Due to China’s long history with Korea, China has been asked many times recently by the US to put pressure on North Korea to get them to back down and not be so aggressive.
However, China’s response has been for the “relevant parties” to “calmly and properly handle the issue and avoid escalation of tension.” Source: Politics News
One reason for this response might be that China has a history with Korea going back to the Tang Dynasty in 688 AD, when there was an alliance with Silla, a Korean state.
Then it could be because Chinese culture, written language and political institutions have had an influence in Korea since the 4th century.
In the 14th century, Korea came under the influence of Confucian thought influenced by Buddhism and Daoism (Taoism).
A 1,700-year old relationship might have more weight than the one China has with America that isn’t even forty years old yet. However, measuring that weight may also depend on the trillion or more US dollars China has invested in America.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Note: This post first appeared with a different title on iLook China on May 27, 2010 at 16:00 PST as post # 361. This edited and revised version reappears today as # 1080.
The U.S. Department of State reports that China is officially atheist (and has been for thousands of years). However, Taoist, Buddhist, Christian and Muslims are allowed to worship in China and these religions have a significant role in the lives of many Chinese.
A February 2007 survey conducted by East China Normal University and reported in China’s state-run media concluded that 31.4% of Chinese citizens ages 16 and over are religious believers.
While the Chinese constitution affirms “freedom of religious belief,” the Chinese Government places restrictions on religious practice outside officially recognized organizations. The five state-sanctioned “patriotic religious associations” are Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism.
Singapore, another nation in Asia, has similar restrictions.
Historically, China has not been accepting of cults, and there is a difference between a religion and a cult.
Princeton.edu says, cult members are “followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.”
All one has to do is study China’s history to understand the Middle Kingdom’s sensitivity toward cults and political activists. China’s struggle with pagan cults reaches back almost a thousand years. Source: The Millennium Cult
There are no official statistics confirming the number of Taoists in China.
Fascinating discussion of how Chinese culture interacts with religions.
Official figures indicate there are 20 million Muslims, 20 million Protestants, and 5.3 million Catholics; unofficial estimates are much higher.
According to About Chinese Culture.com, there are more than 85,000 sites for religious activities, some 300,000 clergy and over 3,000 religious organizations throughout China. In addition, there are 74 religious schools and colleges run by religious organizations for training clerical personnel.
Buddhism, the most popular religion in China with about a 100 million followers, has a 2,000-year history in the Middle Kingdom and there are about 13,000 Buddhist temples.
Taoism, native to China, has a history of more than 1,700 years with over 1,500 temples.
Islam, which was introduced into China in the seventh century has more than 30,000 mosques.
At present, China has about 4,600 Catholic churches and meetinghouses.
Protestantism first arrived in China in the early 19th century. Today there are more than 12,000 churches and 25,000 meeting places.
Although Judaism is not listed as one of the officially recognized religions in China, there are Jewish synagogues in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
Jews first settled in Kaifeng, Henan Province in 960 AD after arriving along the Silk Road. The Jews were welcomed by the Imperial government, which encouraged them to retain their cultural identity by building the Kaifeng synagogue, which was finished in 1163 AD.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Since the two best-known spiritual rulers in the world are the Dalai Lama and the Pope, I’m going to compare the two.
The Dalai Lama seems to get about as much attention as the Catholic Pope in Rome, who rules over the Vatican in Rome. The Pope is also the spiritual leader of about one billion Catholics.
What about the Dalai Lama and Buddhism?
The working class peasants/serfs in old Tibet before 1950
Buddhanet says that it is generally agreed that about 6% (or 350 million) of the world’s population are Buddhists.
Then Adherents.com says, The number of adherents that follow Tibetan Buddhism is estimated to be between ten and twenty million, (which is about the same as the population of New York state in the US).
There are four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama is the temporal head of the Gelug(pa) “Way of Virtue” school, and Dalai Lamas have been the “spiritual” leaders of Tibet from the mid-17th to the mid-20th centuries.
The 2000 population census in China reported that about 2.62 million lived in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
If those facts are correct, today’s Dalai Lama is technically the spiritual leader of about 2 million in Tibet and between 8 to 18 million globally that are citizen of other countries.
