China to rewrite the Bible and the Quran to further Sinicize religion

Vouthon said:

The New Testament is already a more socialist text, unaltered, than any actual policies of the Chinese Communist Party:

Acts 4:32-35: "No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ... There was not a needy person among them...it was distributed to each as any had need."
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Why would any 'socialist' need to edit that to make it cohere any better than it already does with socialism? The New Testament is basically one giant diatribe against the wealthy who exploit the poor and social outcasts i.e. "But ye have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you, and themselves drag you before the judgment-seats?" (James 2:6).

If you can't make Christianity fit a socialist agenda, what religion could you?

Of course, the post-Deng Xiaoping ideology has long embraced state capitalism and mixed private-public property ownership, under the guise of this being just the "primary stage of socialism" looking forward to a classless, moneyless utopia that is always so infuriatingly out of reach (funny that), all the while the billionaire real estate moguls and the corrupt Politburo elites in the CPC get richer and richer under an ever more totalitarian regime.

“The fundamental end of the Communist party of China under Xi Jinping is all the more to control that society politically and economically,” an China expert writing to the Guardian argued earlier this year.

To create a true 'people's community', every social group - along with every individual - within society has to be brought within the purview of state control. The Uighur Muslims and the Christians offend the Party apparatchiks and ideologues by their very existence, as distinct religious or ethnic identities from the totalizing 'whole'. That's why the Uighurs are held right now under a police state and being transported like cattle into vast "re-education camps".

I can understand very well why they might want to "revise" or "airbrush" scriptural verses like the following from the Gospel of Luke:

[God] has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty

(Luke 1:51-53)

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Somebody might get ideas, so.......

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Audie said:

Dont worry, they wont get the idea from you.

China has had so much civil war, so many
invasions, it should be understandable that
strong and unified comes before anything
else.

Prosperity is great of course.

The bible and koran are rightly seen as
alien works of fantasy and fanaticism.
No more real than star wars.

They are not easily gotten rid of but to
the extent that they can be turned tp constructive
purpose they can be more easily tolerated.

Meanwhile it would not hurt you guys,
would be an aid to comprehension if
you could try to conceive of Beijing
being other than pure evil, but in fact
having a legit pov. It has BTW provided the best
govt, the most freedom and prosperity
China has ever known.

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Vouthon said:

Acts 4:32-35: "No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. ... There was not a needy person among them...it was distributed to each as any had need."

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Vouthon said:

To create a true 'people's community', every social group - along with every individual - within society has to be brought within the purview of state control.

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Debater Slayer said:

This is nothing more than conspicuous apologetics for a government that is currently exercising abuse, torture, and detention of all and sundry who dare oppose or differ from its ideals. Uyghur Muslims are hardly the first example of this.

Your post is no different from support for far-right fascism or gilded genocide in the name of nationalism. Defending China's current policies seems to require an especially low moral bar to measure one's views against, which makes your apologetics even bleaker and more morally bankrupt.

You are giving a rather dark picture of China's history if its current regime is indeed providing the "best government, the most freedom and prosperity China has ever known."

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Audie said:

Like you know anything about China.

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Debater Slayer said:

Certain policies like those against the Uyghur and Tibetan minorities are far from a secret, so yes, I know at least a few things that most of the world knows about the reprehensible way China deals with dissent or difference of religious and political opinion. Good thing even relatively media-isolated countries like North Korea can barely hide their crimes in this day and age.

You really are grasping at straws and coming across as desperately apologetic for a deeply criminal regime. If that's what you want to present as, be my guest, but you aren't fooling anyone by pretending those of us who find such policies inhumane merely don't know "anything about China."

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Audie said:

It is true, though, you dont know anything, and no
verbal sleight of hand , trying to put it on me
will make you knowledgeable.

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Debater Slayer said:

I assume you are saying this because you have access to secret, magical knowledge that justifies China's treatment of Tibetans and Uyghurs.

I also don't assume but know that it would be a waste of time and a fruitless endeavor to try to have a rational discussion about this with you given that it is blatantly clear you support state-sanctioned oppression just because it aligns with personal prejudices.

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Audie said:

I made simple descriptive and accurate statements
about China, along with a suggestion that westerners
might at least attempt to understand the whys.

From there you derived that I apologize for China,
lack morality, am grasping, desperate, attempting
deception, prejudiced, irrational and a supporter
of torture. Now it is "secret magic".

You dont understand China, at all, and you
certainly do not know me. Making things up
does not aid comptrhension.

I have no obligation to defend myself against
such stupidity.

Your prob is with yourself.

