Archive

from The Great Debate:

The great paradox of Hobsbawm’s choice

The words “communist” and “socialist” are now used so recklessly in the United States that their meaning has been devalued. But Eric Hobsbawm, the British historian who died Oct. 1, was the real deal.

Born in 1917, the year of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Hobsbawm used Karl Marx as the inspiration for both his personal politics and his successful transformation of our understanding of history. He was an unabashed and unwavering supporter of communism in theory and practice, who only let his party membership lapse at the final moment, when the Berlin Wall fell.

His singular contribution to the telling of the human story was to reject the traditional method of viewing history through the actions of great men and women, in favor of describing the larger economic and social tides on which leading figures are often mere flotsam. Though history was usually taught through the lives of kings and queens, Hobsbawm demonstrated that economic and social history offered a fuller explanation of why events happened. He also gave prominence to previously ignored political agitators, whose courageous actions obliged leaders to agree to benign reforms.

His quest for discovering explanations for historical movements beyond the usual bold-faced names was inspired by his personal experience as a young Jewish man growing up in Austria and Germany, when Hitler and Nazism were on the rise. His choice to join the Communist Party in 1936 was both an act of faith and a practical solution to his personal dilemma. Though moderate opponents of Nazism were soon swept aside in their attempts to counter the threat to freedom by democratic means, Communists offered firm, direct action to subvert the burgeoning Nazi state.

from FaithWorld:

Vatican excommunicates pro-govt Chinese Catholic bishop, criticizes Beijing

(Christmas mass at a Catholic church in Beijing December 24, 2009./David Gray)

A Chinese bishop ordained without papal approval has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, the Vatican has said, bringing relations between the Vatican and Beijing to a new low. In a statement branding Thursday's ordination illegitimate, the Vatican said Pope Benedict "deplores" the way communist authorities are treating Chinese Catholics who want to remain faithful to Rome instead of to the state-backed Church.

China's state-sanctioned Catholic Church ordained Joseph Huang Bingzhang as bishop in Shantou city in southern Guangdong province on Thursday despite warnings he would not be recognized because the city has a Vatican-approved bishop.

from Russell Boyce:

Asia – A week in pictures 03 July 2011

A great news picture has to have the WOW factor and without a doubt the picture of the domb disposal expert being caught in a car bomb blast is amazing. What is even more amazing is that he lived.

A car bomb explodes as a member of a Thai bomb squad checks it in Narathiwat province, south of Bangkok July 1, 2011. The bomb planted by suspected insurgents wounded the squad member, police said.  REUTERS/Stringer 

from FaithWorld:

China says everything normal at restive Tibetan temple

(A Tibetan in Nepal on a 24-hour hunger strike in Kathmandu April 18, 2011, to express solidarity with victims of a Chinese crackdown last month/Navesh Chitrakar)

China has said everything was "normal" at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery after the Dalai Lama urged restraint in a stand-off between security forces and Tibetans at the temple in southwest China. "According to what we understand, over the past few days the life and Buddhist activities of the monks at the Kirti monastery are all normal. Social order there is also normal. Material supplies in the temple are totally sufficient," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing.

from FaithWorld:

Vatican warns China bishops over illegal ordination

(Christmas Mass at a Catholic church in Beijing December 24, 2009/David Gray )

Bishops in China who are ordained without papal authorisation inflict a "grave wound" on the entire Catholic Church and should not let themselves be manipulated by the government, the Vatican has said. The Vatican issued the warning on Thursday after a meeting of a special commission that studies the situation of Catholics in China, who are not allowed to recognise the pope's authority but forced to be members of a state-backed Church.