The ruling class in old Tibet before 1950
The only explanation for the attention the Dalai Lama gets in the media is that a very vocal following of fanatics has grown around him turning him into a cultish godlike figure.At best, the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of about one third of one percent of the global population.
At the low end, the Dalai Lama only represents about one tenth of one percent, which may represent the number of followers he has in China compared to the total population there.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Earlier this year, Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley reported on China’s sensitivity over Tibet.
He says the Dalai Lama has long been a thorn in the flesh of the Chinese government. Beijing openly calls him a Jackal in a Monk’s Robe. The Dalai Lama has met every US President since George Bush Senior in 1991.
Birtley says, China state media often says that Tibet has always been part of China long before Hawaii become part of the United States.
The Dalai Lama’s people, on the other hand, claim that China never ruled Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s global followers blindly accept this claim as the truth.
Since Birtley offers no evidence in his report to support China or Tibet’s claims, I offer two sources of primary evidence from unbiased and non-Communist sources that support China’s claim.
I will start with the oldest source. Robert Hart (1835 – 1911) worked in China from 1854 to 1908 and was the most powerful Westerner in China’s history.
In a letter Hart wrote in October 1885 to Campbell, his agent in England, he mentioned a diplomat from the British Foreign Office was seeking friendly relations and trade with Tibet. However, China did not want “Tibet, its tributary”, exposed to Western trade and influence.
In another letter in December 1903, Hart mentions the Chinese Amban in Tibet. An Amban was the title for the political governor assigned to Tibet by the Emperor in Beijing.
Granted, Tibet was remote and difficult to reach and manage, and there were times during those 636 years where it may have appeared that the Tibetans managed themselves.
However, the facts show that China does have a claim that Tibet was part of China.
The second source appeared in The National Geographic Magazine (NGM) in October 1912 when the medical officer of a Chinese mission sent to Tibet in 1906 wrote a piece about Tibet for the magazine.
If you want to read about and see Tibet of that time, I suggest reading Dr. Shaoching H. Chuan’s The Most Extraordinary City in the World (pages 959 -995).
The NGM also published about 60 photos the doctor shot.
On page 979, Dr. Chuan describes the government of Tibet, “the Ambans are appointed by the Chinese Emperor every four years. All governmental affairs have to undergo examination by the two Ambans…”
The reason Tibet declared its independene from China in 1913 was due to British political medling.
Tibet stayed free less than 40 years before Mao sent the PLO to reclaim territory China ruled as a tributary state since the 13th century.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Jean Delumeau, that narrator of the video, is an honorary professor of the College de France. He says by the time Buddhism arrived in China in the first century AD, Confucianism and Taoism had been widespread for several centuries.
Taoism was the popular religion of China while Confucianism was the official state religion of the Han Dynasty. In fact, the bureaucracy practiced Confucianism at work and turned to Taoist spiritual practices after work.
Even though Taoism and Buddhism have fundamental differences, Taoism helped spread Buddhism. While Taoism seeks the salvation of the individual, Buddhism seeks an escape from the cycle of personal existence.
However, certain practices of Taoism and Buddhism are similar, which are meditation, fasting, and breathing techniques.
The word “Tao” means both the order and totality of the universe and the pathway or road that allows the individual to enter into the rhythm of the world through a negation of self.
Two opposing but complementary forces of reality are fused in the Tao — Yin, which is passive, cold and feminine and Yang, which is active, hot and masculine.
The moon and the sun are the manifestations of Yin and Yang and all change is a result of these two dynamic forces such as day and night, the seasons, and life and death.
These two principals alternate in the five phases of a cycle, which are represented by water, fire, wood, metal and earth, which serve to define the five cardinal points, which are north, south, east, west and the center.
A contemporary of Confucius, Lao Tzu’s teachings were compiled in the fifth century BC into a collection called the Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing, which have had a great influence on Chinese thought and medicine.
One example says, “The wise man does not seek to be known as a wise man but of his own free will remains in obscurity. Those who seek much knowledge enrich themselves daily. Those who seek Tao become poorer each day. Eventually, they become so poor they are incapable of action. Without action, nothing can be achieved.”
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
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