Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

ARTICLE: "When opium can be benign: China's Communist Party, reconsidering Marx's words, is starting to wonder whether there might not be a use for religion after all," The Economist, 3 February 2006, p. 25.

My favorite prediction from BFA is that China becomes a surprisingly religious society within a generation.

This article points to a theory I've been wanting to see somebody propose being validated by events.

My favorite line on religion's rise is that the rising affluent urban class, raised sans religion, starts having kids hit that age when they ask questions, and this rising middle class generation of parents, with its material needs increasingly met, moves up Maslow's hierarchy of needs under the guise of self-improvement and voila! You got yourself some religion brewing, despite CCP misgivings.

This is the demographic/development flip side of that argument: elders left behind in the countryside without sufficient support networks. So the CCP lets churches step up to fill those gaps. The success of that, plus the CCP's growing recognition that religion can be viewed as a self-improvement vehicle for an emerging middle class, means faith communities explode across China.

Many tricky days and issues lie ahead, and rising crackdowns will reflect rising numbers of believers, but these trends are looking very good. As everywhere else, Christianity's subversive appeal will grow in large part because of the empowerment offered to women. The church simply offers females a much flatter playing field than ancient clan traditions.

That's the part I like best, showing globalization's impacts are consistently revolutionary.

This article gives a nice overview of these developments.