Just before the July 1 anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, the U.S. State Department issued the 2018 International Religious Freedom Report. At the press conference to mark the release of the report on June 21, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke of how the norm in China is the “intense persecution of many faiths—Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, and Tibetan Buddhists among them.”
“The Chinese Communist Party has exhibited extreme hostility to all religious faiths since its founding,” Pompeo said. “The Party demands that it alone be called God.”
For 70 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been fighting with various religions. This struggle against religion is an essential part of the CCP regime. That regime cannot allow the existence of free will and free thoughts, and so its attempts to eliminate all religions and beliefs are inevitable.
The “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” published by The Epoch Times explains that the Communist Party is an “evil cult.”
At the beginning of the Communist Party, the “Nine Commentaries” says it “regarded Marxism as the absolute truth in the world. It piously worshipped Marx as its spiritual God, and exhorted people to engage in a life-long struggle for the goal of building a ‘communist heaven on earth.’”
“The CCP promotes atheism and claims that religion is ‘spiritual opium’ that can intoxicate the people.”
The CCP has also destroyed traditional culture, eradicating tradition and morality in the name of revolution.
A system of state ownership, alive today even as the CCP is thought to have embraced capitalism, gives the Party control over all of society. This control has a psychological and spiritual dimension, and the Chinese people are constantly saturated with the CCP’s doctrines and propaganda.
But these doctrines fly in the face of human nature. An individual left to his or her own devices would reject them.
For this reason, the “Nine Commentaries” says “eliminating dissidents is the most effective means for the evil cult of communism to spread its doctrine. Because the doctrine and behavior of this evil cult are too ridiculous, the communist party has to force people to accept them, relying on violence to eliminate dissidents.”
This violence can take the form of torture, killing, or even mass murder.
In a letter to the CCP’s elite Politburo circulated on the night of April 25, 1999, the then-dictator Jiang Zemin asked, “Can the Marxism, materialism, and atheism that our Communist Party members uphold not win the battle with what Falun Gong promotes?”
This fear that the Chinese people would prefer Falun Gong’s traditional moral principles—truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—to the CCP’s doctrines helps explain its 20-year-long campaign to eradicate the practice.
The spiritual teachings of Falun Gong, or the teachings of orthodox religions now struggling to survive in China, provide an alternative to what the CCP calls a “sense of Party nature.”
The “Nine Commentaries” states that Party nature demands that a member “be ready anytime to give up all personal beliefs and principles and to obey absolutely the Party’s will and the leader’s will.”
George Orwell warned of this in his novel “1984.”
In the novel, after the protagonist, Winston Smith, is arrested and imprisoned, he is repeatedly tortured by the “Ministry of Love.” One of the purposes is to force him to give to up the mathematical logic of “2 plus 2 equals 4.”
In the end, Winston finally abandons rational logic and accepts the result of “2 plus 2 equals 5” imposed by the Ministry of Mercy. He then leaves prison to return to his work of deceiving people for the “Truth Department.”
Orwell understands the essence of the Communist Party’s totalitarian cult. The result of rational logic is not important. The key to the system is forcing everyone to accept the Party’s completely illogical “truth.”
Similarly, in the CCP’s war against religion, the ultimate purpose is to force everyone to give up their freedom and accept the CCP’s absurd conclusions.
In spite of this cult-like effort to control the minds and souls of an entire nation, large numbers of Chinese have fought against the CCP: dissidents who have advocated for democracy; human rights lawyers who have sought to bring the rule of law to China; farmers who have sought to keep their land; house-church Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, and others who have fought for their freedom of belief; Falun Gong practitioners who have waged an unprecedented civil disobedience campaign, telling the Chinese people about their practice, about the persecution they suffer, and about the need for the CCP to disintegrate.
Beginning with the release of the “Nine Commentaries” in 2004, The Epoch Times has called for an end to the CCP. The “Nine Commentaries” ends:
“Only without the Chinese Communist Party will there be a new China.
“Only without the Chinese Communist Party does China have hope.
“Without the Chinese Communist Party, the upright and kindhearted Chinese people will rebuild China’s historical magnificence.”
The drama playing out in China is the crossroads of history. The CCP can only survive by eliminating those who think differently. This threatens the freedom and security of the entire world.
And so, on this 70th anniversary of the founding of the CCP, the entire world faces a choice: to support the religious freedom of those in China, or to remain quiet in the face of the CCP’s evil. There is no middle ground, and the future is at stake.
From The Epoch Times
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. The CCP was founded 98 years ago, on July 1, 1921. It also contained an incorrect reference from the novel “1984.” The Epoch Times regrets the error.
