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Battle of the Billions
As Christianity reaches for China and India, a struggle is intensifying
http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/asiaweek/magazine/2000/1020/editorials_sb1.html
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.
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