Chapter 24 What China Is Missing—Faith in Political Discourse

In: From Trustworthiness to Secular Beliefs
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Gerda Wielander
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1 Introduction

The first major policy declaration by Xi Jinping 习近平 (1953–) in 2013 started with the word faith (xinyang 信仰).1 “Faith, belief, confidence, and real action are the guarantee for the success of our undertakings” (Xinyang, xinnian, xinxin he shigan shi women shiye chenggong de baozheng 信仰,信念,信心和实干是我们事业成功的保证).2 This emphasis on faith came with corresponding eight commandments (bage bixu 八个必须) which reflected some of the points written into the preamble of the Chinese constitution and now read like a precursor of the socialist core values.3 Since then xinyang has become a key term in Xi’s rhetoric and is seen as a core quality of the Chinese people. The phrase “If people have faith, the country has strength” (Renmin you xinyang, guojia you liliang 人民有信仰,国家有力量)4 has become a key slogan, plastered across billboards in China’s major cities, and even got its own song, composed in time for the 19th party congress in 2017.

This chapter focuses on this appearance of the word xinyang (faith) in mainland Chinese politics discourse in recent years. It analyzes the party’s attempts to create a belief system around socialist core values and a hagiography around the history of the Communist party and its saints (heroes). The main focus of this study is the use of a certain terminology (i.e., the use of the term xinyang) rather than the object of faith (e.g. Communism, or a Christian God). While the use of the term faith in party discourse is not new, I argue that the emphasis placed on it since Xi Jinping’s leadership needs to be explained by contemporary developments rather than as a continuation of previous practices. It places the party’s emphasis of xinyang in the context of the resurgence of religion in twenty-first-century China, on the one hand, and the emergence of a credible moral alternative to the party in the form of Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波 (1955–2017) and Xu Zhiyong 许志永 (1973–) on the other—two individuals representative of a wider movement built on faith and courage of conviction, which gained traction and support until the party’s crackdown from 2015 onwards. The chapter points out common points in this discourse and the ways this discourse ties in with earlier discourse on faith and values since the early twentieth century. It considers the term xinyang a “floating signifier” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001 [1985]) whose precise definition is contested, but which is connected to questions over China’s future “salvation” by all those invoking it. Faith is what is required for China to achieve its aims, seems to be the consensus.

As Klein points out in this volume, in Republican texts the term xinyang operated in conjunction with other religious terms like shengjing 圣经 (bible) and fuyin 福音 (gospel), all of which suggested a Christian context. A hundred years later, these terms still carry this connotation, but to a degree they have also entered secular and common parlance.

We need to point out that the use of xinyang is not the only manifestation of spiritual language in Chinese political discourse. Under the Hu-Wen government, love was an important term in the context of building a “harmonious society.”5 Apart from faith, which is the focus of this article, jiingshen 精神 or spirit is another key term in political discourse. Not only does the achievement of various goals and objectives require the “correct spirit,” but there is also a Chinese national spirit (Zhongguo minzu jingshen 中国民族精神), a Beijing spirit (Beijing jingshen 北京精神), and spiritual hygiene (jingshen weisheng 精神卫生), not to mention the spirit of Lei Feng 雷锋 (1940–1962) and other model heroes, and the spirit of the 19th party congress (shijiuda jingshen 十九大精神). “Innovation is the soul of a nation’s progress” (Chuangxin shi yige minzu jinbu de linghun 创新是一个民族进步的灵魂), a big banner proclaimed on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road in April 2017, and, of course, the party has soul (dang de linghun 党的灵魂). For Andrew Kipnis, the “party propagandists mirror the poetics of the English language using linghun’s sacred/religious connotations to imply that there is something permanent and powerful about the interiority that animates the party.”6

To Kipnis, the “soul” is a bridge between the pre-modern and the modern, echoing Habermas7 who argues that religious communities owe their persistent influence to an obstinate survival of pre-modern thought. He further argues that “one may discover, even in religious utterances, semantic contents and covert personal intuitions that can be translated and introduced into secular discourse.”8 In the case of China, the meaning of secular in itself is debatable, but in the contemporary Chinese context secular discourse is characterized by a focus on the philosophical rather than the numinous,9 morality rather than faith in divinity, and an understanding of transcendence that is not dependent on a force outside oneself,10 as will be shown in what follows.

2 Faith, Values, and the Party

“The Chinese people have faith” (Zhongguo renmin you xinyang 中国人民有信仰), released in the autumn of 2017, is a catchy pop tune. The lyrics are a simple ode to Chinese core socialist values in fourteen short lines, which the seven-minute song will imprint ineradicably on one’s mind. “Core values are our faith, core values are our new practice, core values we commit to our heart, core values we sing out loud! If people have faith, the country has strength; extraordinary among the ordinary, our common ancestors are Yan and Huang ; if people have faith, the Chinese dream has hope, with shared prosperity we speed towards xiaokang 小康!”11 These words are followed by a recital of each of the core values, which at one point in the rather lengthy song are being rapped. If the invocation of faith and hope has a faint ring of St Paul about it, the third element in the gospel according to Xi is strength (liliang 力量), not love, and references Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙 (1866–1925), as shown in Klein’s chapter in this volume.

