Europe, learn from the pope how to deal with China
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao's May 6 visit to Italy will center upon business and economics. In Rome the Premier will attend and speak at an investment seminar organized by the Confederation of Italian Industry. On Saturday he will head north to Tuscany to meet with a very select group of Chinese entrepreneurs, followed by visits to museums, leather plants and motor scooter companies.
The choice of Wen's visit to the economic power of Rome, to Florence and its world-famous Uffizi museums and Pisa with its dominant leather industry are a pretty clear sign that the Chinese Premier (perhaps only for now) has no interest in the Rome which has been home to popes for centuries of Catholicism.
Wen's interests, rather, lay in Italy's history, in Marco Polo, the famous Far East-traveling merchant, and in the Italian Renaissance, that is, in a culture that has exalted the power of man while marginalizing that of God.
We missionaries were the first to rejoice in Beijing's new economic reforms. We applauded China's accepted membership into the WTO, which saved the lives of 200 million starving Chinese. We gave our support to Beijing's nomination to host the 2008 Olympic Games. Chinese Catholics, even if suffering from persecution, are among those who hold most dearly their country's economic development. They are not just interested in caring for the handicapped and abandoned children, but also in working as entrepreneurs, teachers, hydraulic engineers, hotel managers, etc.
However, it is on account of this very passion for progress that the Asian giant currently shows little respect for man and God. China's whirlwind of industrial and commercial projects is, at the same time and with equal velocity, leading to poverty and misery as well job loss and dissatisfaction. This is so in both urban and rural communities across China. AsiaNews has often quoted the very same figures and statistics that Chinese leaders thrust under the eyes of their government. For example, there are 170 million Chinese without jobs while there is an ever-increasing gap between the country's rich and poor. There are countless cases of clear injustice toward farmers and migrant workers. As a result of such imbalanced development, 250 million unhappy Chinese citizens organize at least 100,000 protests and rallies a year, while often violently clashing with police forces or assaulting Communist Party offices. Moreover, there are a half a billion Chinese Christians forced to live out their faith in an underground and private way, given the government's desire to clamp down on unauthorized religious practice and gatherings as well as proclaiming official contempt for all faiths.
A Chinese government adviser told me a few months ago that he agreed with my analysis "90%". It is likely that even Prime Minister Wen also shares the same opinion, as seen in the choices made by the government this year to slow down China's economic growth and begin investing in rural regions. The remaining "10%", which the adviser did not find agreeable, is found in the issue of religious freedom and human rights.
China's problem is that Italian and European companies demonize Chinese factories, which "steal" work from Italy and elsewhere across the Old Worldyet at the same time cherish a new economy based on wild liberalism, a paradise for entrepreneurs. This same wild system is lacking in trade unions, minimum costs and has no state checks and controls, etc. No European country, however, calls for religious freedom to be respected, an issue often considered a stumbling block or secondary with respect to developing business or even something that might send the stock market tumbling or reduce chances for easy money.
However, various American companies more than their European counterparts establish ethical clauses in every deal signed with the Asian giant. Examples of such moral stipulations are a dignified salary according to Chinese standards, a clean lunchroom or cafeteria and dormitories with no more than six beds per room (not 50-60 or even 100). Sometimes these deals even require the release of a certain political dissident, bishop or priest. Sometimes the building of a church is pre-condition for signing.
Freedom of religion allows for a more human development, one which is balanced, strengthens business ethics and solidarity among people. Asking China to permit greater and true religious liberty only works to foster sound economic development. Without the element of free religion, relations between the East and West are based solely on economic exploitation.
Some years ago, John Paul II, when speaking about Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, said defined the missionary as having been the "precious bridge between the West and East, between European Renaissance Culture and that of China." Thanks to Ricci's love and the risks he took in the name of faith, China came to know mathematics, physics, and other applied technical sciences. The West, in turn, discovered China's form of government, its art and other aspects of a culture on that risked being closed off from the rest of the world. Nowadays, with no interest in matters of faith, Western Europe takes ever less risks while China becomes an ever-larger giant born from fragile development.
It is worth noting that intellectuals and sociologists at Chinese universities say Christianity is just what China needs. They claim it defends the absolute value of the individual based on a sense of law that neither the state or any other power can stamp out. Moreover they say it creates a sense of love and giving which really aim at "serving the populace". And this was Mao's motto. Yet, in no way, did it come to be fulfilled under Chinese communism and neither under China's current form of capitalism. It will only come to fruition under Christianity. Chinese scholars have taken a stance contrary to that of their European colleagues, who have forgotten their Christian roots and have become tired of living. Let's hope Wen Jiabao does not follow the philosophy of these poor teachers.
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07/05/2004
