China state media continues to be the only media providing coverage of the standoff between church goers in Wenzhou and officials who want to demolish their church. The Beijing-based Global Times offering this feature yesterday.
Buried midway is a quote by an official who regulates religion: “So far, no crosses have actually been taken down. We understand that crosses are a symbol of Christian belief so we are negotiating,” he said.
The notion that belief can be negotiated like a tchotchke bargained over at a municipal market is a very “New China” way of looking at faith, or conflict in general. Just as America, as our First Amendment makes government tampering with the practice of thought or prayer an absolute verboten, pragmatism in China is a way of life, even (or especially) if it comes to something as intransigent as a standoff over Christianity’s most iconic symbol.
I refer back to one of my favorite stories from when I covered China.
If nothing else, the exercise in seeing the world through Chinese eyes is timely as many world religions this week shine their prescient glare on the ability of the downtrodden to navigate tyranny. Be the struggle with the autocracies of Ancient Egypt, Imperial Rome, or modern day Asia this week’s lessons teaches us that Spring eventually arrives.
Global Times | Zhang Yu in Wenzhou – 2014-04-17 7:58:02 PM
Concern rises in Wenzhou as Christianity booms in capitalist fashion
Sanjiang Church under construction. Photo: Zhang Yu/GT
Freshly daubed in red paint on the left façade of Sanjiang Church in Yongjia county, Wenzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province, is a large Chinese character chai, meaning “to demolish.”
A symbol of China’s rapid urbanization in the past three decades, the same character has been painted on the walls of old neighborhoods, factory buildings and illegal structures all over China before they made way for new high-rises, highways and commercial complexes.
But a province-wide controversy was triggered when the same fate befell the brand new Protestant church early this April, in a city where the large Christian population, about 15 percent of a total of 9 million, has provided the nickname “China’s Jerusalem.” Read more.
Meanwhile…back in Russia….another gem from The Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.