The meaning and importance of faith has been a topic of keen discussion since about the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. At that point, the resurgence of religion, and in particular the rapid growth of Christianity, had informed much soul searching and sociological and ethnographic research on religion in China. While one of the main conceptual models to talk about the growth of religion in China used is the “market,” as proposed by Tamney and Yang,12 by 2009 Chinese academics were talking about “religious ecology,” and more specifically, about an imbalance in China’s religious ecology. This imbalance was considered to have been caused by previous attempts to stamp out all polytheistic beliefs (in the form of folk religion or “popular religion”) which allegedly removed all obstacles to hinder the growth of Christianity. Mou Zhongjian 牟钟鉴 (1939–) of China’s Minzu University felt compelled to argue that, “one important strategic task for the future social and cultural building-up of China is to re-establish, under the guidance of the system of core socialist values, the equilibrium of a diverse and harmonious ecology of religious culture.”13 This renewed emphasis on indigenous religion as a response to the popularity of Christianity can be compared to the rivalry between Buddhism and Taoism, described by Mollier, which led to a significant change in Taoist scriptures in an urgently felt need on the part of Taoists to reinforce the prestige of their own tradition.14 Today party ideology seeks reinforcement through invocation of Chinese traditional religions against the “challenge” of Christianity.

In 2013, Zhuo Xinping 卓新平 (1955–), Director of the Institute for the Study of World Religions within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a scholar of Christianity, and a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, argued that the members of the Communist Party and the Chinese nation needed faith; without faith, there was no future for the country or the party; without faith, social morality became “like a river without a source, a tree without roots.”15 In order to realize the Chinese Dream, Zhuo argues that the entire Chinese people must be united by means of cultural faith. A year earlier, Gao Zhanxiang 高占祥 (1935–), Chairman of the Association for the Promotion of Chinese Culture, already warned that, “Belief is the soul of a nation. A firm belief is […] a spur for a state, a political party, or an individual to proceed on his or its way forward. It is a determining factor […] as regards the flourishing or the decline, the success or the failure […] of states, parties, and individuals.”16

Such thoughts are not new. Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873–1929) already wondered in 1902 whether China would have any kind of future without faith,17 and an article in xin qingnian 新青年 entitled “On Faith” (Lun xinyang 论信仰) by Yun Daiying 恽代英 (1895–1931), an early leader of the CCP, argued that, “Faith leads people forward, that’s for sure. It has a special function; it makes the meek brave, the weak strong, the lethargic spirited […] only faith has this function.”18

While xinyang as a compound (noun or verb) has been used since the Tang dynasty, there is debate, as evident in the contributions to this volume, as to when the concept of faith started to be discussed and defined.19 One of the most interesting modern definitions of faith, including political faith, was provided by He Lin 贺麟 (1902–1992) who, in 1947, speaks of faith in the following terms.

Faith is a form of knowledge, it is also a motivation for action; one can say that faith is a form of knowledge which is able to prompt action. Furthermore, it can be said that faith is a form of knowledge that makes the individual strong, enduring, sincere, focused […] On the day a nation’s or a country’s faith is broken, the nation or the country will fall into tragic disaster […] Traditional faith holds together systems of customs and forms the core of rituals […] pragmatic faith (shiyong xinyang 实用信仰) makes life more convenient as it regulates activities […] all faith in politics or military matter falls into the realm of pragmatic faith […] Political faith includes three different aspects: a) faith in a political doctrine, b) faith in the plans or policies of the government or a party, c) faith in the character of the political leader.20

He Lin himself wrote in response to his own context and has no direct link to the CCP, but we can find all three aspects of political faith as identified by He reflected in the party’s endeavors. Works like Daguo xinyang 大国信仰 (A Great Nation’s Faith)—a reader in socialist ideological faith—try to re-establish socialism as China’s political doctrine; delivery on economic targets and “speeding towards ‘xiaokang’ with shared prosperity,” as the new song puts it, is designed to instil faith in the plans and policies of the government; and the emerging personality cult around Xi Jinping himself is perhaps less of an adulation of the man than his supposed incarnation of party values and spirit.21

Xinyang, as propagated by the party, is closely linked to socialist core values (shehui zhuyi hexin jiazhiguan 社会主义核心价值观) which, to some degree, have become synonymous with Chinese values (Zhongguo jiazhiguan 中国价值观, also Zhongguo de jiazhiguan 中国的价值观).22 Unlike xinyang, the term jiazhiguan is a neologism; it is a modern compound made up of jiazhi 价值 and guannian 观念. Zhong Shaohua 钟少华 states that the term did not exist in classical Chinese at all. The term jiazhi on its own, on the other hand, does appear in post-Han texts, mostly in Buddhist classics, but is reserved to express value in a monetary or economic sense. It is only in modern times, from the late nineteenth century onwards, that virtues like ren or concepts like ziran 自然 started to be referred to as values using jiazhi. It was in the Chinese translation of the Bible where the term jiazhi was introduced as a term to speak of things like wisdom, fate, and other spiritual values.23 From the twentieth century onwards, the term jiazhi started to be used for a whole variety of different non-monetary values, all of which were considered to be “objective” or “universal.” Jiazhi in non-monetary or economic terms appeared in the writings of Liang Qichao and Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), among others. Through these writings, jiazhi slowly became something aspirational, something one was aiming to reach. In writings by Jiang Jingsan 蒋径三 on idealism, for example, value/jiazhi started to be associated with subjectivity and an emotional judgment; as what should be rather than what is, something associated with liangxin 良心 (conscience, rendered in German in Zhong’s text).24

Zhong identifies Zhang Dongsun 张东荪 (1886–1973) as key source for the introduction of the term jiazhiguan. Chapter 6 of Zhang’s essay “Knowledge and Culture” (Zhishi yu wenhua 知识与文化) is entitled “Knowledge is Value” (Zhishi ji jiazhi 知识即价值) and speaks of a distinction between Western and Asian values, referring to “dongfangren dui jiazhi de guannian东方人对价值的观念.25 The term jiazhiguan is therefore a rather new term, which emphasizes the relativity and subjectivity of values depending on one’s view point, one’s culture, and one’s politics. This is a very important point given the centrality of values, and in particular the socialist core values, in contemporary discussions on xinyang. Faith, in the way the term is used in Chinese political discourse today, implies adherence to a particular set of values that is distinct to China and Chinese socialist culture; not universally shared—but increasingly globally transmitted—the anchoring of xinyang around a specific understanding of values is an important aspect of the attempts to fix the meaning of the floating signifier xinyang in the wider debates.

