Author:
Publication: ASIAWEEK,
www.ccn.com, Asia Now
Date: October 20, 2000
As Christianity reaches
for China and India, a struggle is intensifying
They make up half of
humanity: 1.27 billion Chinese, a billion Indians and over 1 billion Christians.
For 2,000 years the three populations have shared Eurasia, peacefully for
the most part, even with the half-millennium of major intrusions into Asia
by Europeans seeking converts, commerce and colonies. Despite centuries
of interaction, however, only 2% of people in China and India are Christian,
and Chinese and Indians are a tiny fraction of Jesus's followers.
This largely peaceful
equilibrium looks set to end, if certain forces resurgent in recent years
continue to strengthen. With this month's tiff over the Vatican's
canonization of 120 saints martyred in China, frictions are intensifying
between Chinese rulers and the Catholic Church. Late last year it
looked as if the most populous nation and the most widespread faith were
reconciling. Expelled from the mainland in 1951, the Vatican's embassy
was set to return from Taipei to Beijing, if China would stop persecuting
"underground" Catholics loyal to the Pope. But in February the Chinese
ordained five new bishops in the officially approved Patriotic Church,
irking Rome. Then came arrests of underground Catholics, including
a bishop and priests, and the Oct. 1 canonization, which, to China's
anger, coincided with the anniversary of the People's Republic.
Beijing's fear of entities
that could publicly challenge its supremacy, revived by a 17-month-old
challenge from the Falungong quasi-Buddhist sect, is one oft-cited reason
for its crackdown on the underground church. But there are more fundamental
factors. Chinese leaders still remember how the Catholic Church helped
undermine communist regimes in Europe, particularly in the Pope's native
Poland. In fighting for justice and rights, Christian clergy and
groups have opposed rulers across the globe, including Hong Kong's over
the right of abode for mainlanders. So even setting aside the still-common
view that Christianity is a Western imperialist plot, Beijing harbors plenty
of fears over a resurgent Church.
In India, the authorities
have generally tolerated Christianity, even the present government dominated
by the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party. But Hindu chauvinists like
the RSS and Shiv Sena groups backing the BJP, have opposed Christian missionary
work. Many were stung by the Pope's call for more efforts to spread
Catholicism during his visit last year. Anti-Christian campaigns,
which can turn violent, intensified recently when a Sister of Charity,
part of a Calcutta-based religious order founded by the late Mother Teresa,
allegedly burned the hands of four street children caught stealing.
Hindu rightists accuse missionaries of using charity work as a ploy to
lure the poor and underprivileged to Christianity.
With the Church pushing
aid and advocacy for the poor as a tenet, there are bound to be more conflicts
between Christians and vested interests in India and China. Add to
that Rome's vision of making Christianity's third millennium the Asian
one (the first two saw Europe, Africa and the Americas converted).
Not to mention the expected anti-foreign backlash to globalization.
Unless millennia of statecraft temper the true believers all around, the
Battle of the Billions may have begun.