The Regional Issue of Religious Education: China
The regional issue in religious education has some special meaning. The representative book to deal with the regional issue of religious education is Richard Osmer and Friedrich Schweitzer’s book, Religious Education between Modernization and Globalization. The subtitle of that book is New Perspectives on the United States and Germany. In that book, Osmer and Schweitzer (2003) describe the transformative progress of two countries – the United States and Germany in a transitional era from modernization to globalization. In other words, the regional issue of both countries constitutes of main stream of that book. They emphasizes that “religious education stands in an interdependent relationships to its social contexts,” since the main goal of religious education is closely related to “a common goal of promoting the well-being of our societies and the human community as a whole” (Osmer & Schweitzer, 2003, p. 5). In this aspect of religious education, I have recently interested in the regional issue between Korea and China. The foreign relationship between both countries adds the dynamics of such meanings with the relational issue of the United States and Japan in Korean peninsula. Chinese students among foreign students to study in Korean universities consist of the most population. Recently 800,000 Korean peoples live in China. According to 2007 statistical analysis of Korean World Mission Association, 14,905 Korean Protestant missionaries worked in 168 countries. Among them, Korean missionaries working in China was recorded at the 1st rank as 2,640 peoples among them.
Especially, the recent foreign issues such as joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) leaded by China and deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in Korean peninsula promote the multilateral relationship between Korea, China and the United States. In fact, many Koreans have many concerns about Chinese foreign leadership leaded by President Xi Jinping. China and the United States are the big two countries in foreign and economic affairs. In the depth of geopolitical tensions between China and the US and between China and Japan, President Xi is carrying out strongly his “anti-corruption campaign” as Chinese domestic agenda (Feng, 2014, p. 27). And his personal popularity and confidence is very high in China and other foreign countries. Thus, any people anticipates cautiously toward Chinese democratization. However, professional political scientists recognize that President Xi remains the stereotypical pattern of “a pragmatic Chinese leader” and does not change “the course of China’s grand strategy of a ‘peaceful rise’” which is shaped by foreign policy of “Chinese ‘self-righteousness’” to maintain a real “competitor” in relation to the United States about world affairs (Feng, 2014, p. 27). Chinese political scientist Zhu Feng (2014), who is Professor of International Relations at Nanjing University in China, analyzed that the “territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas” with “China’s military modernization” and its expansion is in relation to the concrete realization of “Chinese ‘self-righteousness’ mindset” rather than a direct challenge to the United States’ central role for the liberal world order in world affairs as a “new Cold War” (p. 27).
Even President Xi Jinping’s personal popularity and his political confidence are very high, it is not easy to anticipate the transformative change in Chinese political affair, since the Chinese political leadership maintains its traditional pattern of closed framework. The United States’ influential political scientist Susan Shirk, who is Professor of China and Pacific Relations at UC San Diego and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President Clinton administration, analyzes the oligarchical structure of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Especially, the leadership election process is very conservative and closed. Generally speaking, in China, the political decision making is determined by the Politburo Standing Committee and the Military Commission. According to Susan Shirk’s (2008) political analysis, Chinese “leadership competition” is covered by “wraps” (P. 52). For example, the hottest political issue of “the Seventeenth Chinese Communist Party Congress in fall 2007” was who becomes a successor of President Hu Jintao (Shirk, 2008, p. 52). Many people thought Zeng Qinghong, who was a right-hand man of former President Jiang Zemin, as Hu’s successor. But the Central Military Commission did not appointed Zeng, who served as vice president, in its number two position, since he was very old (Shirk, 2008, p. 52). Of course, we are able to recognize that China currently experiences “the explosion of information” through “market-oriented and Internet-based new sources” (Shirk, 2011, p. 2). However, the Chinese Communist Party controls the public through its strong media regulation devices and monitors “the actions of subordinate officials” in the local governments through recognizing the openness of media “as a watchdog” (Shirk, 2011, p. 5). In Chinese current circumstances, how do we construct the project of religious education to apply religious educational practice in the foreign relationship between both countries, that is, South Korea and China?
References
Feng, Z. (2014). Geopolitics and China’s response: Be a co-operator and competitor. Global Asia, 9(3), 24-29.
Osmer, R. R., & Schweitzer, F. (2003). Religious education between modernization and globalization: New perspectives on the United States and Germany. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Shrik, S. L. (2011). Changing media, changing China. In S. L. Shirk (Ed.), Changing media, changing China (pp. 1-37). New York: Oxford University Press.
Shirk, S. L. (2008). China: Fragile superpower. New York: Oxford University Press.
Prayer: We pray for China in Jesus Christ. We believe that you love that country. Thank you so God. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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