3 Worshipping the Party

First signs of recent attempts to link the party, faith and the state in Chinese people’s minds came at New Year in 2010, when the national education department launched a comprehensive campaign to encourage people to “wish the motherland a Happy New Year,” which lasted from 10 January to 19 February 2010. Chinese people were encouraged to offer sacrifice (jibai 祭拜, lit. “to offer sacrifice to one’s ancestors”) to China’s magnificent territory, the common ancestors Yan and Huang, outstanding historical figures, revolutionary martyrs, model heroes, and the millions of common people. According to Li Xiangping 李向平26 this was the first incident in the Chinese people’s history where the state interfered with New Year. While there were some attempts after 1911 to link the nation to faith (as Klein points out in this volume), these were quickly diluted and certainly in the first three decades of the People’s Republic all kind of worship was considered “individualistic” and hence forbidden. In the 1990s, even fireworks and crackers were forbidden. However, recent economic development has brought about a liberalization of faith related customs, and, lo and behold, the state suddenly wants to be the object of worship, says Li. Despite economic development and a relaxation of rules on popular religion, Li argues, there is no actual religious freedom; the crisis of religion has not gone away. While people have faith, they are not able to identify with this faith or to freely express it. What is happening instead, in particular in the context of this exhortation to worship the state, is that the Chinese people are being “made to believe” (bei xinyang le 被信仰了). Li quotes Zhu Xueqin 朱学勤 (1952–), who stated that China’s reforms could be divided into two periods, characterized by different types of cooperation. In the 1980s, China saw the cooperation between enlightened officials and progressive students; the following phase saw cooperation between the government and capital, which resulted in the formation of bigwig capitalism, to use Li’s words. Li now sees a third phase characterized by the cooperation between public authority and traditional faith, for the purpose of sanctification of bigwig capitalism as the deliverer of economic development. This, the state may hope, will counter the crises of faith in Marxism, in the party, and in socialism.27 Indeed Brown28 argues that the party’s main strength lies in its redemptive power—or at least a narrative based on redemptive power—and the promise to deliver on modernization and national rejuvenation.

The party has certainly been working hard at its creation myth. In 2012 CCTV1 broadcast a three-part documentary film with the title “Xinyang.” It is a three-hour lesson in CCP history and its heroes, dedicating part one to the period of 1921–1949, part two to the 1950s, and part three to the contemporary (leaving out a rather large chunk of time in between). The film establishes the orthodoxy of the CCP’s version of historical events, whether factual or not. The three parts enshrine CCP history with its holy places, and its saints, evoking a history and spirit of sacrifice and dedication, with frequent repetitions of the word xinyang itself throughout the three parts. The closing frame of part three concludes with the following voice over:

In order to believe (weile xinyang 为了信仰) that there is an even longer road ahead of us; that by the time the CCP will have been established for 100 years we will have built a moderately prosperous society for our several billion Chinese people; that come the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the New China we will have built a rich and strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious socialist country through socialist modernization, let us be guided by faith. Let even more legendary, groundbreaking stories [of communist heroes] be the spiritual motivation for our ceaselessly forward marching CCP members.29

The commemoration of revolutionary martyrs and other communist heroes is an important aspect of political faith around the party. Like saints, they represent the soul of the political movement which extends into their afterlife. Cemeteries in China today are important sites of political education. Students—whose faith is of particular concern to the party—are taken to important cemeteries like Baobaoshan 八宝山 in Beijing to reinforce their learning of the stories of the martyrs. The information on the actual gravesites is supplemented by signage and TV screens. On some cemeteries tombstones will have matrix codes etched into them, which people can scan to download information on the buried hero onto their smartphones.30 Cemeteries where revolutionary heroes and political leaders are buried have a higher real estate value and prestige than others.31 Some cemeteries even have small museums to CCP history built on them, almost taking the role of “chapels.”

According to Jürgen Habermas (1929–),32 living in a secular society used to be bound up with the certainty that cultural and social modernization can only advance at the cost of the influence and relevance of religion, but that this is now no longer the case in the West today. We can observe a similar change in the party’s consciousness. Even the staunchest CCP member no longer considers the foreseeable disappearance of religion a certainty, not even a probability. While the party has returned to its stance that all party members at least must be atheists, the reality betrays a very different picture. In the face of the continuing need for religion—seemingly recognized by the current regime—the party now seems to present itself and all that it stands for as an object of faith, expecting people to redirect their religious desires to the party and its heroes, as propagated in the film Xinyang. It will also adopt quasi-religious practices. It is trying to do so by directing religious feelings towards the party, but also in an increasing personality cult around Xi Jinping himself. In Southeast China Christians have been told to get rid of pictures by Jesus and replace them with portraits of Xi Jinping. There have been accounts of reverent gatherings around a tree Xi planted in 2009 in Henan province,33 and in Shenyang the party installed red “confession boxes” in the streets (somewhat reminiscent of red telephone boxes in Britain) where people are encouraged to speak their innermost thoughts to the party.34

