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Christ and China II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

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Closely aligned with the theme of the passio Christi apud Sinenses is that of the emulation of heroes. Mao led his nation in an extraordinary struggle to reshape the values, attitudes and ideas of an entire people. James Reston, senior editor of the New York Times was astounded by the ‘staggering thing that modem China is trying to do. They’re not trying merely to revolutionize people, and establish a sense of social conscience, but they’re really trying to change the character of these people. The place is one vast school of moral philosophy.’ Many methods pour into this enormous programme of thought-reform: preaching, teaching, wide-ranging techniques of persuasion from the outside, and orgies of self-criticism in which people testify to their conversion away from selfishness and incorrect ideas towards an exalted service of the masses in the name of the party. In all this ideological struggle to practise good deeds, overcome selfishness and reach true equality in a new society, the emulation of heroes (and sometimes of heroines) has emerged as a major means used on a nation-wide scale.

I would like to explore this imitation of heroes. It would be silly to speak of it constituting an imitatio Christi apud Sinenses (imitation of Christ among the Chinese). Nevertheless, certain interesting Christological implications may emerge.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 New York Times, September 1, 1971

2 China Today (London, 1972), p. 209Google Scholar.

3 Tse‐tung, Mao, Selected Works of Mao Tse‐tung, (Peking, 1967)Google Scholar, III, pp. 177f.

4 China Quarterly 33–36 (1968), pp. 47–72.

5 Chinese Literature, November 1966, pp. 103–04; cited Mary Sheridan, op. cit., p. 61.

6 Cited Sheridan, op. cit., p. 70.

7 China Today, p. 255.

8 Bastad, p. 148.

9 Mao (London, 1974)Google Scholar.

10 Selected Works of Mao Tse‐tung, III, pp. 90f.

11 Bastad, p. 31.

12 W. Gluer, Bastad, p. 50.

13 Bastad, p. 29.

14 ‘The Christian Way and the Chinese Wall’. America, November 9, 1974, p. 278.