The Chinese Communist Party Uses the Bible as Propaganda

On May 21, 2019, two Chinese Christian councils in Shantong Province, Eastern China, published a circular asking the ministers of various Christian confessions to “guide believers in strengthening their ideological position by integrating fundamental socialist values.”

As part of the implementation of these directives, several places of worship—according to the Bitter Winter magazine whose editorial line is critical of the Chinese Communist Party— churches were forced to hang government-prepared propaganda posters with verses from the Bible illustrating the twelve principles of the “core socialist values”: prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship.

Thus, according to the CCP, the notion of democracy corresponds to Proverbs 15:22: “Designs are brought to nothing where there is no counsel: but where there are many counsellors, they are established.”

Already, at the end of 2018, a publication of the Office of Theology of the Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing tried to make the connection between the principles of Chinese socialism and Catholic doctrine—to which some of the faithful “remarked that the elevation of the ‘core socialist values’ to the level of theology is tantamount to treating the Communist Party as God.

Further, on March 18, 2019, the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of Wuhan city commenced a week-long indoctrination training for 44 Catholic clergy. The courses included topics such as “the spirit of the 19th National Congress,” “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” and “core socialist values.”

For the record, on September 22, 2018, the Holy See announced the signing, in Beijing, of a “provisional agreement” with the People's Republic of China “on the appointment of bishops.”

For the time being it is the Christians in particular who seem to be bearing the consequences of an accord which, until now, has in no way slowed down the will for sinicization of religion desired by the master of Peking. Atheistic communism is intrinsically perverse, warned Pius XI in 1937.