Andrew Kipnis has also observed a subtle shift in the way visitors pay their respects at Mao Zedong’s mausoleum in Tian’anmen Square. Firstly, he notices that the entire square has been redesigned to accommodate masses of rural Chinese tourists. Inside the mausoleum, Mao is presented slightly more God-like than in the past. Visitors now must take off their hats and must remain silent during their visit. Many will also bow three times and place flowers in the cauldron in front of Mao’s statue. Finally, upon emerging from the mausoleum Mao memorabilia including badges depicting him as a “god of prosperity” are being sold, like outside temples.35 The use of flowers instead of burning paper goods and incense is now encouraged on all cemeteries as a fire prevention measure. This also applies at the Mao temple in Hunan, where visitors are not allowed to burn incense, but are allowed to light a cigarette and stick it vertically into the sand of the cauldron to let it burn down.36

4 A National Faith for China

Neither xinyang nor jiazhiguan are confined to rhetoric and spiritual aspects alone; core socialist values also include practice and ritual. Xinyang is considered the spiritual motivation to inspire heroic and selfless deeds by communist party cadres, and a nation’s shared belief is considered vital for the success of the country, as we have seen from Liang Qichao to Zhuo Xinping. In his book Xunzhao shidai de xinyang 寻找时代的信仰 (Seeking a Faith for Our Times),37 Yuan Youjun 袁友军 (1967–), professor at the Guangdong party school and Guangdong’s College of Administration, goes so far as advocating the establishment of a Chinese national faith fit for the age of globalization, which reflects the “cultural genes running in the blood of the Chinese,” China’s current economic situation, and its external environment. He envisages a Chinese national faith not solely around the party, but one which emerges from a mix of various faiths including the following ingredients: Confucian ethics; ancestor worship including the worship of the Yellow Emperor and Zhougong 周公; sinified Christianity; socialized Taoism; globalized Buddhism; and Mao Zedong worship. Among these, Confucian ethics are supposed to take the leading role, perhaps not unlike the vanguard role of the urban proletariat in relation to other revolutionary classes. In Yuan’s view, China’s history of multiple faiths provides the perfect starting point for such an amalgamated faith, and potentially he sees this model not confined to China, but as a suitable example of cultural globalization in times of economic globalization.38

Yuan’s historical reference points are the Virtuous Hall of Five Religions (wujiao daode tang 五教道德堂) of 1923, which was established by Chen Fuling 陈福龄 (1844–1929) and others in Qiqihar advocating a harmonization of the five great faiths into one, and also a meeting in Lushan in 2011 by the leaders of China’s five officially recognized faiths called the “Five Religion Prayer Culture Garden.”39 While these previous initiatives included Islam in the melting pot, Islam is notably absent in Yuan’s detailed proposals for China’s national faith. It is, however, noteworthy that he includes Christianity (or rather sinified Protestantism) in the components to make up the new national faith. In his analysis, China was crucial in the reversal of fortunes of Christianity as a faith, which is on decline in the rest of the world, but on the rise in China. This is one of the most optimistic and positive spins on the rise of Christianity in China from the perspective of the CCP. While individuals like Zhao Xiao 赵晓 (1967–), another party member, spoke about the importance of the rise of Chinese Christianity for world Christianity, such voices have become rather quieter since Xi Jinping’s leadership. Therefore, this official endorsement of Christianity by Yuan is rather noteworthy.

The bottom line for Yuan is that whatever an individual’s belief, the country and the nation need a national faith suited to the contemporary economic circumstances, which exerts spiritual guidance for the ordinary person. He fears that China’s economy and society will not be able to continue to develop in a harmonious and stable way without such a faith, and that the Chinese nation would not easily withstand the challenges from other powerful civilizations without it,40 echoing fears voiced by Liang Qichao and, more recently, Zhuo Xinping. For Yuan, China’s socialist core values are intended to play an important part in this national faith. However, according to Yuan, they need to be lifted from the level of theory to the level of faith. After all, values are the substance and core content of any faith. Yuan cautions that socialist core values are scientific and progressive, but that they are at present only an abstract theory. Faith, he argues, must go beyond theory and science and include practical worship. Therefore, in order for the core socialist values to become internalized and turn into a national faith, they need to be lifted from an abstract concept to a faith that is alive and takes shape in rituals performed in front of the masses and which transport the values into every aspect of life, argues Yuan. Through education, practical cultivation, and institutional safeguards, socialist core values need to be internalized as spiritual pursuit, and externalized through people’s conscious action. It also needs to be disseminated effectively. After all, every faith needs missionaries to spread its gospel, says Yuan.

Instead of churches or temples, he considers businesses the ideal places of ritual and worship of this new faith as well as the best organizational units to promote faith in the context of a globalized market economy—an idea quite possibly inspired by the practices of Yiguandao 一贯道,41 and directly tuned into party discussions about how to best promote Chinese culture abroad which consider selling rather than sending culture abroad the most efficient method.42 Yuan suggests that not only should companies have their own figures of saints and little shrines or places of worship (modelled on the relation between Shinto and Japanese firms), tying the employees’ faith to that of the organization, but he also sees companies as the ideal vehicle for the dissemination of this faith. A company’s activities in the globalized market economy make it the ideal missionary through the products they sell (which stand for values), the service they provide, the conduct of their staff, as well as their philanthropic activities. Ultimately, he envisages a global business association based on this common faith built on the model of Freemasonry. This would have the advantage of bringing together the financial means required to disseminate the faith, leading not only to the promotion of the new faith, but also to China’s national rejuvenation at the same time.43

5 Was den Chinesen abgeht—What the Chinese Are Lacking

Zhou Guoping 周国平 (1945–), philosopher at CASS and scholar of Nietzsche, also considers faith vital; it is one of the core messages of his book Zhongguo ren queshao shenme? 中国人缺少什么?44 The title of the book takes inspiration from a chapter in Nietzsche’s Götzendämmerung entitled “Was den Deutschen abgeht” (1888).45 While Nietzsche bemoaned the German people’s lack of thinking as reason for its sorry state, according to Zhou Guoping the Chinese are lacking faith and the rule of law, a point he had already made in a speech in the 1990s when Liu Xiaobo, too, first reflected on faith.

