Zhang Chunhua
(ZENIT News – Bitter Winter / Guangdong, 09.18.2024).- The law on “patriotic education” came into force in China on January 1 of 2024, launching the largest campaign of domestic propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 21st century. The state-controlled five authorized religions are also asked to participate in the “patriotic education” efforts.
Pilgrimages are important for Catholics but with the advent of “patriotic education” visiting Marian shrines is increasingly replaced by mandatory tours of revolutionary sites and museums.
In connection with the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Yangjiang City, Guangdong, branch of the government-controlled (but now Vatican-approved) Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association organized a pilgrimage for parish priests and lay leaders to visit “revolutionary education” sites on September 3, 2024.
Led by Li Changming, Chairman of the Yangjiang City Chinese Patriotic Catholic Associations, the priests and lay leaders were taken in a pilgrimage to sites in Biaozhu and Pinglan villages, celebrating the saga of the Enyangtai Independent Battalion.
The site was opened in 2021 and is quickly becoming an important center of Communist pilgrimages. In fact, the Enyangtai Independent Battalion was a ruthless group of Communist activists who conducted agitation and espionage activities in an area controlled by the Nationalists during the Civil War, including political assassinations.
Its main aim was to excite peasants against the Nationalists exploiting their protest against forced conscription and high taxes. As the Civil War progressed, the Enyangtai Independent Battalion eventually became a Red Army unit, headquartered in Biaozhu village’s primary school, whose principal was a member of the Communist Party. Only ruins of the school remained, but an ambitious restoration project led to the establishment of the pilgrimage site.
Li explained that the purpose of these pilgrimages, part of “patriotic education,” is that “Catholic priests and believers learn to continue the red bloodline, inherit the red genes, and forge ahead.”
What Catholicism has to do with the “red genes” and “red bloodlines” of violent Communist agitators (who killed among others quite a few Catholic priests) remains unclear. Or perhaps it is very clear. The Patriotic Catholic Church, which after the Vatican China deal of 2018 operates with the blessing of the Vatican, continues its main business, i.e., transforming Catholic priests and lay leaders into loyal Communists of the “red bloodline.”
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