蜜芽传媒

Good morning. The Chinese president ends his time in Britain today with a visit to the Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester with its state of the art research into new materials. But societies depend on more than advanced science and trade, as the President himself emphasised in his speech to parliamentarians in the House of Lords earlier this week. Then he stressed that from ancient times China was a society of law, and today, he said, it is 鈥渁 socialist, law based society.鈥� Law is certainly essential in keeping us from the most destructive behaviour by fear of punishment. But what makes us do the right thing just for its own sake, or care for one another? What stops a society being just a collection of warring individuals and groups? Answering those questions has exercised the Chinese leadership ever since Marxist ideology lost its hold on society, leaving a moral vacuum.

Their response has been to allow religion, within strict limits, to play a role in the new China. Confucianism, once banned, has made something of a comeback, and as all visitors to China note, the Christian churches are exploding in the most remarkable way. Estimates of numbers vary widely but the Pew Forum research centre in the states puts it at 67 million Christians 鈥� certainly far more than attend church on a Sunday in the whole of Europe.

Both Catholics and Protestants are divided into those congregations which are officially recognised by the State, and those which are independent, unregistered churches. When I was in Beijing for an academic conference a couple of years back one of the faculty we expected to meet was absent. He had been picked up by the police a few Sundays before on his way to worship with one of these unregistered churches. We were told that he would probably be imprisoned for a few weeks and then released to go back to his job 鈥� the consequences of belonging to an illegal church organisation.

However, China is clearly willing to recognise religion as a way of encouraging good behaviour and strengthening social cohesion. I welcome that. Christianity should be happy to play a role in this way as part of its mandate. But that mandate comes with a wider purpose in relation to a larger truth. As Christ said when on trial before the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. 鈥淢y task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world鈥� (John 18, 37)-and this includes speaking truth to power, whether in China or any other country in the world.

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