China Immune To The Infection Of Democracy.

The Democracy Virus: China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where else could a million human-beings be “re-educated” into sullen obedience? Where else can whole cultures be rendered invisible? (ABC Image)

“A MINOR RELIGIOUS INFECTION”, no statement captures more succinctly China’s problem with world – or the world’s problem with China. The words themselves appear in a leaked document setting forth in grim detail the reasons for the detention of 300 Uighurs and other Muslims in China’s benighted Xinjiang province. Other justifications for incarcerating an estimated one million Uighurs in China’s very own “Vocational and Educational” archipelago include: “used to wear a long beard”; and, “used to wear a veil”. Tellingly, not even the past tense can save you in Xinjiang.

Does the Chinese Communist Party leadership in Beijing understand how poorly the idea that religious belief constitutes a form of “infection” is likely to be received by the overwhelming majority of human-beings belonging to one or the other of the world’s great faith communities? Reading these words in the context of China’s ongoing struggle against the COVID-19 viral epidemic is certain to amplify global displeasure.

When people of faith around the world discover that the Chinese authorities regard the guiding principles of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam as dangerous diseases, whose followers must be isolated from the uninfected population, restored to ideological health, and only then released; they will be dumbfounded. But, not for long. This news will generate rage and resentment on a scale no rational political regime would willingly countenance.

And yet, the Chinese Government remains adamant that its Uighur policy is not only fully justified, but also politically effective. It will not hear a word spoken against its Xinjiang strategy – or, at least, not by those whose opinions it is in a position to monitor – and contain. That this refusal to respond to world opinion might threaten such cherished Chinese initiatives as One Belt, One Road, does not appear to have occurred to those in charge of the Uighur policy. Nor has the mounting evidence of attitudes towards China hardening, all across the world, been sufficient to prompt a regime change of heart.

What is it, exactly, that Beijing fears? What is of more concern to them than the world’s increasingly negative opinion of the Chinese Government? The answer is brutally simple: what the Chinese Government fears most; and certainly much more than global public opinion; is losing control.

China has witnessed the extraordinary derangement of American politics which was set in motion by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Accordingly, it is determined to dry up the waters of religious extremism in which terrorist organisations like Al Qaida and ISIS floated.

They have also observed, in the EU countries and Britain, the dangerous socio-political pressures produced by mass immigration, along with the divisive multicultural policies it generates. In the People’s Republic, it is the Han Chinese who migrate en masse to the territories of their nation’s ethnic minorities – not the other way around. Cultural homogeneity is both the short and long term objective of the Chinese Government. China’s future is envisaged as monocultural, not multicultural. It is national unity that the Chinese Communist Party seeks – not cultural diversity.

These goals, like the Party’s militant and uncompromising atheism, sit uncomfortably with the expectations of Western elites. It was, for many years, their fond expectation that free trade and free-markets would set up the conditions in which China’s transition to liberal democracy became inevitable. Few now believe that such a transition is imminent. The Chinese looked on grimly as the former Soviet Union was stripped and humiliated by the West. If these were the consequences of embracing liberal democracy, then the West could keep it.

In truth, the Chinese Communist Party has made a high-stakes historical wager. It’s betting everything China has achieved since 1949 that liberal democratic excess will undermine the social, political and cultural cohesion of Western Capitalism long before it overturns “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics”.

This is not as risky a wager as Westerners might think. China’s authoritarian political system enables a level of social surveillance and control that liberal democratic societies cannot match. The Chinese Government makes full use of the latest digital technology to both punish – and reward – its citizens. The plans it formulates cannot be challenged, or hindered. Where else could a million human-beings be “re-educated” into sullen obedience? Where else can whole cultures be rendered invisible?

Yes, all these policies put China off-side with the rest of the world. The thing is: China doesn’t care.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 February 2020.

Contracting Out Of Religious Freedom.

Going Upstairs: If we accept the LGBTQI+ community’s untrammelled right to advance their understanding of love, then we must also accept Israel Folau’s right to articulate his own simplistic and inadequate interpretation of the Christian religion.

ONE OF THE FIRST things I learned as a young trade union organiser was: “You cannot contract out of statute law.” What does that mean? It means that if you enjoy a statutory entitlement to three weeks paid holiday, then your boss cannot legally require you to sign a contract limiting your paid holiday to just two weeks. This prohibition stands as one of the most crucial protections of English Common Law. Without it, the rights guaranteed to citizens by statute would be routinely signed away on pain of their not securing – or retaining – paid employment.

Tell that to Israel Folau!

In spite of the fact that the Australian Constitution explicitly guarantees to each citizen the freedom of religion, Folau’s contract with the national Australian rugby team has been terminated on account of his religious beliefs concerning homosexuality.

No matter that the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion must, logically, include the freedom to express one’s religious beliefs. No matter that the Australian High Court has ruled that the democratic character of the Australian Constitution implies the enforceable entitlement of all Australians to all the freedoms associated with the practice of democracy – most particularly, the freedom of expression. According to Folau’s employers, his statement regarding the ultimate fate of sinners (which they have branded homophobic) has brought Australian Rugby into disrepute – and his contract has been terminated.

That bit about bringing his employers into disrepute is crucial to the outcome of the legal challenge Folau is determined to mount against his termination.

One of the other things I learned very early on in my (brief) career as a trade union organiser is that our paid employment is still defined as a “master/servant” relationship. Under law, one of the many duties we, “servants”, owe our “masters” is the protection of their good reputation. Our employers have a legal right to expect that their employees refrain from doing anything which is likely to bring them into “disrepute”.

Clearly, this legally enforceable right of the masters to curtail the speech of their servants runs headlong into the right of servants – as citizens – to exercise their freedom of expression. The question thus becomes one of determining which takes precedence. The fact that servants have a legal obligation not to harm their master’s reputation. Or, the fact that masters, along with everybody else in a democratic society, have a legal obligation to recognise their fellow citizens’ right to speak freely about the things that matter to them?

For a conservative fundamentalist Christian, the ultimate fate of those who sin is eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. Fundamentalists would, therefore, argue that Christian love requires the faithful to do all that they can to rescue sinners from the torments of hellfire: by warning them of the fate that awaits them; and by imploring them to change their ways.

It cannot fall to a believer’s employer to determine what should, and should not, constitute a sin in any given religion. That would represent an entirely unwarranted arrogation of power over that worker’s spiritual and moral life. Nor can it be just that their employees’ constitutional right to freedom of religion, and their democratic right to freedom of expression, is set aside on account of some supposed obligation to protect their boss’s reputation – as s/he defines it – at no matter what cost to their conscience and their liberty.

It has been argued that Folau’s statement about homosexuality constitutes a genuine threat to the well-being of young, gay people. But, surely, that can only be the case if those affected accept, as fact, Folau’s claim that eternal damnation awaits unrepentant sinners? This, in turn, presupposes that young, gay people are not free to reject the rugby-player’s theologically unsophisticated and deeply conservative Christian faith. That their own beliefs about human love and solidarity are not infinitely stronger than those of Folau’s fundamentalist Christianity, which has lost sight completely of the boundless and unconditional love of its founder.

And if we accept the LGBTQI+ community’s untrammeled right to advance their own understanding of love, then we must also accept Israel Folau’s right to articulate his own simplistic and inadequate interpretation of the Christian religion.

As this story unfolds, it’s becoming increasingly clear the only statute Israel Folau has contracted out of is Christ’s unequivocal commandment to “love thy neighbour as thyself”.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 28 June 2019.