Search

In spring-summer 1965 lay Catholics facing the pressures of the Socialist Education Movement in rural north China began to see visions and to preach. This article examines these events, their origins in local history, their relationship to the Chinese and international political context, and their interaction with the ongoing campaign that led into the Cultural Revolution. It argues that local context is crucial in understanding religious repression in the Maoist era and that these events are important to Catholics in the area today because the memory of them shapes ongoing relations between Catholics and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the Opium War the Italian missionaries in Shanxi were dependent on the local Chinese population both for their safety and their funding. This meant that only missionaries who were willing to conform to Chinese customs could succeed and thus it was impossible to implement the rulings against various Chinese customs made by the papacy in the eighteenth century. The treaties that followed the war greatly reduced the penalties on missionaries discovered in the interior and made it possible for French charitable funding to reach them. Once the missionaries were no longer dependent on the Chinese but on sponsors in Europe those with much more hostile attitudes to Chinese customs were able to enforce them, leading to a century of alienation and hostility between them and the Chinese Catholics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]