Taiwan Church News
3184 Edition
March 4-10, 2013
Headline News

Reported by Chiou Kuo-rong

Written by Lydia Ma

The Lee Teng-hui Association for Democracy hosted a seminar at National Taiwan University on March 2 on the topic of “Academic Seminar on Exploring China”. The seminar called on National Chengchi University’s Graduate Institute of Religious Study Associate Professor and China’s religious policies expert Dr. Tsai Yuan-lin to share his expertise.

According to Tsai, China is a country lacking in genuine religious freedoms and it uses religion as part of its unification offensive against Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used China’s history to argue that missionaries are merely tools used by colonial powers to dominate China. For this reason, it declared that all religions in China must be self-supporting and all religious leaders must be appointed by the Chinese. Furthermore, the CCP passed a “Regulation on Religious Affairs” to regulate the number of clergy. This regulation also stipulates that clergy must be commissioned by the CCP and their religious beliefs must be compatible with CCP ideals. These regulations eventually resulted in the Catholic Church in China refusing to recognize clergy appointed by the Vatican.

Though the constitution of the People’s Republic of China states that citizens have freedom of religion, the government only allows religions that are compatible with its brand of socialism. Religious institutions that aren’t compatible with the CCP’s worldview are labeled as illegal and punished. According to Tsai, people involved in these institutions may be imprisoned for a minimum of 3 years.

At another lecture on how the CCP controls Chinese society, Professor Tseng Chien-yuan from Chung-Hua University’s Public Administration Department underscored that the CCP functions as a central commanding center and uses “carrots” such as brainwashing and education, and “sticks” such as threats, to control its people. He highlighted that the approach used by the CCP to govern Chinese people and the approach used by the KMT to govern Taiwanese people is altogether the same. Since religion has an inherent ability to assemble and rally people together, the CCP has always kept a tight rein on religion to protect its regime from being toppled.