The bulk of Zhou’s book focuses on an analysis of Yan Fu 严复 (1854–1921) and Wang Guowei 王国维 (1877–1927), in Zhou’s view two Chinese intellectuals who tried to introduce the idea of both faith and the rule of law to the Chinese; Yan Fu through his translations of British liberals, and Wang Guowei through his engagement with German philosophy. Both ultimately failed in their task, he says: Yan Fu, because he was unable to transcend the limitations of his own culture by using existing Confucian terms to express the ideas of liberalism, and Wang Guowei because he himself lost faith in philosophy and turned to history and philology instead.

Zhou sees the excellence of Western philosophy in two areas: metaphysics and its concern with ultimate truth and ultimate value, based on ancient Greek philosophy as further developed in German philosophy; and individualism, that is respect for the value and freedom of the individual, based on Roman philosophy and further developed by English philosophy. Thanks to metaphysics the West formed a cultural tradition of conscientious treatment of knowledge and faith, he says. Thanks to individualism, it established a society ruled by law based on the highest principles to protect individual liberty. Zhou suggests that if one takes the West as frame of reference and universal values as yardstick when analyzing Chinese culture (something many Chinese would of course object to), then faith and the rule of law are what China lacks. Zhou further contends that it is the profound lack of both which will mean that economic transformation may ultimately fail.46

The book also includes a copy of Zhou’s 1999 speech with the same title, as well as a 2008 post-script to the republication of the 1999 speech, in which Zhou expressed his own views rather more clearly. In Zhou’s view the main weakness of Chinese cultural tradition lies in its emphasis on practical values and its neglect of spiritual values. He contends that China’s modernizers have always focused on the lack of material culture—riches and strength—and tried to think of political systems and ideological weapons that may be required to bring about this material self-strengthening. Spiritual culture has either been low on the agenda, or not of concern at all. Indeed many, he says, believe that Chinese culture is already one of the most spiritual in the world, providing a counterpart—and potential savior—to the West’s materialist culture,47 possibly a little stab at people like Yuan Youjun.

To Zhou, Yan Fu’s main shortcoming was his failure to grasp the core tenet of liberalism, which is the value of the individual. In Yan Fu’s translation individual freedom became a mere method to ensure progress through the free development and competition of individual power in order for a nation to become rich and strong. This obsession with the practical applicability of theory is the reason why Chinese philosophers and thinkers have been unable to grasp the core of Western philosophy which touches on metaphysical or spiritual concerns, Zhou argues. The spiritual quality of individuals only tends to receive attention because it is an ingredient in the quality of the nation and its people. Even men like Liang Qichao and Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881–1936) focused on morality and ethics rather than true spirituality, driven by the need to change society as they perceived it. Individual spirituality, Zhou argues, was never considered a value in itself, as it should be.48

While there is great interest in the reverence of the dead in Chinese culture, and although dead ancestors and dead revolutionaries play an important role in folk religion and in political faith, Chinese philosophy is not overly concerned with questions as to the meaning or ultimate cause of life, nor does it talk much about death. To Zhou this lack of engagement with questions of a transcendental nature is a great shortcoming in Chinese culture and part of the reason why China lacks a sense of awe; not only does Chinese culture not believe in God, but there is also no belief in the holy, he says. Consequently, somebody, who is apathetic to their own meaning of life cannot feel real empathy towards others, cannot feel true social responsibility.49

6 Faith and Resistance

A feeling of social responsibility is what motivated Xu Zhiyong and other lawyers commonly referred to as weiquan 维权 lawyers, or rights defenders, who came to prominence in the first decade of the twenty-first century. They took over the mantle of writers and intellectuals as the most politicized professionals in the new millennium. Their actions formed a marked departure from previous behaviour of Chinese intellectuals, whom Liu Xiaobo acerbically and relentlessly criticized as lacking both a moral stance and courage of conscience. In one of his essays from 2002, Liu laments that their conscience either makes intellectuals depressed or go into exile; that it seems that they have not yet come up with any alternative behavior.50 Conscience, and the courage to act on one’s conscience and conviction, is a key thread in his writings and one that gained currency in the first decade of the millennium. Concurrent to the time when Charter 08 was being thought up and drafted, a new group of intellectuals started to make an impact in Chinese society. Liberal thought started to develop further through the emergence of Christian voices in political counter discourse. Core principles of Christian liberalism can be summarized as the emphasis on a transcendental source of democratic and societal values and the notion of conscience (liangzhi 良知 or liangxin), which started to have an impact on all groups of liberals in the 2000s. At the same time, the disillusionment created by corruption and the effects of distribution of wealth linked to existing power structures meant that a wide sector of society was starting to develop a strong sense of justice. As such conscience started to simply stand for knowing and standing up for what’s right, or protesting against what is not right. This is the context and spirit in which weiquan lawyering emerged.51

Xu Zhiyong and his colleagues clearly have come up with an alternative behavior to depression or exile: Xu’s approach to making a difference was based on a very simple concept: to take one’s rights and duties as citizen seriously. From this simple and sincere premise, backed up with countless politically motivated, concrete and far-reaching examples of “model” behavior, Xu built the “New Citizen Movement,” a platform from which he advocated “a community of citizens committed to freedom and democracy,”52 which begins with individual, small acts of civic engagement. As Xu writes, the New Citizen Movement was

