Is Religion Banned in China?

[Farbeyonddriven]

I'm sorry I'm not brainwashed yet.

Yes you are
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/is-this-new-york-nah-its-shenzhen-mainland-china.473334/

 

[Zen0]

Yes you are
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/is-this-new-york-nah-its-shenzhen-mainland-china.473334/

Give me a camera , I'll make south Africa look like Denmark. Building skyscrapers won't make slums disappear .

 

[Farbeyonddriven]

Give me a camera , I'll make south Africa look like Denmark. Building skyscrapers won't make slums disappear .

that's how you massage your ego torn apart by fact,that british moocher can't quit going to the most ghetto areas which are like a few dots on a sweater and then claim that's how Shenzgen or China is,can't believe by that trick he has collected a legion of dimwits like you who rely on his vids to fulfill the "actual China sucks" theories

 

[Zen0]

that's how you massage your ego torn apart by fact,that british moocher can't quit going to the most ghetto areas which are like a few dots on a sweater and then claim that's how Shenzgen or China is,can't believe by that trick he has collected a legion of dimwits like you who rely on his vids to fulfill the "actual China sucks" theories

Again you are shouting at the wind , I've seen and researched enough to tell what China is like , unlike you I don't throw childish tantrums over facts , more than 50% of China is rural , most of the urban regions have still huge slums.

 

[Farbeyonddriven]

Again you are shouting at the wind , I've seen and researched enough to tell what China is like , unlike you I don't throw childish tantrums over facts , more than 50% of China is rural , most of the urban regions have still huge slums.

tell me the cities you have had your researches on and seen,let me see how an "objective" ,"fact" worshipping indian distorts the fact in favor of the images he is inclined to see,and stop watching that guy's videos,by judging the way he speaks Chinese after 12 years living in China,I can tell he never really integrated into our society but treading on the margin taking advantages of our lenience on foreigners,and thank god that era of lenience is now gradually coming to an end after we got more stronger and eye opening,no more easy jobs for white deadbeats in the future

 

[haidian]

According to many Chinese here your country isn't developed and has bad infrastructures if you don't build high rise and shiny buildings on every m².

Meanwhile China seems nowhere to be seen on infrastructure rankings and aditionally on public services provided.....

Well Not only China has world's most skyscrapers, China also has he world's longest highways, subways,railyways(both regular and high speed) world's biggest airports, seaports, bridges...

China Used More Concrete In 3 Years Than The U.S. Used In The Entire 20th Century

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...entire-20th-century-infographic/#43196a164131

 

[Kai Liu]

Originally this guy was kind of objective. But now he is not different from those anti-China white trash. He keeps complaining that foreigners like him can not obtain Chinese citizenship, that he feels insecure about his career here, and that Chinese government is trying to kick him out because someone reported him to the police for defaming China, and he is not dare to even go to Hong Kong for being afraid that he will not be allowed to get into Mainland China again. Of course such kind of thoughts are typical of mentally disordered person's self-imaginary shit, because he is just one of those white trash our government is not gonna care a shit about.. What a loser... And since then, this poor guy together with a bunch of white trash started to make negative videos about China.. You can see the clear transition.. It is just from around 2 years ago or so...

tell me the cities you have had your researches on and seen,let me see how an "objective" ,"fact" worshipping indian distorts the fact in favor of the images he is inclined to see,and stop watching that guy's videos,by judging the way he speaks Chinese after 12 years living in China,I can tell he never really integrated into our society but treading on the margin taking advantages of our lenience on foreigners,and thank god that era of lenience is now gradually coming to an end after we got more stronger and eye opening,no more easy jobs for white deadbeats in the future

Exactly. The frustration felt by this guy is clearly shown in a lot of his videos. White trash's good days in China like 20 years ago has gone forever.

 

[lcloo]

I was resident of a 2nd tier town called Shajing沙井 in Shenzhen city for 8 years a decade ago, in fact I was living in a old village called Bo Gan 壆岗，a village that is several hundreds years old. Shenzhen was a sparsely populated sleeping fishing village until 1990s when construction works began to turn the place into modern city.

