Karl Marx long ago disparaged religion as “the opiate of the people,” and now the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to ban all addicts. The Communist leadership of coastal Zhejiang province has declared it will double down on a long-standing but little-enforced rule that bars religious believers from joining the Party.
That move comes amid a widely reported tightening of the ideological screws in Chinese universities and across the media landscape. Professors across the country have reportedly been fired for speaking against the Communist Party, and the country’s education minister declared last week that China should “never let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes.”
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China recognizes five “official” religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism — but many believers who worship outside of state-sanctioned institutions are subject to periodic crackdowns. Buddhism and Taoism have received far greater official support due to their deep roots in Chinese culture, but during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, even these religions saw their temples ransacked and desecrated as relics of “superstitious” and “feudal” thinking.