… a political movement through which the people of this ancient nation can bid farewell to autocracy once and for all and make the transition to constitutional government. It’s also a social movement that will break with corrupt privilege, abuse of power for personal gain, and the huge gap between rich and poor and instead build a new order of equality and justice. And it’s a cultural movement to create a new national spirit that can replace the authoritarian culture of subjects. Finally, it’s a movement for peaceful progress, one that will advance the level of the entire human civilization.53

Xu Zhiyong—very much a man of action rather than an armchair philosopher—uses a striking amount of spiritual language in his reflections on the work he and his colleagues have been doing as lawyers and political activists. While not a Christian himself, Xu has clearly been influenced and impressed by Christian friends; to use his own words he “dabbled in Christianity.” Xu was detained in August 2013 and was sentenced to four years in prison in January 2014. His arrest was followed, in June 2015, by the start of a systematic crackdown on weiquan lawyers, which has affected more than 300 individuals and includes criminal detention, house arrest, and residential surveillance.54 In his rousing and deeply moving closing statement to court following his trial, Xu made repeated reference to faith.

[…] I believe in the power of faith, and in the power of the truth, compassion, and beauty that exists in the depths of the human soul, just as I believe human civilization is advancing mightily like a tide.[…] I urge everyone to maintain their faith in freedom, justice, and love […] Remain steadfast in your faith in justice, always stay true to your heart, and never compromise your principles in pursuit of your goal […] Adhere to faith in love, because this nation has too many dark, bitter, and poisoned souls in need of redemption […] Our faith in the idea of building a better China, one of democracy, rule of law, freedom, justice and love, is unwavering.55

The type of socially and politically engaged work by intellectuals (as which lawyers most certainly count) was a new departure in the twenty-first century from what Liu Xiaobo had decried as the “utilitarianized” (gonglihua 功利化) character of Chinese intellectuals.56 In 1990, Liu wrote that due to the utilitarianized nature their thinking rarely develops towards pure science or theory; that it has no transcendental character. As a result, it does not develop any religious spirit which points towards transcendental, ultimate values, nor does it establish any metaphysical tradition or theory or hypothesis that transcends the empirical, let alone foster an authentic spirit facing up to reality that transcends a rational political approach. All they know is to blindly follow behind the mantra of “cultivate one’s character, manage one’s household, rule the state, pacify the country,”57 a charge that could be laid squarely at the door of Zhuo Xinping et al. who, in the service of the state, now promote a national faith for China’s salvation.

Liu Xiaobo speaks of faith as early as 1990, in the aftermath of the crackdown in Tian’anmen Square and at a moment when economic reforms were not yet considered successful. He calls for a collective awakening of intellectuals, urging them to make resistance their “Bible” (Fankang shi dangdai zhishi fenzi de “Shengjing” 反抗是当代中国知识分子的《圣经》).58 Here, too, faith is linked to transcendental values.

Among wo/men’s59 rights and liberties, spiritual liberties (xinling de ziyou 心灵的自由) are the most important—freedom of thought, expression, and faith. These liberties not only allow one to think what one wants, believe what one wants, and say what one wants. Even more importantly, in terms of faith they allow one to pursue transcendental values; in terms of knowledge they allow one to uphold scientific truths that transcend the political and the ethical; in the realm of thought, they train a kind of prophetical spirit built on hypotheses ahead of our time. It is a freedom that transcends utility. This is what Chinese intellectuals are missing. The result of this is not just material poverty of the nation, but an even starker national spiritual withering. This in turn manifests itself in submissive, unenlightened, subordinate thinking as well as numbness towards all things mystical or unknowable, and an absence of wonder or desire to explore.60

And in a devastating critique, which has lost little of its relevance more than thirty years after it was voiced, he adds that

Chinese intellectuals today pursue the transformation of faith into power, and the use of power to sustain faith […] If it weren’t for the heartless nature of those sanctified dictators, intellectuals would to this day be oblivious to the dangers of worshipping power […] If it weren’t for the wholesale destruction (caused by) the Cultural Revolution and the failure of current “reforms,” Chinese intellectuals’ illusions about the power of the dictator would still not be shattered.61

7 Conclusion—the Contested Discursive Field of Faith

According to Laclau and Mouffe, discourse is an attempt to fix a web of meaning within a particular domain; the constitution of discourse involves the structuring of signifiers into certain meanings to the exclusion of other meanings. “Any discourse is constituted as an attempt to dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a centre.”62 Despite attempts to stabilize the meaning of a “floating signifier” into one unambiguous set of meaning, no discourse is capable of completely hegemonizing a field of discursivity. The domination of a particular discourse is never complete, but continuously subject to challenges by counter-hegemonic practices, which, in turn, prompt hegemonic interventions. Tracing the appearance of the term faith in contemporary Chinese discourse—together with associated signifiers like values and conscience—has shown that it is a hugely important “floating signifier” in China today, one that is invested with different meaning in different discourses. We have traced its emergence to politically reform minded discourse of the Republican period, which is today referenced by both the party and liberal intellectuals. These discourses share some common points on faith. There is general agreement that faith is a good thing and profoundly lacking in China today. All agree that faith is built on shared values and an important motivational force that can lead to social and political transformation. Faith can be a moral and spiritual unifier, whether this is for smaller groups or the nation at large. There is general agreement that faith cannot fulfil these transformative functions, if it remains at a discursive level only. Faith needs ritual and action. Perhaps most interestingly, all discourses, including the party’s discourse, emphasize the importance of the spiritual; science (and a scientific mind set) and faith are not seen as contradictory.

