Chinese government winks at the Orthodox Church

Patriarch Kirill’s trip to China has been marked by huge media interest and the kind of grand welcome that is usually reserved for heads of state. Beijing’s new government, especially President Xi Jinping, wanted to make the Russian Orthodox Patriarch’s visit to China a very high profile event. Indeed, Kirill is the first foreign religious leader ever to visit Communist China.

 

Kirill arrived in China last 10 May and will be staying for a week. Aside from his official meetings in Beijing, the Patriarch will also visit the Northern city of Harbin, which is home to a large Russian community and will end his trip in Shanghai.

 

The news about the meeting between Kirill and Xi made the front page of People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China and stressed the fact that the Orthodox Patriarch’s visit “will help deepen mutual understanding”. The two men met in the Great Hall of the People, where Communist leaders usually receive foreign dignitaries.

 

Kirill’s entire visit is probably being seen more from a foreign policy point of view than a religious point of view: the Patriarch has not made any reference to the religious freedom situation in China. All he did was to ask the government to recognise the miniscule Chinese Orthodox Church as one of the country’s official religions alongside Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Taoism and Buddhism. The local Church currently has 15 thousand members and has been without a priest since the death of Archpriest Alexander Du Lifu, ten years ago.

 

Kirill’s visit to Beijing comes after Xi Jinping chose Moscow as his first foreign destination after his enthronement. The aim of the visit was to strengthen Sino-Russian relations, to counterbalance the gradual cooling of relations between the two countries and the US.

 

For the Chinese government, winking at the Russian Orthodox Church is a way to dispel Western criticisms about the country’s repression of Catholic and Protestant religious freedom, showing that Beijing is happy to collaborate with Christians as long as they do not try to interfere with China’s domestic affairs. In his meeting with Xi, Kirill stressed that “sovereignty and national independence are two things” Russians and Chinese “hold close to their heart.”

 

The way the Patriarch of Moscow sees it, China and Russia “have common moral tasks” faced with the “sharp moral decline” of “Western civilization” especially. A decline that “will lead to the collapse of the entire system of human relations and mankind will commit suicide.”

 

Whereas the West is showing signs of moral decline such as same-sex marriages and the practice of euthanasia, thanks to the Orthodox Church, Russia and China act as a front in defence of morality because neither country “violate[s] the moral principles of life, but, on the contrary, try to promote spirituality in their people," Kirill told Chinese religious leaders last Monday.

 

This is music to the ears of Chinese leaders, whose approach to the country’s religious communities was legitimised by Kirill’s meeting with leaders of the various official Christian communities and heads of China’s department of religious affairs.

Alessandro Speciale (May 14,2013)

Source: vaticaninsider.lastampa.it