Stop the cosmos! say ChiComs

For a bunch of smart guys, the Chinese Communist regime sure is stupid. The other day, Beijing decreed that Tibetan Buddhist monks must cease to reincarnate without the Communist Party's permission. Excerpt:

China asserted the communist government's right to recognize Tibetan Buddhist reincarnations of the lamas that form the backbone of the religion's clergy.

All future incarnations of living Buddhas related to Tibetan Buddhism "must get government approval," the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the State Administration for Religious Affairs.

Reincarnate lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and oversee the training of monks, giving them enormous influence over religious life in Tibet.

China already insists that only the government can approve the appointments of the best known reincarnates, including the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, the No. 1 and No. 2 figures in Tibetan Buddhism.

A copy of the new rules posted to the administration's Web site said that the selection of reincarnates "must preserve national unity and solidarity of all ethnic groups."

"The process cannot be influenced by any group or individual from outside the country," it said in an apparent reference to the Dalai Lama and supporters.

Well, that'll learn 'em. God knows the Chinese communists can inflict hideous suffering on the Tibetan Buddhists -- they have done and will continue to do -- but only a fool would bet against religion in China. The Asia Times Online columnist Spengler says history is not on the side of Chairman Mao's heirs:

Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by the National Catholic Reporter's veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history. If you read a single news article about China this year, make sure it is this one.

I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East.

China, devoured by hunger so many times in its history, now feels a spiritual hunger beneath the neon exterior of its suddenly great cities. Four hundred million Chinese on the prosperous coast have moved from poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of people in history. Despite a government stance that hovers somewhere between discouragement and persecution, more than 100 million of them have embraced a faith that regards this life as mere preparation for the next world. Given the immense effort the Chinese have devoted to achieving a tolerable life in the present world, this may seem anomalous. On the contrary: it is the great migration of peoples that prepares the ground for Christianity, just as it did during the barbarian invasions of Europe during the Middle Ages.

If you read that John Allen report cited by Spengler, you'll see that there's a big religious boom all over China -- even among Confucians and Muslims. The Christian boom is almost entirely a Protestant thing, it appears. It's easy to see why China is on fire for religion: the country is undergoing revolutionary upheaval with the arrival of capitalist prosperity. Vast throngs of peasants are moving into the cities, and are seeking some sort of community, and spiritual anchor amid their dislocation. In a spring issue of The American Interest (behind subscriber firewall), William H. McNeill wrote about how the urbanization of the planet in this century is going to cause -- is in fact causing -- religious revival. But it's not going to be traditional religion, or liberal religion. It's going to be modern and fundamentalist. People think that's a contradiction, but in fact, fundamentalism is a reaction to modernity. That's another story, however.

Anyway, Spengler's right: bet on the Pentecostals. Bet on the Tibetan Buddhists. But don't bet on the scientific materialists ruling from the Forbidden City. That's a sociological judgment, not a theological one.