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March 25, 2025 - Epoch Times
23:10
How the Chinese Regime Wages War on Religion: Marco Respinti
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There are few people who have played a more consistent role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Respinti, director in charge of Bitter Winter magazine.
In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us were arrested in China, and half of them simply.
During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Marco for a deep dive, where he reveals why he fights so hard for the religious freedom of people of all faiths, as a Roman Catholic himself.
And he breaks down how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, co-opts, and destroys religious movements in China.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Marco Respinti, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
My pleasure, totally.
Marco, I've had this deep, deep respect for you for quite a long time through your work exposing human rights violations in China, and especially those of religious minorities in particular.
I believe that the freedom of conscience or freedom of belief is probably the most fundamental right that exists.
What do you think?
I think that the most fundamental right for a human being, for a person, is the right to life, because otherwise, if you're dead, no rights.
In my opinion, this is the first.
The second, but it's direct, the relationship, is the freedom of conscience or religious freedom, because they're strictly connected, one is inside the other, because it's all about addressing the most fundamental question of all in human life.
Does God, or whatever you call it, supreme being, universal force, whatever, it's not the name, does that God exist or not?
And if it exists or not, this has a relationship, direct relationship, on how you organize your life as an individual and as a member of the...
You live in starting from your family and going to all the structures, intermediate structures between individual and state that the human genius can imagine.
So again, it's truly the second most important question of all.
Freedom of religion is not just the liberty you have.
To believe privately, in a closet, in your room, and to pray secretly.
But it's also, and fundamentally, the liberty to live accordingly to your belief.
So it's public.
Political in the sense that Greek addressing with the name of polis, the res publica, the public thing.
And it's not by chance that America put this freedom as the first right of the American citizens in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
It was here to a long tradition of thought which put this idea of the human being.
Being fundamentally shaped by his or her thought about God, that tradition is the core question out of which America was born.
That fundamental idea in America is still going around and it confronts all the liberty-killing regimes, government, and historical experience of many other countries.
I've come to understand that essentially Every liberal democracy out there right now really took its inspiration from the US, ultimately.
Do you view it that way?
I think it is correct to say that, because for its importance, America is a lighthouse for many democratic regimes.
Many liberal democracies try to imitate America, but not all of them are America.
They don't understand the natural law, Aristotelian, I would say, roots out of which this country was born.
For sure, all the liberal democracies that try to imitate America but bear the Enlightenment, Jacobin, French Revolution heritage in their...
Bones will have hard times to understand this country and to imitate it for the best.
And why?
Because the two things are completely different, and they cannot cope one with the other.
The American experience is born out of this Aristotelian, Christian, natural law-based tradition.
And the Jacobian Revolution and the Enlightenment in the French version is the idea of getting rid of that past.
Instead of evaluating it, underlining and using it, correcting the mistakes, of course.
Nothing is perfect when it's human.
So correcting even that tradition.
But the French Revolution and that Enlightenment idea, the Enlightenment project.
It has been called by scholars.
It's the idea of getting totally rid out of that past because it was judged negative and bringing to nothing.
But it's a matter of fact that all the totalitarian regimes and tyrannies that came after the French Revolution were inspired by that instead.
Democracies that are inspired by America have a different quality in the public life they grant to their citizens.
So why this particular interest in China and the realities of the lack of religious freedom in this country?
People say that after the end of the Cold War communism is over.
It is not.
We have 1 billion, 300 million people in China, the most populated country in the world, who still lives in a very proud communist regime.
No election, no freedom, nothing.
So the magnitude of the problem is so big that we need to address the thing.
China is a powerful nation, very smart in finding ways to lure other countries, democratic countries.
So I think it is needed to expose the real nature of China.
China is a liberty-killing regime.
They persecute all religions.
In different ways, but all religions and especially so-called minority groups.
And they do it in a very harsh way.
And we see that sometimes in the West the topic is not addressed as it deserves.
Give me a sense of the true scope of the issue or the magnitude of the issue.
A very fine Chinese scholars on religion, Feigang Yang, a few years ago, described the relationship between the Chinese Communist state and religions using the metaphor of three markets, the grey, the black and the red markets.
Can be divided into these free markets when it comes to the relationship they have with the Chinese Communist Party.
The red market is where the Chinese Communist Party and the state tolerates or releases groups or churches.
And when I say tolerates, it means that most of the time they infiltrate them.
And they try to control them from inside.
This started back in the 50s, establishing the so-called patriotic, Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Taoist association.
And it was a way to infiltrate those churches because it could not be possible for the government, even if so much powerful, to destroy them.
Completely. So they try to control them from inside, infiltrating them.
And then there is the black market.
The black market is the place where the groups, religious groups, are described by the regime with a Chinese expression, which is called, which is, it means, it's an old expression.
It comes from the old days in China.
It means, means, heterodox.
The Chinese Communist Party revived that old expression and it reinterpreted it and re-translated it using the word cult, which is very much...
Is or was very much popular in the West.
Scholars have abandoned the use of cults because cult is a derogatory term which has no limit and no boundaries.
So basically it's a way by which the power, whatever it would be, uses to again put people aside.
To smear them, basically.
Yes. So it's debunked and it's not used by scholars.
And there are legal decisions that say that should not be used in many countries, that should not be used in international treaties and documents, official documents, and so on and so forth.
But what the Chinese Communist Party does is to compile a list of siege out.
And they put all the groups that they can directly repress.
Why? Because they have large numbers of faithful, but they are not, for many reasons, are not well known, so not well defended abroad, and the government.
Have almost a free hand in repressing them.
