It’s hardly news that 2011 has witnessed a severe deterioration
of relations between the Vatican and China. Nor is it any secret
what’s at stake for Rome: the Catholic Church’s freedom in China
from state control. Benedict XVI can no more accept that the lay
bureaucrats (some of whom aren’t even Christian) who run the
state’s Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association should decide who
will be China’s Catholic bishops, any more than Pope Clement VII
could acknowledge Henry VIII’s absurd claim to be Supreme Head of
the Church of England in 1534.
There is, however, a broader backdrop against which this
struggle is being played out. Much of it proceeds from internal
contradictions unleashed by China’s embrace of
capitalism.
Whether or not we believe the growth figures published by
China’s government, there’s no question that millions of Chinese
have escaped poverty since Deng Xiaoping began liberalizing China’s
economy in the late-1970s. This has not, however, been without its
complications.
It’s abundantly clear, for instance, that China’s economy
is hardly the capitalism envisaged by Adam Smith. Instead, it’s a
crony-capitalist arrangement. One symptom of this is the extensive
corruption prevailing throughout Chinese society.
In 2010, Transparency International ranked China as 78th
out of 179 countries on its
Corruption Perceptions Index. That made
China only slightly less-corrupt than Russia! Moreover, as Yashen
Huang illustrates in
Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics
(2008), apparatchiks from China’s Communist party, government, and
military exercise far-reaching control over thousands of the
businesses powering China’s development in the special economic
zones. That’s a recipe for a growing culture of accelerating
bribes, nepotism, and fraud.
Wiser heads in China, however, know crony capitalism isn’t
infinitely sustainable. In the long-term, China needs the rule of
law and a stable system of property rights — all of which implies
limiting the capacity of those with political power to act
arbitrarily.
But while rule of law and property rights are essential
for sustainable economic growth, they are not enough. Equally
important is a generally accepted moral culture that most people
have internalized and generally follow.
Here, however, Beijing is in a quandary. Thanks to decades
of often-brutal upheaval (not to mention the nihilistic destruction
unleashed by Mao’s Cultural Revolution), the Confucianism which
provided the moral glue that held Chinese society together for
centuries has been decimated. Nor does anyone believe in the
Communist party’s Marxist-Maoist alternative. It simply functions
to legitimize existing power-arrangements.
This brings us squarely to the issue of religion. Even
someone as militantly anti-Catholic as Voltaire acknowledged
Christianity’s civilizing effects upon those whom he dismissed as
the great-unwashed.
And religion is plainly on the rise in China. Five years
ago, the English language version of the Communist Party’s
newspaper, China Daily, reported on the results of studies
done by Shanghai University professors which indicated that
millions of Chinese — especially the young and particularly in the
special economic zones — were becoming Christian.
This shouldn’t be too surprising. It is materialism that
leads to atheism, not the growth of wealth per se.
Economic liberty requires and encourages people to think and choose
freely. But such thoughts can’t be quarantined to commercial
considerations. With increasing wealth, many Chinese now have the
time and resources to explore life’s more important questions. Many
have found answers in Christianity.
Such developments, according to some Chinese officials,
aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Back in 2006, the then-head of
China’s religious affairs ministry, Ye
Xiaowen, begrudgingly acknowledged the various
Christian churches’ contributions to helping Chinese society cope
with the effects of increasing wealth.
Beijing’s predicament, however, is that the same
Christianity which provides people with a moral compass in rapidly
changing societies also insists the state is not God and may not
exercise religious authority over the Church. This position is
especially pronounced in Catholicism. It receives doctrinal and
canonical affirmation in Catholicism’s insistence upon the need for
all Catholic bishops to be in full communion with St. Peter’s
successors as Bishop of Rome. Among other things, this means Rome’s
approval must be granted before ordination as a Catholic bishop is
considered licit.
China’s government thus faces a paradox. Some of China’s
corruption problems might well be alleviated by the growth of
Catholicism’s moral influence within its borders. As a faith,
Catholicism articulates a moral teaching that is (even according to
many of its critics) remarkably consistent and absolutely prohibits
intentional choices to murder, steal, or lie. The Church also
remains the world’s strongest promoter of natural law moral
reasoning — something that, by definition, isn’t premised on
explicitly Christian claims.
That same Catholic Church, however, cannot and will not
bend the knee to contemporary China’s Caesars, be it on questions
of doctrine or bishop appointments.
From this standpoint, Beijing’s quarrel with Rome is a
proxy for many of China’s dilemmas. Today, the regime’s raison
d’être is essentially one of a monopoly of power for its own
sake: the same domination that contributes to the corruption that
handicaps China economically, but which also rules out allowing
significant freedom to those very organizations that might help
address such problems.
The way out, of course, is for China’s rulers to accept
freedom’s indivisible character. Once you concede religious or
economic liberty, it’s hard to quarantine its effects.
Acknowledging this, however, would require China’s Communist Party
to self-terminate its grip on political power. Regrettably, as
history illustrates, Communists never do that — or at least not
until it’s truly inevitable.
