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So China's communist leaders are coming, inelegantly, to terms with the problems that religion presents. The mindless faith of the believer terrifies them. They have seen what it can do. And somewhere in their souls, men like Fu still believe in the ultimate triumph of atheism. This is, after all, a country that just inaugurated an annual Hero of Atheism award. (This year's winner was Sima Nan, a 43-year-old ex-journalist who debunks the "superhuman" feats of local shamans on his TV show.) "The sincere advocacy of freedom of religious belief is based on our understanding of the dialectical materialistic theory," says Ye Xiaowen, director of the State Council's Religious Affairs Bureau. "It is our concept of God." God, therefore, is subject to "sensible, cautious and scientific choice." As Ye wrote in 1996, "We must definitely adopt Lenin's attitude on such questions: 'Be especially cautious,' 'Be most rigorous,' and 'Think things over.'"
But Lenin would be mortified by modern China. Think things over? The place is changing so fast that the Chinese like to say, "He who thinks is lost." In China it's all about reaction. At the nation's heart is a tentatively beating, market-based economy, and keeping it alive puts every other goal--even mass atheism--in distant second place. That's why there's such a complex struggle with religion. China's leaders think a little faith can help the country grow--by serving as a bulwark against social unrest and the ennui Chinese call huise wenhua, or gray culture. Says Bishop Jin Luxian, 83, leader of Shanghai's Catholics: "The Communist Party realizes that religion has a good side and can contribute to the welfare of the people." Jin, who is an eighth-generation Chinese Catholic, has waited for that epiphany a long time--including 27 years spent in Chinese prisons. "In the past," he explains, "people opposed religion as the 'opiate of the masses.' But now that 'opium war' is over."
China's ideological Brahmins have cut a deal with the nation's spiritual leaders--as long as your religions support the regime, we'll let you exist. But there's a flip side: Step off that narrow path, and you'll go to jail. "Prison," Chinese priests and nuns still say, "is our seminary." In 1982 China's constitution was amended to permit freedom of religion. But that's not the same as freedom of belief or freedom from government interference. Thus while China has officially produced 1,000 Catholic clerics in the past 18 years, all government-certified Catholics--including Bishop Jin of Shanghai--must forswear allegiance to the Roman Pontiff. Those who refuse must worship underground, ministered to by fugitive priests. Beijing has little patience with those who say the Kingdom of Heaven has precedence over the rulers of the Middle Kingdom. Peter Xu Yongze, an underground Protestant minister, has been arrested three times for suggesting that God might be more enduring than the state. (His other transgressions include pushing a kind of Christianity that requires new converts to weep for three straight days as a way to cleanse themselves of sin.)