Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 665 | Wed 05 Oct 2022
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CHINA’S GREAT LEAP BACKWARDS
to be confirmed at CCP’s 20th National Congress.
By Elizabeth Kendal
The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will commence on Sunday 16 October. This Congress is immensely significant as it is expected to mark a definitive break with the post-Mao era fashioned by Deng Xiaoping. In the 1980s, to avoid the return of a Mao-style personality cult, Deng introduced presidential term limits – limiting Presidents to two five-year terms. He also introduced collective leadership – ensuring power was shared and rotated between the CCP’s two factions: the Shanghai Faction/Gang (which represents China’s wealthy coastal cities) and the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL, which represents China’s poor rural hinterland). Insisting the CCP should get its legitimacy not from ideology but from its ability to deliver prosperity, Deng set China on a path of openness and free market reform.
After the Tiananmen Square protests and 4 June 1989 military crackdown, the CCP realised it needed a new narrative. A new school curriculum was written in which Marxist ideology was replaced with Chinese nationalism. According to the new narrative, China was long the greatest nation on earth. However, from 1839, China endured 100 years of national humiliation at the hands of hostile foreign powers. Since taking power in 1949, the CCP has been leading China on a 100-year marathon to national rejuvenation which will see China regain global supremacy by 2049. The generation raised on this narrative (virtually all mainland Chinese aged 30 and under) tends to view the CCP as China’s saviour, defender and trail-blazer, much to the horror of the older generation, particularly those aged over 70, who lived through the terrors of the CCP’s Cultural Revolution.
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| China’s President Xi Jinping in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, 16 Sept 2022. (Photo by Sergei Bobylyov) |
Originally a member of Jiang Zemin’s Shanghai Faction, Xi Jinping has diverged from Jiang in assessing that China’s growth is unsustainable and slowing. Consequently, the CCP will not always be able to deliver prosperity. As Xi sees it, if the CCP is to complete the 100-year marathon to national rejuvenation and global supremacy, the CCP will need to sacrifice growth and return to Mao-style total control of both the economy and the masses. After becoming president in 2013, Xi Jinping moved quickly to establish his own faction and shore up his own power. In March 2018 the CCP’s purged legislature approved an amendment to the constitution, removing presidential term limits, paving the way for Xi Jinping to be re-appointed for a third (and fourth and possibly fifth) five-year term.
Xi has secured enormous power through political purges executed under the cover of ‘anti-corruption’ and through escalating levels of social control. Xi’s social control includes the establishment of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) tasked with ‘stability maintenance’, lawfare under the cover of new ‘Administrative Measures’ and repressive legislation,the use of blanket surveillance using cameras loaded with world-leading facial recognition software and Artificial Intelligence to drive the CCP’s punitive Social Credit System, to extraordinarily cruel Zero-COVID measures through which the CCP has demonstrated it can turn an apartment block or even a city into a lethal prison literally overnight. [See China Insights (Youtube): ‘New wave of strict lockdowns across China’, 16 Sept 2022.] Using Zero-COVID measures, Xi has managed to rein in the private sector, stifle unsustainable growth, punish the Shanghai Faction and return the masses to a state of fearful submission and dependency. While some analysts surmise Xi might relax the Zero-COVID measures after the Congress, others are not so sure.
This nightmarish environment forms the context of the escalating persecution of the Church in China. In pursuing its goal of global supremacy, the CCP demands and requires a ‘united front’. Dissenting voices will be silenced. The persecution ahead will be just as severe as Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) – albeit more high-tech. The day is surely coming when the LORD will judge the CCP: he will ‘cut it down’ and ‘cast it out’ (Ezekiel 31). But that will only happen in God’s perfect time, according to God’s perfect plan, when everything is in place. When that day comes, the Chinese Church will be freed to change the world. Until then, the Church in China needs our prayers.
An expanded (1400 words), more detailed version of this RLPB is available on Religious Liberty Monitoring (5 Oct 2022).
PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR MERCIFUL GOD WILL
* continue to sustain, build, guide and bless his precious Church in China; may our Lord provide her with all she needs to grow and persevere through persecution and hardship; may the Spirit of God comfort and encourage her, and fill her with wisdom, faith and light to navigate through the deepening darkness.
* protect, sustain, and fight for every Chinese Christian who is currently imprisoned because of their ‘illegal’ church leadership, ‘illegal’ evangelistic ministry, ‘illegal’ Christian life and witness, or their ‘unpatriotic’ religious liberty advocacy or human rights activism. May they be assured of God’s presence and love.
The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27a ESV). ‘And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20b ESV).
* fulfil his good and perfect plan for Xi Jinping, for the great nation/empire of China and for the Chinese Church; may all the evil of the CCP be redeemed and worked for good – for the benefit of the nation, the Church and the world.
‘Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!’ (from Psalm 46 ESV).
SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
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CHINA’S GREAT LEAP BACKWARDS
The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will commence on Sunday 16 October. This Congress is immensely significant as it is expected to mark a definitive break with the post-Mao era fashioned by Deng Xiaoping. Since becoming President in 2013, Xi Jinping has secured enormous power through political purges and social control. In 2018, the constitution was amended, removing presidential term limits, paving the way for Xi to be appointed for an unprecedented third term. Xi believes that, if the CCP is to complete the ‘100-year marathon’ to global supremacy by 2049, the CCP will need to return to Mao-style total control of both the economy and the masses. This nightmarish environment forms the context of the escalating persecution of the Church in China. Please pray.
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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate for the persecuted Church. RLPB is a donor-funded ministry. To support this ministry visit www.ElizabethKendal.com.
Elizabeth has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.
For more information visit: www.ElizabethKendal.com