cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49968113
The residents of this rural Chinese town had never witnessed anything like it. Around 10 pm on Sunday, December 14, law enforcement descended by the hundreds on the streets of Yayang. Videos posted on Chinese social media and geolocated by Le Monde showed officers moving into the town, wearing helmets and armed with batons and riot shields.
The day before, dozens of wanted notices had been plastered on the walls of this town of several thousand people. Underneath two portraits of men staring out at passersby, the notices read: "Please report any unlawful acts committed by Lin Enzhao, Lin Enci and their criminal gang (...), accused of provoking quarrels and disturbing public order." This particularly vague offense has become the Chinese Communist Party's tool of choice to stifle dissent. According to testimonies collected by Le Monde, the two brothers led services at the Yayang protestant church, which was built nearly 30 years ago.
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Three weeks after the Yayang operation, police targeted another house church in Chengdu. Six of its leaders were imprisoned and charged with similar offenses as those cited in Yayang. In October, one of China's main house churches, present in some 40 cities, was targeted. Its founder and 20 other church leaders remain imprisoned.
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According to a local Christian interviewed by Le Monde, it has become impossible for believers to worship freely in the district: "Services are now monitored by government agents in the churches. Many are preparing to stop gathering there and return entirely to the model of house churches."
These "house churches" began to develop at the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), thanks to a period of relative tolerance by the government. Initially limited to the private sphere, they gradually grew into public places of worship, and today are believed to include tens of millions of believers across China. They differ from the official Christian faith (44 million followers in 2018, according to Beijing), which is practiced under the supervision of the Communist Party through a tightly controlled national patriotic association.
But Xi Jinping's rise to power changed the situation. "Since he took office, the relatively controlled freedoms religions enjoyed since the 1980s have been sharply curtailed," explained Julie Remoiville, a specialist in Chinese religions. "Ideological control has greatly intensified, and Xi Jinping has had many places of worship, including churches, destroyed."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
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Interesting to make the parallel of the inept, corrupt and teetering late-Qing dynasty to the modern CCP... Losing their grip on power via economic mismanagement and triggering a bloody civil war by lashing out at the people that fill the vacuum. Very bold stance for a tankie.
So looking a fraction of an inch beneath the surface we find it's like every other rebellion in history: a charismatic leader pitches a grass roots solution to the material problems of a neglected population, the population rallies and the state retaliates. This leader just happened to have a Christ-themed psychotic break.
If you read up more you'd find out how that Christian messaging was counter productive, generating resistance from both the traditional rural/Confucian population and the more modern/liberal upper classes.
I know you're trying to win an argument here and not engage with the history at all.
But surely you can see the difference between a government that crumbles in the face of a reactionary Christian cult and one that gets our way ahead of the problem.
Again, the irony here is palpable. You clearly don't know shit about history if you think the Qing dynasty wasn't "getting way out ahead" of dozens of threats with the same ham fisted violence. That tends to work right up until it doesn't.
You got banned from Reddit, didn't you?