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Comment by yason | Hacker News Reader

I sometimes wonder why do they want to protect the state by cracking down churches instead of using religion, a powerful tool of control, to their advantage. It would take more time to build a Chinese branch of Christianity (and others) but be a lot more efficient.

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There are 3 state sponsored churches in China. The trouble is they don't experience much growth compared to the underground churches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Self_Patriotic_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Christian_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Patriotic_Catholic_Ass...

Like those purchased-startup-turned-department in big corporations.

I assume that's it's harder to create a religion for a billion people. Christianity ranks in at #1 and Islam is #2, the new religion if followed by all would be #3. I would love to hear what they could come up with tho.

The ideology of the Party has been corrupted to the core, and what’s left is mere Machiavellianism. Choosing a wrong alternative ideology is too big a mistake that nobody dare to take the risk.

Within China there are approved churches of various denominations. For whatever reason that is apparently no longer sufficient.

The last time someone tried to build a "Chinese branch of Christianity", it resulted in the Taiping rebellion [1] trying to turn China into a theocracy and millions died.

The Communist party definitely doesn't want any parallel hierarchies outside their own ranks. Where religious imagery could benefit them, it has already been incorporated into party worship/Chinese nationalism. Propping up minority religions would not be an efficient way to exert control they already have.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

They do, actually, goverent propaganda explicitly uses Taoist and Buddhist imagery.

It's a different sort of religion than Western religions, so westerners don't get it and spout off the leninist silliness you see in this thread.

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