Chinese communists destroy 800 Buddha statues, discriminate against religious minorities

[Sirona]

Found this on Youtube while searching for "Buddhist temples". This report from 2020 by Deutsche Welle states that the Communist Chinese government pursues an anti-religious policy (more fervently than before) by destroying 800 Buddha statues and closing Buddhist temples, as well as by exercizing repressions against religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians. It may be easy to dismiss this as China-bashing, but I grew up in Communism. When I was a kid, my father would only begrudgingly let me attend Bible class because he feared "disadvantages". So I suppose that with regard to China's anti-religious policy, the claims made in the report have not been plucked out of thin air.

 

[Rival]

Religion is growing in China and I'm happy about it. This repression has to stop.

 

[Secret Chief]

From even just an historical PoV it is sad because China has contributed so much to Mahayana Buddhism's development.

 

[Twilight Hue]

It's funny on how the Communist Chinese think eliminating 800 statues by destroying them is going to affect Buddhist adherents.

The funny thing is there are actually promoting Buddhism themselves through the practice of impermanence by example.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

How terrible. That is as evil as the Taliban and Daesh's crimes against the religious and cultural heritage of others. The faster that regime goes into the garbage, the better.

 

[Nakosis]

Under Xi, the CCP has pushed to Sinicize religion, or shape all religions to conform to the doctrines of the officially atheist party and the customs of the majority Han Chinese population.
The CCP is officially atheist. The party prohibits its more than ninety million party members from holding religious beliefs, and it has demanded the expulsion of party members who belong to religious organizations.
For example, in 2018, party cadres and officials were given control over Sichuan Province’s Larung Gar, one of the world’s largest Buddhist study centers. Authorities demolished nearly half of the center in 2019, displacing up to six thousand monks and nuns.
Some argue that state repression of religion often has less to do with religious doctrine than with a group’s organizational ability, due to fear that such a group could potentially challenge the CCP’s legitimacy.
The State of Religion in China

Not religious myself but this seems more about reducing the threat to CCP political power.

Reducing the political threat of Buddhism.
Chinese authorities are requiring key Tibetan monks and nuns to act as propagandists for the government and Communist Party, Human Rights Watch said today. Under new policies for “Sinicizing” religion, the government has been compelling selected monastics in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) to undergo political training designed to create a new corps of Buddhist teachers proficient in state ideology.
Under the “Four Standards” policy introduced in TAR in 2018, monks and nuns must demonstrate – apart from competence in Buddhist studies – “political reliability,” “moral integrity capable of impressing the public,” and willingness to “play an active role at critical moments.” The implication is that they must agree to forestall or stop any attempts to protest state policy.
China: New Political Requirements for Tibetan Monastics

Is Buddhism at odds with Communist rule?
Buddhism is compatible with atheism. Then what political threat could Buddism be to the Communist Party?

 

[Wu Wei]

Under Xi, who is a big fan of Mao..... nothing surprises me

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Is Buddhism at odds with Communist rule?

All traditional religions are. Marxism-Leninism is basically its own religion and serves as a replacement for any spiritual beliefs, especially ones that teach transcendence of the physical world in some respect, as that violates the Marxist belief that we're just meat puppets and communism solves all of our problems. Spiritual beliefs of any kind are called "false consciousness" in Marxist theory.

 

[Secret Chief]

Buddhism is compatible with atheism. Then what political threat could Buddism be to the Communist Party?

I would guess it's the perceived potential threat from an organised group, any organised group. So that would include Buddhist communities / temples; irrespective of the presence or absence of any deities.

 

[Wu Wei]

Is Buddhism at odds with Communist rule?

I don't know about any Chinese presidents views on religion before Hu Jintao (who was right before Xi). But under Hu Jintao the practice seemed to be, we don't care what you do, just don't get in our face about it an make us care what you do. And the party religion was Atheism. There were rather large Christian churches built when Hu was in charge and no one cared about Buddhist or Taoist temples. Just as long as you didn't decide to have a disruptive protect or hand out pamphlets in Tiananmen square. Do that, you go the route of falun gong...who did exactly that. Other wise under Hu's government, no one seemed to care.