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Audie said:

I made simple descriptive and accurate statements
about China, along with a suggestion that westerners
might at least attempt to understand the whys.

From there you derived that I apologize for China,
lack morality, am grasping, desperate, attempting
deception, prejudiced, irrational and a supporter
of torture. Now it is "secret magic".

You dont understand China, at all, and you
certainly do not know me. Making things up
does not aid comptrhension.

I have no obligation to defend myself against
such stupidity.

Your prob is with yourself.

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Audie said:

China has had so much civil war, so many
invasions, it should be understandable that
strong and unified comes before anything
else.

Prosperity is great of course.

The bible and koran are rightly seen as
alien works of fantasy and fanaticism.
No more real than star wars.

They are not easily gotten rid of but to
the extent that they can be turned tp constructive
purpose they can be more easily tolerated.

[...]

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AsianActivist said:

China to rewrite the Bible and the Quran to further Sinicize religion | Tibetan Review

China has called for a “comprehensive evaluation of the existing religious classics aiming at contents which do not conform to the progress of the times” and it has been understood to mean that the Bible and the Quran should be rewritten by “re-translation”. The order was issued during a meeting in Nov 2019, reported dailymail.co.uk Dec 24.

The order was given in November during a meeting held by the Committee for Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which oversees the ethnic and religious matters in China, the report said.​

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Stevicus said:

So, what exactly do we pitiful, deplorable Westerners need to understand about China?

We have made it a practice of criticizing governments which are deemed oppressive, authoritarian, and/or tyrannical - although due to glaring inconsistencies in that regard, this practice is often viewed cynically or skeptically by many. Understanding the country seems a secondary concern when it comes to criticisms like that.

Still, despite the heated rhetoric going back and forth, the West and China still seem to continue to want to do business with each other, since both sides believe they can benefit.

Of course, they're still going to be criticized over Tibet and the Uyghur situation, along with other issues along those lines.

For their part, China has made some rather scathing criticisms of the West and the U.S. Chairman Mao had some pretty choice things to say about us. But he probably never really understood America. Nixon went over there and convinced him that we're all a bunch of nice guys. He used that old Nixon charm.

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Debater Slayer said:

"Accurate statements" praising the supposed freedom and prosperity that the current Chinese government affords its citizens compared to previous regimes. And of course, the "accuracy" doesn't stop there but includes other blazingly intellectual statements:



... in a thread about yet another example of Orwellian policies in China, no less.

Parenthetically, both your understanding of my points and the "accuracy" of your statements are on par with each other in terms of their deplorable quality--it is no wonder you actually believe what you are saying and that those "Westerners" are such uninformed people who need to know why China is the way it is before criticizing it.

I'm not responding because I give any weight to what you have to say about China's human rights record (since, as far as I can see, you have demonstrated that it is best to thoroughly dismiss your input on this specific subject as prejudice); I'm responding because I believe that hateful, misleading, or otherwise harmful apologetics and misinformation need to be called out whenever possible. That includes your posts in this thread.

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Audie said:

I didnt call you guys deplorable! See below.

Regarding what you white ghost foreign devil
capitalist- roader counter revolutionaty reactionary
Westerner swabs might keep in mind about China
is at least touched on in my first post- the need for
stability.

Check out casualties in Chinese civil wars.
American civil war was a barroom brawl by comparison.

Click to expand...

Audie said:

I didnt call you guys deplorable! See below.

Regarding what you white ghost foreign devil
capitalist- roader counter revolutionaty reactionary
Westerner swabs might keep in mind about China
is at least touched on in my first post- the need for
stability.

Check out casualties in Chinese civil wars.
American civil war was a barroom brawl by comparison.

Click to expand...

Audie said:

Dont worry, they wont get the idea from you.

China has had so much civil war, so many
invasions, it should be understandable that
strong and unified comes before anything
else.

Prosperity is great of course.

The bible and koran are rightly seen as
alien works of fantasy and fanaticism.
No more real than star wars.

They are not easily gotten rid of but to
the extent that they can be turned tp constructive
purpose they can be more easily tolerated.

Meanwhile it would not hurt you guys,
would be an aid to comprehension if
you could try to conceive of Beijing
being other than pure evil, but in fact
having a legit pov. It has BTW provided the best
govt, the most freedom and prosperity
China has ever known.

Click to expand...

Audie said:

I didnt call you guys deplorable! See below.

Regarding what you white ghost foreign devil
capitalist- roader counter revolutionaty reactionary
Westerner swabs might keep in mind about China
is at least touched on in my first post- the need for
stability.

Check out casualties in Chinese civil wars.
American civil war was a barroom brawl by comparison.

Click to expand...