What the video shown by this South African are familiar to me, but I won't called these places slump. They are old no doubt, some several hundred years old, thus the streets are narrow (traditional streets called hutong)because there are no motor vehicles hundred years ago in these villages. His narratives regarding these places as slump are plainly wrong because :-

1) All buildings in these villages have electricity and running water, and they have toilets too! In real slumps these do not exist.
2) Most of the owners have moved to new houses in city or new villages, and rented out the century old buildings to mostly immigrant workers from nearby factories. These buildings are not well kept because their "shelf lives" are expiring (In time, these places will be demolished for new projects as the owners were getting rich receiving fat yearly dividends from profits mostly from rental of factories and office buildings built on the village lands).


The Bo Gan new village in Shenzhen where I was staying from 2001 to 2008. I took this photo in late 2008 before leaving China.

 

[shadows888]

Originally this guy was kind of objective. But now he is not different from those anti-China white trash. He keeps complaining that foreigners like him can not obtain Chinese citizenship, that he feels insecure about his career here, and that Chinese government is trying to kick him out because someone reported him to the police for defaming China, and he is not dare to even go to Hong Kong for being afraid that he will not be allowed to get into Mainland China again. Of course such kind of thoughts are typical of mentally disordered person's self-imaginary shit, because he is just one of those white trash our government is not gonna care a shit about.. What a loser... And since then, this poor guy together with a bunch of white trash started to make negative videos about China.. You can see the clear transition.. It is just from around 2 years ago or so...


Exactly. The frustration felt by this guy is clearly shown in a lot of his videos. White trash's good days in China like 20 years ago has gone forever.

He's gonna get deported to South Africa haha

Give me a camera , I'll make south Africa look like Denmark. Building skyscrapers won't make slums disappear .

There are no slums in Shenzhen. it's called population control (amount of people allowed into Shenzhen each year) and world class urban planning. Go to Shenzhen and see for yourself.

 

[XiangLong]

If any of you think religion is any good, then I suggest you read up on things like the Hundred, Eighty, and Thirty Years' War in Europe, in which half of the German population died because one church refused to recognize the Pope as the Earthly representative of God. Or better yet, read up on the Taiping Rebellion, which might be considered the most deadly conflict in human history. If you really want to have things hit close at home, just watch what is happening in the Middle East at the moment.

Religion gives unity , power and freedom . Three things communists hate more than anything

You know there is a thing called 'Seperation between Church and State', right? This is not only the case in 'communist' countries, but in most democracies as well, including India. I don't know where you base your assumptions on, with the notions of unity and freedom in relation to religion, but history has shown that religion (in particular Catholicism) has actually achieved the opposite in the pre-modern age. You do know that the pope had the power and authority to declare religious war on a region somewhere in the world, if it didn't adhere to the catholic version of the christian belief, a few hundred years prior? That was, if an inquisition before that, didn't bear the necessary results to root out heretics.

You know why some religious group (in India for example) can't just declare someone persona non grata, or excommunicate people nowadays? Because religion isn't and shouldn't be allowed in a modern state to decide over legislation. When deciding upon legislation and the enforcement behind it, REASON should always be the charter.

This is why in most modern state structures, the government is always first and foremost SECULAR. This is why different religious groups in the west, East-Asia, Russia (and to a lesser extent India) are able to live in relative peace next to each other; because the constitution and the rule of law requires them to, while at the same time, society has been institutionalized enough to enforce it.

If any of you think religion is any good, then I suggest you read up on things like the Hundred, Eighty, and Thirty Years' War in Europe, in which half of the German population died because one church refused to recognize the Pope as the Earthly representative of God. Or better yet, read up on the Taiping Rebellion, which might be considered the most deadly conflict in human history. If you really want to have things hit close at home, just watch what is happening in the Middle East at the moment.



