State and Church

I say we need a new religion; the Western State doesn't agree with me. They have their own, thank you.

China has its own too, and doesn't want a new one. What it wants is to dismantle the old ones. Which is pretty much what the West has been doing. We have freedom of religion. All churches can do what they want as long as they're progressive. Like the model-T. China finally figured out how that works. And so...

https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/905689026421702656

Context is China just passed new regulations about religion (in English here). The new regulations call for all religions in China (the 5 legally recognized) must do more to adapt to society and obey the government. Take proactive measures against extremism. Extremism being of course a relative term.

I want something. You want something. Say you draw a line, at one end it's what I want, at the other end it's what you want. If you accommodate to what I want, well you stop being you. If you try to do what you want but not too hard, then you're a moderate. If you try very hard to do what you want and don't care about what I want, then you're an extremist. Quite literally so.

tong_xin_great_mosque_ning_xia_china2

Chinese mosque

Again, that's no fallacy. If you try very hard to get what you want and don't care about what I want, well the logical end is to kill me, then get what you want. And that's what extremists do. That's not good, obviously, and China wants to eliminate extremism. They very wisely have chosen to do away with the charade that a country can be multicultural. It can be multiethnic, given that the ethnic groups live separately, and the government has as little popular input as possible. But multiculturalism, of which religious freedom is but a subset makes no sense. The point of having a distinct culture is to set borders to the ingroup and compete with other groups. The very point of culture is to prepare for conflict. You don't want internal conflict in a state. That's bad for everyone.

Which is why everyone in the West must be progressive, and everyone in China must be... "sinicized". Chinese. Not Han, mind you. The official ideology in China is that "China" is this multiethnic utopia, of which the Han are an important, but not unique part. It's all still quite blood and soil though, compared to the universalist blank slatism of baizuo religion. And of course Progressive infiltration of religion is a fact, but never stated overtly. De jure we have Freedom of Religion. China insists on being honest.

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I think part of the reason why the Chinese government is doing this is because there has been an increase in religiosity among the Chinese recently, and the Chinese government want to make sure it doesn't become too dangerous. I have a friend living in China, and he told me that the Hui Muslims are becoming more religious, and now Hui women are wearing the headscarf more often. And, supposedly, there has been a huge increase in Christianity in China, especially with the underground house churches, although I don't know how much of that is true or just wishful thinking on the part of the Western media

I think the Christianity thing is wishful thinking. There are some weird cults around there but they aren't that big and they're as much Christian as the Taiping were. The Hui in some areas are starting to get annoying and I do think this is mostly about them.

The beauty of Western alienation from Velvet Underground's "Ocean" back to Achilles moping by the wine-dark sea ... this is worth fighting for.

Taoism? I thought Taoism was already Sinic! Why does Taoism have to be Sinicized? Or are they including Taoism just so the Abrahamic faiths don't feel like they are being singled out?

The religion bureau recognized 5 religions, and this time they said "all religions must sinicize or else". Of course both Taoism and Buddhism, to the extent they even function today, are sinicized to the core, but the point here is that the government will give them orders and they better not resist them.

I visited Kaifeng and found a Jewish community totally Sinized. Officially recognized by the State. More Chinese than the Han. More patriotic than Yue Fei. They invited me to a banquet and gave me moon cakes. Indigestible for this Jew.

Do they have much knowledge of the Torah still?

That's fake. The Kaifeng Jews died out centuries ago. It's all to cheat you if your tourist money.

Israel could use some Han Diversity. It's a strength!

I think you are right.

