THE Vatican-China pact, first signed in 2018 as an experiment for two years, and renewed twice in 2020 and 2022, is due for another renewal this October.
The confidential pact, the content of which has not yet been published, allows the appointment of Catholic bishops in China in agreement with both the Vatican and Beijing.
The mandate of the just concluded third plenum of the Communist Party may push Beijing to renew the pact again as it helps China’s economic policies and shields it against criticism of being repressive toward cultural and religious minorities.
Vatican officials have repeatedly reiterated that the pact aims to address pastoral concerns and not diplomatic ones. But for China, the pact has been purely political and diplomatic, and now it can even become an economic tool.
The four-day plenum, which concluded on Jul 18, mandated the party to adopt a people-first policy, which is nothing but a call to produce a tamed society that toils for the economic hegemony of the nation of 1.4 billion people.
According to reports, the plenum wanted the entire population to become the flag bearers of the new tech-based Chinese world order. People would be asked to shed their existing cultures and religious beliefs or make them fit a Sinicized society that thrives on a market-oriented economy to help the nation stay ahead of the curve of the knowledge-based global economy.
This applies to the 12 million Catholics, including 6 million underground Church members, who refuse to accept the state’s control over their faith practices. They will all have to live by the new “social modernization plan” involving innovation-driven growth. There will be hardly any room for dissent.
Soon after the pact was signed, the Vatican showed signs of disowning the “underground Church” to the extent that it categorically asked Catholic priests and communities to register with the state-approved Patriotic Church.
The Vatican hopes that the move will end the division of the Church in China and make it one Church, approved by both the state and the Vatican.
It also indirectly tells Catholics in China that if they continue to oppose the regime and its systems, the Vatican will not be able to back them up in any way — the end of Catholics’ official dissent. That helps China to push with its plans for the Sinisation of religions.
However, the stakes are high for the ruling Communist Party, and religion is not a priority. Some 600 million people, more than 40 percent of the population, live in the countryside, and they have to be modeled on the “Chinese-style modernization.”
Vocational centers and academic institutions to be established in rural areas will be designed to produce innovation champions who are also high-end manufacturing experts.
As China will put society and the economy at the heart of the next five-year plan, starting in 2026, and ahead of the 80th anniversary of the People’s Republic’s foundation in 2029, the nation has to swear by peace.
On the global front, the third plenum’s thrusts are reforms and opening up — a signal to international investors that there is enough left in the communist nation to feast on. China needs international investors to help it become an engine of growth and assume global leadership sooner rather than later.
It is imperative for the Communist Party to chart out a new course of economic action. The current economic focus is on expanding global market share for China’s manufactured goods, which must be switched over to innovation breakthroughs.
As directed by the plenum, China will have to pursue an economic model in which its new-generation products, services, capital, and culture are widely accepted worldwide.
A week before the third plenum, Western leaders gathered in Washington to assess their war preparedness under the aegis of NATO.
At the three-day meeting, attended by almost all top Western leaders, a NATO declaration said the military alliance was investing in “chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense capabilities to operate effectively in all environments.”
In contrast, the third plenum said: “In foreign relations, China remains firmly committed to pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace.”
China is forced to show an olive branch for its own political and economic goals. Peace cannot be a value in itself for the communist nation that continues to be the biggest rights violator on earth.
Peace is business for China. Here is one of the umpteen examples. It brought together arch-rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia on a common platform to ensure an uninterrupted oil flow to its shores.
It helped warring factions in Palestine — Fatah and Hamas — come together and meet up in China in April aiming to gain brownie points from Islamic nations worldwide.
But then, this apparent love for peace helps build an international image. It gives the impression that the Chinese leadership strives along with world leaders like Pope Francis, who has been asking the world to “give peace a chance” since the Ukraine war started on Feb 24, 2022.
Francis has repeatedly stressed the role of peace in his sermons, speeches, and messages, particularly after the Gaza war began on Oct 7, 2023.
China needs the Vatican in its effort to woo international capital and gain the trust of Western lobbyists.
When China plans to remodel its society, as the plenum asks, a pact with the Holy See can help the one-party nation withstand Western governments’ criticism of its alleged curbs on religious freedom and alleged human rights abuses.
Above all, the deal can help China gain a wider acceptance among Western Christian nations in Europe and elsewhere for its new-generation tools and solutions and big-ticket infrastructure projects, which the US has been assiduously trying to keep at bay.
For the Vatican, the pact may serve as a pastoral tool to unify Catholics and normalize its relationship with the Chinese Catholic Church by having a say in their affairs.
But the biggest question remains: Will China, which has a nasty history of breaking pacts when it suits, ever allow the Vatican to decide the affairs of the Catholic Church in China?
The answer, for most Catholics, is the elephant in the room. – UCA News
