestant minister, Wu Yaozhong, who was suspected of having been a secret member of the CP before the 1949 revolution.

In reality, the Movement was designed to kill two birds with one stone: firstly, to feed hostility among Christians towards foreign influences in religious matters and, secondly, to "indigenize" Christian communities.

Catholics saw in the creation of the Three-Self Movement a powerful weapon that was erected against them.

 

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1. Boxers is the name by which the Chinese secret society of the Fists of Justice and Harmony is known, who, in the 19th century, were the vanguard of the fight against Western influence and Christianity in China . On July 14, 1900, a coalition of French, English, German, Italian, Austrian, and Russian forces forced Empress Cixi and her Boxers to flee.

2. It is estimated that Mao Tse-tung was guilty of massacring almost sixty million victims in China. Jean Madiran, La vieillesse du monde, NEL, 1966, pp. 46 &

- 3. Boyao Zhang, Crosses, hammers, and sickles: Sino-Vatican Relations between 1949 and 1989, McGill University 2015.

4. Cindy Yik-yi Chu, Chinese Catholicism: An OverView, in Catholicism in China, 1900-present, Paígrave Macmillan, 2014.

Jean Madiran, op. cit., p. 63 & 65

Pius XII, Christmas Radio Message igs¡

5. See this issue in Beatrice KF Leung & William T. Liu, The Chinese Catholic Church in Conflict: 1949-2001, Universal Publishers, 2004, p. 95 & passim.