Xi, however, has read everything Mao ever wrote and is a big Mao fan....so religion will have problems

 

[Nakosis]

All traditional religions are. Marxism-Leninism is basically its own religion and serves as a replacement for any spiritual beliefs, especially ones that teach transcendence of the physical world in some respect, as that violates the Marxist belief that we're just meat puppets and communism solves all of our problems. Spiritual beliefs of any kind are called "false consciousness" in Marxist theory.

Religion is the opium of the people.
IOW religion is the painkiller of the people.
The pain caused by "capitalism".

The idea behind this, I presume, is that once capitalism is done away with, the people will no longer need religion to kill their pain.
Considering the continued rise of religion in China, it seems Chinese communism has not stopped the pain.

So whatever Marx was hoping for, Chinese communism isn't it.

 

[Nakosis]

I don't know about any Chinese presidents views on religion before Hu Jintao (who was right before Xi). But under Hu Jintao the practice seemed to be, we don't care what you do, just don't get in our face about it an make us care what you do. And the party religion was Atheism. There were rather large Christian churches built when Hu was in charge and no one cared about Buddhist or Taoist temples. Just as long as you didn't decide to have a disruptive protect or hand out pamphlets in Tiananmen square. Do that, you go the route of falun gong...who did exactly that. Other wise under Hu's government, no one seemed to care.

Xi, however, has read everything Mao ever wrote and is a big Mao fan....so religion will have problems

I wonder if Xi's rule is part of the catalyst for the increase in religion.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Religion is the opium of the people.
IOW religion is the painkiller of the people.
The pain caused by "capitalism".

The idea behind this, I presume, is that once capitalism is done away with, the people will no longer need religion to kill their pain.
Considering the continued rise of religion in China, it seems Chinese communism has not stopped the pain.

So whatever Marx was hoping for, Chinese communism isn't it.

He was also insulting religion by equating it with a harmful drug that clouds the mind. In Marxist theory, religion is seen as a tool of the ruling classes to mislead and fool the common people with false hope and promises, that causes them to forget who their oppressors are. So religion is an enemy to be done away with. The question is how they're going to get rid of it. Some want a more forceful approach like we saw under Stalin, and others think it will wither away on its own.

 

[Twilight Hue]

How terrible. That is as evil as the Taliban and Daesh's crimes against the religious and cultural heritage of others. The faster that regime goes into the garbage, the better.

Communism never was good nor will it ever be.

Same goes for fascism.

 

[stvdv]

Found this on Youtube while searching for "Buddhist temples". This report from 2020 by Deutsche Welle states that the Communist Chinese government pursues an anti-religious policy (more fervently than before) by destroying 800 Buddha statues and closing Buddhist temples, as well as by exercizing repressions against religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians. It may be easy to dismiss this as China-bashing, but I grew up in Communism. When I was a kid, my father would only begrudgingly let me attend Bible class because he feared "disadvantages". So I suppose that with regard to China's anti-religious policy, the claims made in the report have not been plucked out of thin air.

Unless the Buddhists were violent, which I doubt, I call this Chinese violence, hence these Chinese act wrong again

Unless it's all fake news, which I doubt, then it seems that China make kind of a habit of this .. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Falun Gong

(of course it could be that all these groups were extremely violent or going against the Law, otherwise it makes me put China on the never-to-go list)
(I do remember that Xi really does not like evangelist or people who proselytize, so that might be a reason why he does this kind of thing; I mean he is boss(y) )

 

[Brickjectivity]

Its difficult for me to put this into perspective. I can't help wondering if they can successfully squeeze religion out of the populace or not. What are they doing differently from the USSR?

 

[Laika]

Is Buddhism at odds with Communist rule?

Yes. Marxism-Leninism is based on the theory of "materialism" which treats all phenomena, including consciousness, as products of nature. Buddhism doesn't come up very often in western Marxist literature, so the only source I can suggest is the one in the link below (Chapters 9 and 20 deal with Buddhism specifically).