There are of course also key differences in the understanding of faith. The most fundamental difference lies in the kinds of values that should lie at the heart of faith. There is little agreement between socialist core values as promoted by the party’s apologists and liberal values as promoted by Liu Xiaobo, Xu Zhiyong, and Zhou Guoping, not least in relation to the universality of such values. There is little agreement over which religious values if any should inform faith. Crucially, there is a marked difference in why faith is considered a good thing, which revolves around the question of whether faith is a mere tool for self-strengthening or a value in and of itself. This leads to core questions of transcendence and the importance of metaphysics, which remain entirely unanswered in the party’s adoption of spiritual language, but which are fundamental to many of those concerned with China’s political transformation.

It is here where the necessity of making a distinction between political faith and religious faith seems to impose itself, in particular when we consider Christianity as reference point and source of the concept. However, if one takes pre-twentieth-century understandings of xin as reference point for the current regime’s use of xinyang, then this distinction seems less obvious. As Vincent Goossaert’s chapter in this volume points out, by the early Qing period one of the meanings of xin was belief or trust as evident in the corpus of morality books and concerned ideas and words rather than gods; xin characterized one who maintained relations of mutual trust with both humans and general moral principles. Furthermore, the twelve socialist core values propagated today bear traces of a framework of eight virtues that emerged during the first half of the nineteenth century and continued to exert influence until a hundred years later. Indeed, six of the eight virtues included in the Yuding jinke jiyao 玉定金科辑要 Goossaert mentions are also propagated as part of the Chinese dream campaign, if not directly included in the socialist core values. In the context of such moral rather than religious discourse, xin is considered the root of transcendence where transcendence is considered the transcending of personal limitations rather than a divine being outside the human realm and perfectly compatible with contemporary spiritual-political discourse on faith/xinyang.

Such semantic ambiguity due to multiple cultural understandings and layering of xin/xinyang63 allows for a broad spectrum of interpretations and identification with the term from the wider population (not unlike love/ai , a key term under the previous leadership)64 and—in the hope of the party who now strategically employs the term—an understanding that all these meanings can be subsumed under and merged into faith built on Chinese core values as propagated by the party. Faith as propagated by the party thus becomes the vanguard of all faiths; the party wants to signal that all the faithful (with certain qualifications, as we have seen in Yuan Youjun’s proposal) have a place within the party. In the 1990s, the party under Jiang Zemin 江泽民 (1926–2022) opened its doors to big businesses by signaling that it represents all the most progressive elements in society; twenty years later, it is trying to convince the people that not just capitalist, but spiritual matters, too, are within the purview of the party.

In the context of an authoritarian regime, focusing one’s analysis on one particular word comes with its pitfalls, of course. Mostly, we can show, as I have tried, how hegemonic discourses are formed and contested; how terms bubble up, gain significance, and are then appropriated by those in power, who try to “arrest the flow of difference” and determine a final meaning. But we must remember that the choice of certain words can often simply be a pragmatic attempt to stay away from sensitive terms. Li Xiangping says that he used to talk about zongjiao 宗教, in particular minjian zongjiao 民间宗教, to describe aspects of Chinese spiritual life until this term became problematic. He then switched to xinyang, and now that this term is also fixed in its ideological meaning, he has started to use shensheng 神圣 (“holy”) to describe the same phenomena.65 This appropriation by the authoritarian state of terms that have gained significance in the intellectual or popular sphere is a common hegemonic strategy. What would be most important and novel, according to Michael Hardt (1960–), would be attempts at the opposite—a wrestling away of concepts with seemingly fixed meaning from the grip of official discourse.66 In the context of an authoritarian state like China, this is wrought with risk and difficulty.

One way is to talk about the present by referencing the past. Zhou Guoping’s study of Yan Fu and Wang Guowei presented the opportunity to republish, hidden away in the appendix, a strongly political message which essentially reiterates points made by Liu Xiaobo decades earlier. In his study of etymology of concepts in the social sciences and humanities, Zhong Shaohua, writing about the term values, concedes that values depend on one’s ethical, religious, or aesthetic framework, but that they can most certainly be shared, and that the denial of the existence of universal values is the age-old feudal practice of emperors and their excuse to suppress other people’s values and make them follow their own instead.67 Zhong’s quote of He Lin on the meaning of political faith cited earlier in this chapter also has an important second part, which quietly invokes both Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong.

[…] to have political faith and to be an official are two completely different things, however. To be an official without political faith is shameful. To sell out one’s political faith, to go past one’s conscience to pander to political power is even more shameful. To have political faith, but not to become an official, yet instead to adopt the position of scholar expert from which to assist the government, to watch the government, and to express the will of the people, that is what is most valuable for China today, and what it is the duty of every educated young citizen today.68

On Thursday 13 July 2017, Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer, only weeks after his “release” from prison on “medical parole.” Although his closing statement “I Have No Enemies” has become a seminal text and the empty chair at the Nobel Prize ceremony has become an iconic image, Liu’s frail figure days before his death will forever remain the most poignant and lasting impression on most. Following Liu’s death, the cover of The Economist referred to Liu as “China’s Conscience.”69 It is precisely the image of the dying man in the hospital bed which symbolizes this. “The party knows that grief is a powerful emotion and that the memorialization of souls can easily give rise to a politicised spirit,” Andrew Kipnis points out.70 There is no grave for Liu Xiaobo, no tombstone from which visitors can download important background information; his life will not feature in Chinese university students’ political education on faith. However, without Liu Xiaobo and many others, who through faith, whether secular or religious, have shown courage of conviction, the party would not have felt the need to enlist scores of intellectuals and artists to create a discourse and corresponding education campaign on faith, complete with films, songs, posters, and cemetery tours in order to fix this “floating signifier” within the realm of party discourse.

