Mark McLeister
Introduction
Since the change in leadership of the Chinese state in 2012 and 2013, there has undoubtedly been a renewed emphasis on ideology by the Communist Party of China (CPC) with the aim of bolstering governance capabilities via enhancing the relationship between the senior leadership and members, strengthening the connection between society and the senior leadership and seeking to become the dominant voice among the many narratives within the CPC and in society more broadly (Mittelstaedt 2023). As a result, there have been some significant changes to religious policy and state “management” of Christian churches in the People’s Republic of China since 2018 at both the national and local levels.
Of course, the CPC’s approach to religion has always had an ideological underpinning, but as scholars have noted, this ideological basis to religious policy has been tempered with a pragmatic bent in its implementation (Cox 2007, p. 374; Hetmanczyk 2015, p. 168). Even before 1949, the CPC was prepared to be pragmatic in its united front work, engaging with religious groups to “win hearts and minds.” A key consideration in analysing the CPC’s treatment of religion is the sparring between ideology and pragmatism at the national and local levels. In fact, we can view the CPC’s policy on religion through this double lens of ideology and pragmatism, with one seeming to take precedence over the other at particular times since 1949. This is further impacted by the CPC’s pragmatic approach to law and its enforcement since law is “valued as a means to accomplish some one or other particular end not as a value in itself contributing to the social order” (Sheehy 2006, p. 243; see also Schak 2020, p. 213). We should therefore not rule out the role of pragmatism in the current ideologically-charged atmosphere.
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