- CHANGCHUN (Reuters) - Fortuneteller Liu Laoxian thrives on despair.
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- Smiling a golden grin from behind an
unruly white beard, the grizzled oracle surveys scores of palm readers,
numerologists and sundry magicians doing a roaring trade on streets teeming
with Changchun's unemployed.
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- "Business is good," he beamed.
"When people are unhappy, business is good."
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- Liu and thousands more like him around
the nation are cashing in on one of China's leading growth industries:
belief.
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- As China's economy slows and painful
reforms put millions out of work, despondent masses from the industrial
northeast to rural southwest are turning to organized religion, underground
worship or just plain old superstition to soothe their aching souls.
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- "I'm just selling a little bit of
happiness," Liu said. "For a few yuan I give people a little
lift."
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- Scorned by orthodox Communists as an
"opiate of the masses," religion is on the march in China.
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- From Christian villages on the outskirts
of eastern Wenzhou to China's rambling border with Burma, where Buddha
is king, belief is a growth industry.
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- Since the Communist Party swept to power
in 1949, the official number of China's faithful has leapt tenfold. And
despite increasingly strict monitoring of religious activity, the growth
trend continues.
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- When Mao Zedong's rag-tag Red Army rolled
into Beijing, China was home to only 700,000 Protestants and fewer than
three million Roman Catholics.
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- The ministerial-level Religious Affairs
Bureau now records at least 10 million Protestants and four million Catholics.
Religious experts estimate double that number meet regularly for unofficial
prayer services.
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- China's sprawling rural northwest is
also populated by 18 million Muslims, and tens of millions of Buddhists
worship at official temples scattered across the country.
-
- But the surge is strongest outside the
official churches and state-run temples, where a powerful cocktail of orthodox
religion, ancestor worship and superstition feeds the rural need to believe.
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- "More than 60 percent of our village
is Christian," said Pastor Li, head of the Catholic congregation
in a small church on the outskirts of Wenzhou.
-
- "We have a long tradition here of
belief in God, going back generations," Li said. "Before it
was just the elderly who came to service, but now even the young come
for a prayer."
-
- Across the street lies Li's competition
for the hearts and minds of the village's 2,000 residents -- a brightly
lit, newly built cathedral-like building dedicated to the controversial
Zhu Shen Jiao, or Supreme Spirit Sect.
-
- China launched a crackdown on the sect
last year, calling it the country's largest cult and arresting 20 members
of the congregation in the central province of Hunan.
-
- Sect leader Liu Jiaguo and his lieutenant,
Zhu Aiqing, were accused of agitating for the overthrow of the "secular
state" and charged in a Hunan court with undermining law enforcement,
rape and fraud.
-
- The outcome of the case has not been
made public, but in rural Wenzhou, the sect remains a top draw.
-
- "Spiritually, we're not that far
apart from our neighbors," said one sect believer surnamed Guo, adding
that the spacious cathedral draws a greater number of Sunday faithful.
-
- "More people come here, but there
are a lot of faithful who attend both churches," Guo said. "Some
even then go to the temple," he added, pointing to the traditional
Buddhist temple a stone's throw away.
-
- "It helps pass the time," he
added.
-
- In southwestern Yunnan province, where
the muddy Mekong river cuts a winding border between China and Burma,
belief is also booming and Buddhism is back in vogue after decades of
government scorn.
-
- Monks in saffron robes again mingle in
rural markets while shopkeepers pay their daily respects to small Buddha
statues, praying that the economy will pick up and their fortunes reverse.
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- "Only recently did we dare bring
out the Buddha again," said one shop owner. "With the economy
in the dumps, it's nice to have some hope."
-
- Hong Kong-based mainland labor activist
Han Dongfang said in a speech on the territory last week that up to 50
million workers were unemployed in China's urban areas and 100 million
farmers were out of work.
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- The craving for hope is also at the center
of the belief boom in northeastern Changchun, where state industry reforms
have pushed thousands out of work and onto the streets.
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- Fortuneteller Liu said while surveying
the ranks of middle-aged men seeking jobs at a makeshift labor market:
"Belief is the easiest way to forget the pain." ( (c) 1999
Reuters)
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