You know there is a thing called 'Seperation between Church and State', right? This is not only the case in 'communist' countries, but in most democracies as well, including India. I don't know where you base your assumptions on, with the notions of unity and freedom in relation to religion, but history has shown that religion (in particular Catholicism) has actually achieved the opposite in the pre-modern age. You do know that the pope had the power and authority to declare religious war on a region somewhere in the world, if it didn't adhere to the catholic version of the christian belief, a few hundred years prior? That was, if an inquisition before that, didn't bear the necessary results to root out heretics.

You know why some religious group (in India for example) can't just declare someone persona non grata, or excommunicate people nowadays? Because religion isn't and shouldn't be allowed in a modern state to decide over legislation. When deciding upon legislation and the enforcement behind it, REASON should always be the charter.

This is why in most modern state structures, the government is always first and foremost SECULAR. This is why different religious groups in the west, East-Asia, Russia (and to a lesser extent India) are able to live in relative peace next to each other; because the constitution and the rule of law requires them to, while at the same time, society has been institutionalized enough to enforce it.

On topic, the reason why a religion like catholicism was and to some degree is still viewed with suspicion by both Chinese society and government, can mostly be attributed to the Taiping Rebellion; the country and its people suffered as a result of an uncompromising religious strife.

 

[haidian]

That's what Christiantiy brought to China and how common Chinese fought back. Check it out

 

[Kai Liu]

Again you are shouting at the wind , I've seen and researched enough to tell what China is like , unlike you I don't throw childish tantrums over facts , more than 50% of China is rural , most of the urban regions have still huge slums.

It is your rights to believe whatever this white trash's BS, such as "majority of people in China live in such slums". But I have to correct what is obviously wrong: the urbanization rate for China is around 57%. Nowadays our society is no longer agriculture focused, rather, urbanization and urban development is the priority. Even the living conditions in the rural area are not bad at all. If not for better paid jobs, people would rather live in the countryside.
These are the ordinary houses and scenes of rural China:

There are better ones like this:

or older ones like this:

But as you know, China is not a developed country yet, the gdp per capita has just crossed $8000 in 2015, which is only half of the threshold of a developed country. And all this rapid development happened within the past 20 years or so. It is not difficult for those white trash to find backward parts and to claim that the majority is like that.. What they don't know or intentionally ignore is the fact as I mentioned earlier that urbanization is our priority that these very old rural houses are either abandoned or only inhabited by the elderly for they are reluctant to change their lifestyle.

As for cities, we don't have to prove more, they are more close to developed world:
And check this guy's and other driving videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/rexlu1979/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/tpxz2008/videos

Suzhou:

Even Lhasa looks not bad at all:
Lhasa old city:

Lhasa old city several years ago:

Lhasa

If you think majority of people live in slums, like that white trash claims, just go to google earth to see what is the percentage of slums exists in our cities like Shenzhen.. to see what kind of BS these white trash are talking about..

 

[xiao qi]

Of course not, but I think, the Chinese government same as Vietnamese gov, the Catholic people is difficult to get into state agent, police system or communist party. They are not same as normal people about citizenship

 

[Zen0]

Focusing on religious oppression in China misses the big picture


(CNN)How bad is religious persecution in China?

This is a question I've thought a lot about over the past few years. Since 2010 I've been working on a project documenting a religious revival in China, and seen new churches, temples, and mosques open each year, attracting millions of new worshipers.

But I've also seen how religion is tightly proscribed.

Ian Johnson, author of "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao."
Only five religious groups are allowed to exist in China: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. The government controls the appointment of major religious figures, and decides where places of worship can be built. It tries to influence theology and limits contacts overseas. And it bans groups it doesn't like, especially the spiritual practice Falun Gong, or groups it calls cults, like the charismatic Christian splinter sect Almighty God.

As atheist China warms to the Vatican, religious persecution 'intensifies'

These problems are explained in a new and carefully researched study by Freedom House. The 142-page report, "The Battle for China's Spirit," points out that some religions face little persecution. Daoists and Buddhists are faring well, while Catholics could soon enjoy better times, with ties possibly warming between Beijing and the Vatican.

