Quoting “Bitter Winter,” Taiwan’s National Security Bureau warns against controlled religious events and “fake academic conferences.”
by Massimo Introvigne
If you are a citizen of Taiwan and a religious believer, would you plant a tree for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? The very question may seem strange, yet this was the experience of Taiwanese Taoist believers who visited Fujian province earlier this month. On July 7, a delegation from Taiwan Tai Ji Culture and Taoism Association and Taipei Xuanming Temple visited Zhangping Heping Fulu Temple in Fujian to conduct a “Plant a Tree Together and Promote the Cross-Strait Relationship” tree-planting ceremony. Planting a tree has a deep spiritual meeting in Taoism as well as in Buddhism, yet the delegates reported with some uneasiness that they were treated to speeches implying that they had planted trees to express support for the reunification between China and Taiwan.
It is having in mind similar incidents, which occur almost daily, that Taiwan’s main intelligence agency, the National Security Bureau (NSB), denounced on July 7 Beijing’s manipulation of exchanges between temples through a conversation between a high-ranking officer and the “Taipei Times.” A NSB official quoted “Bitter Winter” to argue that any attitude by Chinese authorities that appears favorable to religion is false, and in fact China continues destroying temples and statues as it did with the pretext of COVID.
Taiwanese believers are invited to China to visit temples honoring the same gods and goddesses they worship in Taiwan, the official said, but these trips are used by the Chinese “to spread propaganda and build networks.” “People who go on these tours could be asked to support or fund political candidates favored by Beijing,” the official added. “Beijing was known for dispatching the likeness of Chinese temple gods to tour Taiwan as an excuse to buy off the support of local religious groups, with money funneled via Taiwanese entrepreneurs working in China… The goal was to use Taiwanese temples as a front for the distribution of Chinese propaganda.”
The NSB official added that some of the temples in China are not even real temples, and that the CCP also organizes “fake academic conferences” inviting Taiwanese scholars and religionists.
As “Bitter Winter” recently reported, the attention of Taiwan’s intelligence services focuses on temples honoring the popular sea goddess Mazu. As “Bitter Winter” wrote, “The worship of Mazu originated in the Chinese southeastern province of Fujian. Many Chinese in Taiwan trace their origins to Fujian, and there are more than 1,000 temples honoring Mazu in the island. Many of them have been built recently: there were some 500 Mazu temples in 1980, and the number has doubled since then… there are networks connecting temples in Fujian, Taiwan, and the Chinese global diaspora, and pilgrimages to the historical Mazu places of worship in Fujian attended by believers from all over the world. While it has repressed other forms of folk religion, the CCP has not only tolerated but promoted international pilgrimages to Mazu shrines in Fujian and cooperation between temples in Fujian and Taiwan,” although the so-called “Mazuism” in Taiwan is a diverse phenomenon with no central coordination, and not all temples engage in politics or are pro-Chinese.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