Hi Spandrell I have never really understood what it actually means that China is ruled by communists and I get it less and less. Here is what I figured so far. Marx was adamant that you cannot skip over phases of progress. You do not go from agricultural backwads country to community, you need a bourgeois revolution and capitalism in between. So Lenin figured they will just do that, the capitalist period, under communist state control. A form of state capitalism, the state exploits, saves and reinvests, like a capitalist in the Marxian model. And Mao never even cared about Marx, he cared about the Soviet model. What he saw was effectively centralized state control and a modernizing approach: http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1921-2/electrification-campaign/communism-is-soviet-power-electrification-of-the-whole-country/ "Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country." This is what Mao basically thought Communism means. That he will be in power, and in power over a united country, not squabbling warlords, and will modernize. This is very far from the concept of Communism by any means. But that is how things changed. So my guess is that in China "communist" means "modernizing centralist", not much more. Right? But how is it possible intelligent people can live with such a huge cognitive dissonance? AND of course it leaves a HUGE avenue open for Prog infiltration: they can claim they want real Communism. And they easily recruit intellectuals by demonstrating them this thing isn't. This means, it can easily be demonstrated that Chinese communists in power are hypocrites. Why do they leave such a subversion avenue open? They could fix it easily. Rename from communist to something else. Like in NK. They renamed it to juche. So nobody could argue in NK it is not real communism, because it is not communism but juche, and real juche is whatever Kim says it is so gap closed. Why don't they do this?

My guess is that they judge the risk of perceived loss of legitimacy from a name change to be greater than the risk you're describing. The Communists are the current dynasty, and that dynasty name still has positive associations in China due to its accomplishments, even if the name itself is now meaningless. Do we have cognitive dissonance in the U.S. with our meaningless political party names? At some point, a name is just a name, and people don't think about what it means. "Communist" strikes us as a provocative label, but then "Republican" would be a pretty provocative political label in Saudi Arabia. The Kims were in a very different circumstance from the CPC -- the Kim name is what's important, not the Communist brand -- and their cost-benefit analysis came out differently. Also, anyone who pushes the angle that the CPC needs to be more true to its name is an idiot or a sociopath (or both), so it's a good way to identify those sorts of people.

It wouldn't be that easy. They would also have to demonstrate any other model of Communism was successful in providing for its people; if they just use theoretical principles, they become baizuo and can be dismissed. If they try to be maozuo, then they have to back up with evidence that Mao would agree with them. Its an uphill battle.

None at all.

Dude... you live in this fantasy world where people have clear ideas, talk about these clear ideas all the time, and then try to apply this clear ideas in a clear way. I haven't spent much time looking at what they teach at the Party Schools in China, but to the extent I've seen some of that stuff it is hopelessly convoluted prose trying to justify why Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is Good, and how we can find some justifying quotes in Marx's or Lenin's writing. Which of course you can, it's not like Marx or Lenin's ideas were that clear anyway. At any rate, 99% of Party officials have no recollection at all of the ideology they were taught in the Party Schools. What they know is the Slogan of the week, which they must use to write a few pages of propaganda. The whole country is full of posters with the Slogan of the Week or the Concept of the Year, or the 20 Important Buzzwords or whatever. In China, Communist means whatever the Propaganda Department has decided this week that it must mean. In the West, Progress means whatever the Cathedral has decided this week means Progress. Nobody reads old books, nobody remembers anything. Meaning is use, and use is getting the joke.

Seems to me that China is the immovable object that can stop this seemingly irresistible force they call Islam. You seem to admire China since it is a bulwark against the Cathedral. And I admire them grudgingly because it is the rock against which all of Islam's wiles/tricks/strategies get smashed to smithereens. *Shaking my head*

Assuming that the Cathedral can be halted, it would be the first time in recent history that has happened(without some sort of worldwide catastrophe). I'm not really holding my breath, cancer tends to win over defenses. It'll be nice, though.

I like this extract from "The Party" by Richard McGregor:

At a lunch in Washington at the Cosmos Club in the mid-eighties, Tom Robinson, the late political scientist, and host of the meal, had badgered Chen about the apparent contradictions between the state's official Marxist ideology and the free-market reforms then unfolding in China. After a while, Chen tired of the inquisition, ostentatiously put down his knife and fork, and firmly put a stop to the questions. 'Listen Mr Robinson,' he said, 'we are the Communist Party, and we will define what communism is.'

The Chen in the quote is Chen Yuan, former governor of the Chinese Development Bank. His father was Chen Yun one of the top Party officials in the 80s and 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen\_Yuanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen\_Yun