Indian Thought K Damodaran : K Damodaran : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Though Buddhism is credited with a very advanced development of dialectics, it is not regarded as a materialist dialectic. Even though Buddhism is Atheist or agnostic, essentially it is not atheist in the "correct" way to be compatible with Marxism-Leninism. Therefore it is regarded as in opposition to "dialectical materialism" as the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of nature, from which the Communist understanding of Atheism is derived.

 

[Vinayaka]

Found this on Youtube while searching for "Buddhist temples". This report from 2020 by Deutsche Welle states that the Communist Chinese government pursues an anti-religious policy (more fervently than before) by destroying 800 Buddha statues and closing Buddhist temples, as well as by exercizing repressions against religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians. It may be easy to dismiss this as China-bashing, but I grew up in Communism. When I was a kid, my father would only begrudgingly let me attend Bible class because he feared "disadvantages". So I suppose that with regard to China's anti-religious policy, the claims made in the report have not been plucked out of thin air.

Ethnic minorities have rarely done well in China. We're kept pretty unaware of it because China itself is just so large. Indigenous peoples, like those in North America, South America, Africa, and Europe have rarely fared well.

Ethnic minorities in China - Wikipedia

 

[Laika]

Its difficult for me to put this into perspective. I can't help wondering if they can successfully squeeze religion out of the populace or not. What are they doing differently from the USSR?

Assuming these reports are true, it's difficult to determine the scale, magnitude and intensity of the effort being directed against religion. (Superficially) this doesn't seem comparable to the extreme lengths the Soviets went to in the 1930's, or to the Cultural Revolution in China itself, or to Albania's effort (the only communist state to outright ban religion). It is still a big shift away from the (relative) tolerance that saw religion grow over the 1990's in China. It's probably still "bad" though by any western standard of religious freedom and human rights.


The Soviet Union went through periods of liberalisation and repression of religion, with its policy changing over time. In the 1920's, there was an intense but very crude effort against religion: young communists would hold blasphemous rallies against Easter and Christmas, which the communists realised only pissed everyone off and entrenched religious believers. After a respite under the New Economic policy, In the 1930's there was intense efforts towards repression, with a "five year plan" to achieve the eradication of religion and the mass mobilisation of parts of the country as part of the "League of the Militant Godless". (They also adopted an entirely new calendar, which switched between 5 and 6 day weeks, thus abolishing "Sundays" so no-one could celebrate the sabbeth). In the 1940's, the war effort meant that this anti-religious campaign could not be effectively conducted, and there was a change in policy being more sympathetic to religious belief in order to help the Soviets win the Second World War. Under Khrushchev in 1950's and 1960's , there was a renewed effort towards undermining religion, but it was (comparatively) less violent; churches were closed, course in "scientific atheism" became mandatory in schools and universities and museums of atheism were established.

Probably the best example of what happened, in the difference between "liberal" and "repressive" periods, was the different approaches to eliminate Christmas celebrations. They tried it in the 1930's, declaring Santa Claus an "enemy of the people" and turning December 25th in to a "day of industrialisation" (celebrated by going to work...how inspiring... ) By the end of Communist rule however, people simply held Christmas-like celebrations on New Years as a way to find secular alternatives to it as a "communist" sponsored winter festival, with Santa Claus, "new years" trees and gift-giving. They also have "new years" cards, which you get a weird blend of seasonal themes and techno-Utopian or patriotic imagery.

 

[Laika]

Under Xi, who is a big fan of Mao..... nothing surprises me

If I'm not mistaken, the Chinese government views the early period of Mao's rule in China favourably, with the formation of the People's Republic. However, the later period is not treated well. The CCP regards the great leap forward and the cultural revolution (basically the world's largest famine and a quasi-civil war) as "ultra-leftist" deviations from a correct party line. the CCP's treatment of Mao's legacy is more selective and the history is evaluated in line with current party thinking and policy.