Some top Chinese officials are guilty of practicing sorcery, and would rather believe in gurus and Western concepts of democracy than the Chinese Communist Party, a senior minister wrote yesterday, warning of the danger they presented to the party’s survival.
China guarantees freedom of religion for major belief systems such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, but party members are meant to be atheists and are barred from what it calls superstitious practices, such as visits to soothsayers.
There have been several cases of officials jailed as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) crackdown on corruption after being accused of superstition, part of the party’s efforts to blacken their names.
Some senior officials in leadership positions had “fallen morally,” their beliefs straying from the correct path, Chinese Organization Department Minister Chen Xi (陳希) wrote.
The department oversees Chinese Communist Party personnel decisions.
“Some don’t believe in Marx and Lenin, but believe in ghosts and gods; they don’t believe in ideals, but believe in sorcery; they don’t respect the people, but do respect masters,” he wrote in the People’s Daily, referring to spiritual leaders or gurus.
Chinese, especially their leaders, have a long tradition of turning to soothsaying and geomancy to find answers to their problems in times of doubt, need and chaos.
The practice has grown more risky amid Xi’s war on graft, in which dozens of senior officials have been imprisoned.
Attacking officials whose faith in communism is wavering, Chen said some consider it an “entirely unreal mirage” and have lost faith in socialism.
Instead, they look to Western concepts of the separation of power and multiparty systems as their ideal, added Chen, who also runs the Central Party School that trains rising officials.
He did not name any officials guilty of practicing superstition or fawning over the West, but later in the article he named some of those caught up in the most high-profile corruption cases, such as former Chinese Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission secretary Zhou Yongkang (周永康) and former Chongqing Chinese Communist Party secretary Sun Zhengcai (孫政才), sacked for corruption in July.
They were “political careerist plotters,” whose cases showed that officials’ political problems were no less a threat to the party than corruption, Chen wrote.
“The higher the position, the greater their platform, the greater the harm they caused to the party,” he wrote.
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