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1

The chapter consistently uses the English word faith to render the Chinese xinyang. However, some quoted sources use the word belief to render xinyang, in which case I have kept the original choice of the author.

2

China Copyright and Media 2013.

3

Zhao 2012.

4

Xinhuawang 2015.

5

Wielander 2013, 46–64.

6

Kipnis 2017, 221.

7

Habermas 2008.

8

Ibid. This is an online source that, as far as I can tell, only exists online and has no page number.

9

Nedostup 2009, 3.

10

See Goossaert’s chapter in this volume.

11

The tune is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7esCE7w13g (accessed 7 February 2018). The lyrics are available here http://ent.cnr.cn/ylzt/gqzj/gqsp/20171001/t20171001_523973654.shtml (accessed 7 February 2018).

12

Tamney and Yang 2005.

13

Mou 2009, as quoted in Gänßbauer 2015, 88. On religious ecology, also see Clart 2013.

14

Mollier 2008, 7.

15

Zhuo 2013, quoted in Gänßbauer 2015, 49, see also Fröhlich’s chapter in this volume.

16

Gao 2012, as quoted in Gänßbauer 2015, 49. The gendered expression is part of the original translation by Gänßbauer, which I have retained, but do not endorse.

17

Zhong 2016, 384. Cf. also Fröhlich’s chapter in this volume.

18

Yun 1917 as quoted in Zhong 2016, 387.

19

See also Fröhlich and Krämer, this volume.

20

He Lin 1947, as quoted in Zhong 2016, 402, translation by author.

21

Kerry Brown 2018 proposes that the party’s power lies in the dominance of the political narrative and that individual leaders like Xi Jinping do not really matter.

22

For an elaborate exposition on the relation between the two concepts see Jiang and Cai 2017, http://www.zhongdaonet.com/NewsInfo.aspx?id=14933 (accessed 31 January 2018).

23

Zhong 2016, 238–239.

24

Zhong 2016, 252.

25

Zhang 1946, quoted in Zhong 2016, 270.

26

Li Xiangping 2010.

27

Ibid.

28

Brown 2018.

29

CCTV 2012; translation by author.

30

Kipnis 2017, 227.

31

Ibid., 225.

32

Habermas 2008.

33

Phillips 2017a and 2017b.

34

See for example http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/gb/2017/09/26/a1343878.html (accessed 29 June 2018).

35

Kipnis 2017, 229–230.

36

This practice was reported by Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China (2017) during a closed discussion held at the Reform Club in London on 18 January 2018 at which the author was present.

37

Yuan 2014.

38

Ibid., 4–5.

39

For a report on this meeting, see http://875647.7225.30la.com.cn/Article/lsnews/201105/20110506151554_1185.html (accessed 1 February 2018).

40

Yuan 2014, 5.

41

See also the chapter by Broy in this volume.

42

See for example http://yunnan.mofcom.gov.cn/article/sjzhongyaozt/201611/20161101587621.shtml (accessed 29 June 2018). The reference to “selling” comes in section three of the article.

43

Yuan 2014, 250–300.

44

Zhou 2017.

45

A German version is available here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/-6185/10 (accessed 1 February 2018).

46

Zhou 2017, 348.

47

Ibid., 338–339.

48

Zhou 2017, 335.

49

Ibid., 344.

50

Liu 2010 [2002], 385.

51

See Wielander 2013, 130–150.

52

Xu 2017, vii.

53

Ibid., 211.

54

For a detailed chronology on the crackdown, see http://www.hrichina.org/en/mass-crackdown-chinese-lawyers-and-defenders (accessed 17 July 2017).

55

Xu 2017, 281–282.

56

I use the rather awkward English term “utilitarianized” in order to stay close to Liu’s Chinese term and to mark the difference Liu sees between Chinese “pragmatism” and Western pragmatic spirit. In his view, Chinese “pragmatic reason” has nothing in common with Western pragmatic spirit. As he says, “Western philosophy developed a positivist spirit […] at its heart lies a respect for experienced reality and scepticism towards a priori truths and reason […] in the realm of ethics, the authentic spirit of western culture manifests itself in utilitarian ethics […] whose biggest characteristic is its clear individualistic nature. Its highest standard is individual happiness and rights, which trump society’s political benefit and moral standards. And public norms must serve the realization of individual happiness and rights.” Liu 2010 [1990], 128–129. In Liu’s critique, Chinese “pragmatic theory” stipulates the opposite, i.e. the subordination of the individual to society and the state.

57

Liu 2010 [1990], 114.

58

Ibid., 113.

59

I choose wo/men to avoid gendered language in rendering the Chinese word ren .

60

Ibid., 107, translation by author.

61

Ibid., 115, translation by author.

62

Laclau and Mouffe 2001 [1985], 112.

63

For a detailed treatment of the semantic transition from xin to xinyang in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, see the chapter by Starr in this volume.

64

Wielander 2011.

65

Personal conversation, April 2017.

66

These comments were made in a personal conversation with Hardt in London on 12 October 2017.

67

Zhong 2016, 272.

68

He 1947, as quoted in Zhong 2016, 402–403, translation by author.

69

Print edition 15 July 2017.

70

Kipnis 2017, 233.

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From Trustworthiness to Secular Beliefs

Changing Concepts of xin 信 from Traditional to Modern Chinese

Series:  Religion in Chinese Societies, Volume: 19
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