林中斌 部落格 / Blog Chong-Pin Lin

Future Surprises That Could Shock the World

The International Economy, Summer 2016

• In July, the founder/editor/publisher of International Economy asked me to contribute a piece of 200-300 words addressing the question What Will Be Tomorrow’s Surprises? Here is my attempted answer “China Will Be Highly Religious” along with the other fifty some views around the world.

Chong-Pin Lin

Communist China Turns Religious

Chong-Pin Lin

 Word account：304

  Date: July 19, 2016

China under the atheist communist rule will become the world’s most populous country of believers. By 2030, its Christian population will reach 247 million, overtaking the U.S. as the largest Christian country in the world, according to Professor Yang Fenggang at Purdue University in 2014.

The teaching of Confucius who was “struggled down” by Mao Zedong during the Great Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s is enjoying a revival since China’s President Xi Jinping began publicly promoting the classics in the late 2014. Chinese schools, somewhat embarrassed, have been borrowing textbooks from Taiwan where Confucianism has been preserved.

Xi displayed a fascination with Buddhism in the early 1980s when working at the county level in Hebei Province, according to Der Spiegel on December 10, 2010. His wife is a devout Tibetan Buddhist, which is an open secret. His mother is a Buddhist, and his father was friendly with Dalai Lama, according to a December 17, 2014 Reuters report.

 Though not officially blessed by the Communist Party, Buddhism has become fashionable top-down in the society. Jiang Zeming, former President of China often recited sutras from memory in public. Buddhist population in China has grown 60% since 2010 to 400 million. Recently, the return of Dalai Lama to China has been conjectured since Professor Jinwei of the Central Party School in Beijing, once headed by Xi from 2002 to 2007, so suggested openly in Hong Kong in June 2013.

In May 2013, Xi unprecedentedly received Patriach Kirill I of the Russian Orthodox Church. Pope Francis since assuming the papacy in 2013 has repeatedly expressed his goodwill to Xi. Beijing-Vatican negotiations on establishing diplomatic relationship have been on-going since 2014.

At least partially utilitarian in motives, Xi may see religions helpful in stabilizing an overly materialist and therefore disharmonious society, and useful in enhancing China’s international image.

Dr. Chong-Pin Lin, a former Deputy Defense Minister of Taiwan, now teaches at its National Defense University