Something of value: the religious response to de-Maoization in China

Abstract

The title of this paper is taken from a novel written by Robert Ruark several decades ago concerning the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. Ruark's contention was that when the British conquered and colonized Kenya, they destroyed the indigenous culture but failed to replace it with an alternative. The result was an ineffective search by the native population for a value system and the barbarism of the Mau Mau uprising. A similar phenomenon has been occurring in China over the past nearly 25 years. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping became China's paramount leader. He launched a series of economic reforms which allowed for a limited capitalism. This required formal ideological justification by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The Resolution on CPC history in 1981 was duly adopted. It attempted unsuccessfully to separate Mao Zedong Thought from Mao Zedong the man. Consequently, the Party's legitimacy rests solely on economic success and power. However, many people in China find this lacking and are searching for new belief systems. This paper seeks to establish the hypothesis that this search is the primary reason for the formation of new religious movements in China (Christian and other, such as Falundafa) which have not been officially recognized and accepted.