The black market of religion is the place where you have the largest number of death in suspicious condition in custody when these people are arrested for just having religious books or praying together or just not signing, I renounce to my faith.
You have torture, you have violence on women, you have all kinds of bad things on these individuals and groups.
And again, most of this happens because these groups are not well known, not well connected abroad.
And then we have the grey market, which is kind of between the red and the black market, and it's the place where the regime is not able, doesn't have the force.
To destroy completely these groups, and it does not have even the force to infiltrate them, so it more or less tolerates these groups.
But as a matter of fact, Fagan Young and other scholars are elaborating on this model which has been brought about a few years ago.
Years ago are now saying that this grey market is slowly disappearing because the power of the state is so growing that either the groups belonging to the grey market goes in the red market, meaning totally directly infiltrated by the government, or they tend to be put in the list of the black markets, Xiexiao, cults, and then destroyed.
So the grey market is a model that scholars use, but it tends to, as a matter of fact, practically, it tends to disappear in recent years.
They will be red or black.
They will be directly infiltrated or directly repressed.
Marco, just one quick sec.
We're going to take a break, and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Marco Respinti, director in charge of the Bitter Winter Religious Freedom magazine.
The Chinese regime doesn't just persecute these groups within its own borders.
It actually has quite some great efforts.
I've interviewed Uyghurs, I've interviewed Tibetans, I've interviewed Falun Gong practitioners, I've interviewed democracy activists from Hong Kong, for example.
All of which are persecuted in some way, in some cases in incredibly severe ways, here in America, in Canada, in Europe, other countries.
What is the thinking there?
Well, transnational repression has been documented in reports by groups and associations and think tanks or activist groups that deal with religious liberty in China.
How long can democratic countries tolerate that people on their land are attacked, harassed by a foreign country?
We have seen countries where Chinese policemen can easily go in the streets.
There are countries where secret police stations, Chinese police stations, have been secretly established.
For which reason?
Why can a democratic society tolerate this infringement on its sovereignty?
And let's go back to the people, the people who escaped China trying to find a safe harbor in other countries, say Italy, say the United States of America, say Canada.
Do we want them to fear not safe in our free country because China has a free hand to get after them?
I think politics needs to address that topic.
So, we've been seeing each other the last few years at these International Religious Freedom Summits here in Washington DC.
What is the significance of this event?
What is the value of it?
As far as I understand it, this is one of the most successful experiments in bringing together different Religious leaders from all over the world, persecuted people, put them around the table, not just to chat,
but to confront, share experience, and try to affect public society and even governments, possibly, with real concrete examples and testimonies.
I think this is the most successful experiment in trying to really build A movement of religious liberty defenders.
You're a deeply believing Catholic.
It's not necessarily obvious that people of a particular faith should be standing up for people of all these other faiths.
It is sometimes not, but I would say it should be.
If you're a believer, whatever religion...
Your first duty would be, I think, to defend the freedom of people, of whatever religion, to exercise their religion.
Because otherwise, I wonder what you really believe in.
If you don't believe that the relationship of a human being with God is so important to be defended at all costs, I wonder how much serious.
You can consider your personal relationship to God in your own tradition.
To answer more directly, as a Roman Catholic, I feel that it's my strong duty to defend the freedom of every human being, to believe, to enjoy the freedom I have.
As a Catholic, they may be Muslim, Buddhist, whatever.
If God has given us liberty, and this is one of the qualities that make human beings similar to God, we should respect that and defend that at whatever cost.
So what do you hope happens through this opportunity you have to meet with all these?
Advocates for religious freedom.
Learn from them.
And the most interesting and even emotional part is meeting with survivors, with refugees, with people who really escaped persecution just for what they believe.
This is unbelievable.
That people can be killed, arrested, tortured, raped, organ harvested for what they believe.
It blows my mind, literally.
I don't think there is...
There can be no reason.
When you really meet people in person and you look them into the eyes and you are saluted by a person...
That you don't remember because you meet so many people, but she or he remembers you because you wrote an article and it comes and greets you and thank you.
That is the things that make you learn the importance of what is not just a job.
It's a vocation.
You know, is there an example that comes to mind of some of your work where you saw it translate into helping someone?
I will not go into details because I cannot reveal some names because of security for them, but we were able to stop the repatriation of a person into the People's Republic of China and it was almost done.
The thing was almost done.
And these people had a relevant role in a religious group, so we knew for sure that what could easily happen to this person once repatriated was simply death.
We were able to stop it almost last minute.
And this person is now free, in a free country, and I will not name one, but you can guess.
Well, that's amazing.
It is, and it's...
I mean, unfortunately, it doesn't happen every other day, and it's quite rare, because we are confronted with powers where...
We are almost a magazine.
We are just a magazine with some connection to a group of activists.
But you actually have access to people inside China who risk quite a lot.
I know because we cultivate all sorts of deep sources inside China, inside the regime even.
These people are risking everything to share information, and you have that.
You've earned that trust.
Yes, we have that.
Unfortunately, it's decreasing these days in numbers, the content we have, because the Chinese regime is very smart in finding these people.
Let me remind you that in the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people were connected to us.
On the ground or arrested in China and half of them more or less have been released sooner or later and half of them simply disappeared.
So we know nothing about them.
That is the value of the work we can do with people in China on the ground giving us information.
That is invaluable, but it's becoming difficult, and it has risks.
So all the credit should go to those people, not to us.
Well, Marco, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation.
It's such a pleasure to have had you on.
It's my pleasure, totally.
Thank you all for joining Marco Respinti and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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