In part one, we were introduced to China’s surveillance state and broader social credit system and asked: Is this type of undemocratic behaviour justified in the modern world?
If the west were truly a beacon of liberty and if nation states were the only forces negotiating global policy between each other acting out of a concern for their citizens’ well being, and national interests then certainly the answer would be a loud negative.
However, when one accepts the reality of a supranational power structure operating above nation states committed to a specific dystopic formula for a world order, then the picture changes a bit.
In order to maintain the perception that China is a villain in the minds of credulous consumers of most conservative media, it is asserted that China is an atheistic monstrosity committed to crushing religion. If one wishes to practice religion in China, we are told the consequences are jail, draconian social credit scores or even the loss of one’s life.
Although popular, this perception is entirely bogus.
As far as freedom of religion is concerned, China is a land which is home to over 50 million Christians and has over 65,000 churches of protestant and catholic denominations. Muslims make up the majority of the population in Xinjiang which hosts over 24,000 Mosques which is a far greater per capita number than anything found in the USA. Buddhist and Daoist temples abound across China as well. For a refutation of the Uyghur genocide myth, click here.
While China is a secular state, it has come a long way from the anti-religious outlook dominant during the dark days of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Even China’s constitution protects freedom of religion (article 36), with the simple caveat that “No state organ, social organization or individual shall coerce citizens to believe in or not to believe in any religion, nor shall they discriminate against citizens who believe in or do not believe in any religion. The state shall protect normal religious activities. No one shall use religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the state’s education system.” And most importantly: “Religious groups and religious affairs shall not be subject to control by foreign forces.”
So basically, freedom of worship is constitutionally protected as long as your religious group doesn’t have the smell of color revolution on it.
Despite the fact that it is required that Churches, Mosques, and Buddhist temples receive a government license to operate legally and conform to China’s overarching national priorities, thousands of underground Churches also exist across China and for the most part, government officials tend to look the other way.
When, however connections are made between those unlicensed churches and foreign intelligence agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, or Open Doors (all having vast CIA connections), then they are promptly shut down. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Daoists are thus encouraged to find less insurrectionary venues to practice their faith.
Most westerners who criticize China’s non-liberal relationship to its religious institutions tend to overlook the fact that the form of modern warfare relies heavily on infiltration, cultural manipulation, psy ops, and asymmetrical warfare from within target nations. One such organization is the NED-sponsored ChinaAid (based in Washington and Texas) which finances and coordinates networks of underground Churches as weapons for broader cultural warfare across mainland China.
This technique of utilizing religious cells as a cover for undermining China is nothing new, and actually goes back to the Taiping Rebellion organized over 160 years ago.
The Taiping Rebellion Bloodbath
During this twelve-year bloodbath (1853-1864), a synthetic Christian cult led by a failed school teacher named Hong Xiuquan unleashed a civil war that put the British East India Company on a fast track to crushing China during the second Opium War (1856-1860).
Hailed as a man-god by his devoted followers, Hong Xiuquan was little more than a useful idiot recruited by western intelligence operatives masquerading as protestant missionaries in 1843 and soon became convinced that he was the brother of Jesus himself. With his revelation, Hong became fanatically committed to cleanse China of evil spirits. This evil was not, however the hand of the British Empire that had bled China in the first Opium War (1839-1842) nor the plague of drugs more generally that had destroyed the lives of millions of his brethren. The “evil spirits” which Hong became obsessed with eradicating were rather Confucian and Buddhist thinking in general and the ruling government specifically!
The year of Hong’s great revelation (1842), was the same year that China lost the first opium war giving over Hong Kong to the British Empire along with a vast expansion of drug flows into the impoverished and drug addicted nation. Opium imports skyrocketed to 3200 metric tons per year by 1850 with every province of China soon forced to grow opium to service the ever-growing demand. What was not produced within China was supplied from British controlled operations in India, and the Ottoman Empire.
The Chinese messiah managed to institute a new government called the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom which soon gained control of one third of China’s southern territory making Nanjing its capital by 1851. Its program attracted over 30 million adherents to Hong’s particular brand of Christianity among the impoverished peasants quickly became converts under this synthetic cult. Part of the attraction was found in the Taiping Kingdom’s policy of equal distribution of all property and no private possessions.
Hong’s cousin and partner in crime was an anglophile trained by the British in Hong Kong name Hung Jen-kan. When Jen-kan returned to Taiping headquarters in Nanjing in 1859 he wrote:
“At present England is the mightiest nation of the world, owing to its superior laws. The English are noted for their intellectual power and national strength, are proud by nature and averse to being subordinate.”
Noted historian Michael Billington cited letters which Caleb Cushing’s agent, and protestant missionary in China, W.A.P. Martin had written to his handler amidst the chaos of the rebellion saying: “The Tartars [Qing] dynasty, too far gone in senility to afford any encouraging prospect of reformation, will now, perhaps, consider the expediency of recognizing its youthful rival [the Taiping] which, catching the spirit of the age, may be prevailed upon toe unlock the treasures of the interior and throw open its portals to unrestricted trade… Divide and conquer is the stratagem to be employed in storming the citadels of oriental exclusiveness”.