But overall, the message is glum. Almost all groups are said to face serious restrictions, with three groups --Uyghurs who practice Islam, Protestant Christians, and followers of the banned spiritual practice Falun Gong --facing "high" or "very high" levels of government interference.

Hundreds of crosses have been removed from churches and buildings across China.


Cross-removals


While most of the facts in the study are correct, the context feels more negative than the religious world I've experienced. Of course it is in the nature of such reports to be critical --this is what watchdogs like Freedom House are for-- but it feeds into an overall assumption in western countries that the Chinese government is a major persecutor of religion.

According to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, for example, China is one of just 17 countries in the world listed as being of "particular concern."

Let me highlight one area where I think Freedom House could have done better: Protestant Christianity. The Freedom House report focuses on a cross-removal campaign, which ran from 2014-2016 and saw over 1,000 crosses removed from the spires of churches, or the tops of buildings. In addition, a church was demolished.

On the face of it, this is horrific -- so many churches shorn of the very symbol of their faith. What better example of a heavy-handed atheistic state persecuting belief?

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View this interactive content on CNN.com
And yet I think this is not typical of Protestantism in China. I've made several trips to the area where the crosses were removed and feel I know the region well.


I'd say that the most important point is that virtually none of these churches have been closed. All continue to have worshipers and services just like before. In addition, the campaign never spread beyond the one province. Some pessimists see it as a precursor for a campaign that might spread nationally, but so far that hasn't happened and there is no indication it will.

What seems to have happened is a fairly special case. That region is at most 10% Protestant -- above the national average of about 5%, but still a minority. But local Christians decided to put huge red crosses on the roofs of buildings and churches, so they dominated the skyline of every city, town, and village across the province. That gave the impression that Christianity was the dominant local religion and irked many non-Christians.

Self-critical Christians told me that their big red crosses were meant well. They were enthused by their faith and wanted to proclaim it. But they also sheepishly said it might also have been a sign of vanity; rather than putting their money into mission work or social engagement, they wanted to boast about their wealth and faith. I felt they were a bit hard on themselves -- in a normal, healthy society an open expression of one's faith should be normal -- but it is true that it was also a potential provocation for a state that does not give religion much public space.

In short, this campaign was fairly specific and not representative of most Protestants' religious experience in China. In his new book China's Urban Christians, Brent Fulton of the Protestant think tank ChinaSource, writes that political oppression is a secondary concern, even for underground Protestants. Instead he says what keeps pastors of these churches up at night are problems that religious leaders around the world would recognize: materialism and the lures of secular society. The government is a hassle, but is not their main problem.

This mirrors what I've seen as well. Protestantism is booming and Chinese cities are full of unregistered (also called "underground" or "house") churches. These are known to the government but still allowed to function. They attract some of the best-educated and successful people in China. And they are socially engaged, with outreach programs to the homeless, orphanages, and even families of political prisoners. To me, this is an amazing story and far outweighs the cross-removal campaign, which basically ended and seems to have had no lasting consequences.

Dark future?


Now, it's true that all this could change. Last autumn, the government issued new regulations on religion. The most important point of the rules was to reemphasize a ban on religious groups' ties to foreign groups -- for example, sending people abroad to seminaries, or inviting foreigners to teach or train in China. This is clearly part of a broader trend in China that we see in other areas. Non-governmental organizations are also under pressure, and the surest way to get unwanted government attention is to have links abroad.

Given the predilections of the Xi administration, these new religious regulations could be harshly enforced. We could see unregistered churches forced to join government churches. And we could see outreach programs closed down.

If this happens, then I would say that Protestantism would be suffering from a "high" degree of persecution. And if it happens we'll need hard-hitting reports condemning it in no uncertain terms. But until this crackdown really occurs, we might be missing the forest for the trees.

Ian Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent based in Beijing. His new book, "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao," will be published in April. The views expressed above are solely his own.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/28/opinions/china-religion-johnson/index.html

 

[8888888888888]

Doesn't seem to be ban as I see religious buildings