DATE=2/2/2000 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=CHINA / RELIGION NUMBER=5-45366 BYLINE=STEPHANIE MANN DATELINE=WASHINGTON INTERNET=YES CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: China is intensifying its crackdown on unauthorized religious and spiritual groups - shutting down meeting places and sentencing members to prison terms. Observers say the government is trying to halt what it sees as a loss of its control over the Chinese people and a threat to the authority of the Communist Party. V-O-A's Stephanie Mann reports. TEXT: In China, people may legally practice only five religions - all of them approved by the government -- and only as part of what are called patriotic religious associations. One of the government's requirements is that all members of the approved associations believe first and foremost in the supremacy of the Communist Party. /// OPT /// The five religions allowed by the government are Buddhism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism and Taoism. /// END OPT /// Because of the constraints on freedom of religion, many Chinese have chosen to worship in unauthorized ways - either in secret "house" churches, or in folk religion groups that the government bans as dangerous superstition. China scholar Anne Thurston says religious belief has grown dramatically in recent years - in particular in traditional Buddhism and in Christianity. /// THURSTON ACT ONE /// With this very rapid economic development going on in China, with the decline of belief in the ideology of the Communist Party, I think that there is a real sort of moral vacuum in China today. So that on the one hand, you see this sort of crass materialism, and on the other hand, you see people trying to give new meaning to their life. /// END ACT /// Ms. Thurston, who lives in Washington and studies contemporary Chinese social issues, says Chinese people are not finding moral guidance from the Communist Party or from the materialism of economic prosperity. So, she says, they are looking to new sources, including religion. The largest religion in China is Buddhism, with 100- million adherents, but Western religions are growing, too. The government-approved Protestant church has about 15 million members and the official Catholic association has four million. China and the Vatican broke relations in 1957, when Beijing refused to allow Catholics to look to the Pope as their spiritual leader. Joseph Kung, a spokesman for the Cardinal Kung Foundation in Stamford, Connecticut, which supports the underground Roman Catholic Church in China, says the unofficial or illegal Catholic Church has about 10 million Chinese followers. /// KUNG ACT /// All these people -- so called underground followers or what you call unofficial church or those people who worship outside the sphere of the patriotic association -- all they want is to practice their religious activities in accordance with their conscience. That's all they are looking for. May we add, they also are very patriotic to China. They also love China. They are not revolutionary. /// END ACT /// And Mr. Kung points to recent arrests of underground Catholic bishops, priests and lay leaders who were doing no more than practicing their faith. /// OPT /// Underground Roman Catholic Bishop Han Dingxiang was arrested in early December. Mr. Kung says he does not know the whereabouts of the 63 year-old bishop, who has spent many of the last 20 years in jail. A 65- year old Roman Catholic lay leader, Wang Chengqun, was picked up just before Christmas and is reportedly being held in a re-education through labor camp. /// END OPT /// Lately, attention has focused on government actions against the folk spiritual movement called Falun Gong, which was declared an illegal cult last year. Falun Gong combines exercise with breathing, meditation and folk beliefs and has attracted a wide following among middle class and middle-aged Chinese. Last year, thousands of Falun Gong members held a silent meditation-style demonstration in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Since then, more than 15-hundred practitioners have been jailed. In addition, in the last few months, the government has shut down more than 100 study centers of another meditation sect, called Zhong Gong. Anne Thurston says the government is worried about its loss of control as well as the historical precedent set by such popular movements. /// THURSTON ACT TWO /// Traditionally, rebellions in China have often started with these sort of unorthodox sects. They begin in times of dynastic decline when people are looking for new values. The government is not satisfying their needs. They look for new values. They form new organizations, and there's a progression to the point where finally some of these unorthodox sects begin to have political overtones and begin to engage in rebellion. /// END ACT /// Both Anne Thurston and Joseph Kung believe that most people who follow unauthorized religions in China do not have a political agenda. Ms. Thurston notes the fact that people choose not to worship in patriotic religious associations can be interpreted as a political decision. But she says it is the Communist Party that politicizes their choice, not the house churches. On January sixth, when the Pope ordained 12 bishops from around the world, the patriotic Chinese Catholic Church held a ceremony the same day to ordain five bishops in China. Joseph Kung says this was not a coincidence, but was part of China's effort to show the Chinese church is independent from the Pope. Anne Thurston says Beijing's ordination of bishops, its arrest of Catholic priests and suppression of unathorized religious groups are all part of China's effort to reassert control. But she doubts if the Communist Party can ever regain the control it once had over the Chinese people. // REST OPTIONAL // /// THURSTON ACT THREE /// I think that this is really the most troubling thing to try to understand as China tries to move forward economically into the 21st century - that the old Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought ideology just doesn't work. . They aren't giving the Chinese people a reason to believe in them. And that's undermining their legitimacy. They're going to have to do something, and it's just not clear what it is. /// END ACT /// In the meanwhile, Ms. Thurston says, China may muddle along - with sporadic protests and crackdowns - as the people and the party try to find new goals to define life in China as it enters the new century. (Signed) NEB/SMN/KL 02-Feb-2000 12:20 PM EDT (02-Feb-2000 1720 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .