One cannot serve two masters, the Bible says, and China’s Communist Party appears to agree.
A recent post on Zhihu, China’s answer to Quora, has once again prompted the question: Is it possible to be a Christian and a communist at the same time? This issue has been addressed on several occasions in the past, and the short answer — not surprisingly — is still no.
Of particular note this time, however, is how and where that message is being delivered: via a discussion thread on Chinese social media in which the Communist Youth League (CYL), an organization for young people led by the Party, weighed in.
In the Zhihu post, which first appeared on Jan. 28, an anonymous net user who said to work for the government explains their dilemma: “I graduated with a master’s degree in 2016 and have been a believer in Christ for half a year,” the post begins, “but now my work requires me to join the Party.”
In China, many companies and institutions — both private and state-run — have their own branches of the Party; membership, though not obligatory, is widely considered advantageous for employees’ career prospects.
The user said choosing both the “joyous and peaceful religious faith” and the better career prospects that a Party membership brings would be like having one’s cake and eating it, too. The post concluded with an appeal to fellow Zhihu users for guidance in the matter.
The CYL stepped up on Friday to provide enlightenment, using simple language and a pictorial peppering of Karl Marx, president and Party leader Xi Jinping with a Tibetan monk, and a black-and-white cartoon of the evolution of human beings. In its answer, the league listed a number of reasons or arguments as to why mixing faith with politics is not a good idea, and proposed some ideas about how Party members should handle the issue of religion within the broader society.
For example, the post read, the CCP and State Council, China’s cabinet, had clearly stated that Party members need to prevent their communist convictions from being eroded by religion. In addition, Marx’s teachings state that from their respective inceptions, communism and atheism have gone hand in hand. Furthermore, being an atheist Party member doesn’t mean giving up freedom of belief — rather, good cadres simply choose not to believe in religion, it argued.
Still, the post read, that doesn’t mean non-Party members should be discouraged from practicing religion. Marx said one day, religion will disappear, and that until then, it will remain a part of society. In conclusion, the Party and the religious masses can still collaborate, and “roll up our sleeves and work hard,” the post read, quoting President Xi’s recent new year address.
The league’s response was written by Jiang Yuanhao, a 26-year-old employee of China State Construction Engineering Corporation who also serves as deputy secretary of a CYL branch within the company.
Jiang told Sixth Tone through messaging app WeChat that his goal for writing the answer on Zhihu was to make it perfectly clear from a number of perspectives why Party members should not be religious. “As a young Chinese with a pen in hand, I feel responsible and obliged to ensure that young people can lead clear, pure, and happy lives,” he said. “That’s the goal of my article.”
The CYL reposted Jiang’s answer on its Weibo microblog account, which has around 4.6 million followers. The league is a relative newcomer to Zhihu, with about 64,000 followers as of Monday afternoon.
Since the CYL was criticized in early 2016 by the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection for showing of a lack of reform and innovation, it has taken a more creative approach to spreading the message of communism among young Chinese. For one, it released a hip-hop music video last June that castigated foreign media for being anti-China, and it recently started putting out its message through popular video-streaming and subculture website Bilibili. The CYL declined to comment for this story on Monday afternoon.
Yet Jiang’s was not the most upvoted response to the original post: That honor went to user Wei Huangsong, whose profile describes him as a master’s degree candidate in software engineering at Imperial College London.
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The essence of this answer was the same as Jiang’s response, but the language Wei used was more direct, describing Christians who joined the Party while trying to conceal their belief as “hilarious.” He questioned why Christians felt the need to hide their beliefs “In the 21st century, in a country whose constitution protects citizens’ freedom of belief, [and] where the most severe outcome for admitting one’s faith is that a promotion could be affected.”
“I would say this group of people are not qualified to be Party members or Christians, but are merely opportunists,” the post read, referring to Christians who don’t profess their faith in the workplace.
In recent years, the number of Chinese converts to Christianity has been on the rise, especially among the younger generation, although the rate of growth has started to plateau. According to official data, there are between 23 million and 40 million Protestants in China, and around 5.5 million Roman Catholics — though unofficial estimates are higher to account for people who practice their faith while remaining unaffiliated with state-sanctioned churches.
One 30-year-old Christian in Shanghai, who declined to be named citing the sensitivity of the topic, told Sixth Tone on Sunday that he considers this latest round of discussion to be “a good thing.”
“If you’re a follower of Jesus, then you shouldn’t say you’re an atheist,” said the man, who became a Protestant at age 20 and now works as a marketing executive with a multinational firm. “You can’t serve two lords.”
The recent discussion should give Party members who are Christians pause for thought, he said. “Maybe they’ll start to rethink their true beliefs.”
Additional reporting by Lin Qiqing. With contributions from Yan Jie.
(Header image: Primary school students hold up Party flags they dyed and decorated themselves in Nantong, Jiangsu province, June 30, 2015. Wang Junrong/VCG)
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Question posed on social media is a reminder that Christianity is forbidden fruit for communists. No 