Last November, the Vatican condemned the ordination without papal permission of Reverend Joseph Guo Jincai, a member of the state-backed Church in Chengde. For a period before that, China and the Vatican had reached an agreement that the Vatican would give tacit but not explicit approval to some of the appointments of bishops by the government-backed Church after discreet consultations.

from FaithWorld:

Beijing “house church” faces eviction in tense times in China

(Christians attend Sunday service at Shouwang Church in Beijing in this file photo from October 3, 2010/Petar Kujundzic)

Tears flowed at one of Beijing's biggest "house" churches when some 300 Chinese Christians prayed on the last Sunday before they face eviction from their makeshift place of worship, pressed by officials wary about religion outside of their grip. The Shouwang Church, with about 1,000 members, is one of the biggest Protestant congregations in Beijing that has expanded beyond the confines of churches registered and overseen by the ruling Communist Party's religious affairs authorities.

from FaithWorld:

China says Dalai Lama must reincarnate, can’t pick successor

(The Dalai Lama during a talk at Mumbai University, February 18, 2011/Danish Siddiqui)

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, does not have a right to choose his successor any way he wants and must follow the historical and religious tradition of reincarnation, a Chinese official said on Monday.

from George Chen:

Inflation, the new civil war in China

Mao Zedong led his Communist comrades to defeat the Chinese Nationalists in a civil war, founding a “new” China in 1949. Today, the Hu Jintao administration is fighting a new civil war and the enemy is inflation. Beijing announced the latest interest rate rise -- the second of 2010 – on Christmas Day, effective on Dec. 26, also the birthday of Chairman Mao. I suspect, central bankers in Beijing didn't really want to celebrate the holiday, they just wanted to give the market a surprise Christmas gift. I asked some friends in the financial industry if the rate increase was a surprise. The responses were very mixed. The 0.25 basis point increase for the benchmark deposit and lending rates was a sort of uniform move. If the central bank had gone for a 50 basis point rise, that would have been a very big surprise. The timing of the increase was a surprise, especially after Beijing raised bank required reserve ratios about a week earlier. We thought Chinese officials also needed a break after a very busy month but they have proved themselves to be unpredictable one again, not to mention tireless. Just one day after Beijing raised the interest rate, Hu Xiaolian, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, published an article on the PBOC's website, saying the central bank would make good use of a combination of monetary policy tools next year, including interest rates, bank reserve ratios and open market operations, to make interest rates more market-oriented. How often will these tools be implemented? She didn't say in the article, but now many analysts are predicting the next rate increase could take place in two or three months – within the first quarter. Clearly, China has entered a new cycle of rate increases. Many economists believe the newest rate rise shows Beijing's determination to curb inflation, giving that task greater priority than maintaining economic growth. Some analysts also said the cabinet and some ministries were finally on the same page for tackling inflation after earlier disputes over how to balance the interplay between GDP and CPI. To be honest with you, I am not a big fan of interest rates. If you really rely on interest rates to improve living standards, it's almost like living in a daydream. Hong Kong broadcaster TVB interviewed some residents of nearby Guangzhou city after the announcement of rate rise. Most of them the move and even the prospect of more increases in 2011 would not do much to help them feel better about inflation, which is rising much faster than the pace of rate rises. Can Beijing raise interest rates once a month? I don't think so. Will inflation continue to rise above 5 percent in coming months? That's my guess. The core cause of China's high inflation is food but people are also very interested to see how much property prices can fall. Premier Wen Jiabao does realise that curbing property prices is much harder than controlling food prices. In a rare state radio interview yesterday, Wen acknowledged that the measures Beijing took this year to cool the property market were "not very well implemented" and changed his tone on getting housing prices to return to "a reasonable level”. Previously, he was usually more straightforward in his statements about wanting to see prices under control during his final term, which ends in 2012. Besides inflation, it will also be interesting to see how Beijing deals with yuan appreciation. With higher deposit rates for yuan, a hopefully more bullish stock market in 2011 and prices of houses and villas rising across the vast nation regardless of policy curbs in 2010, do the factors sound perfect for seeing the yuan increase in value too? In fact, as many economists have already pointed out, a stronger yuan can also allow China to import commodities and other items more cheaply, helping  the government get to grips with inflation. My grandmother, more than 80 years of age, once told me there were still many old people in China who miss the days when Chairman Mao was the leader and the distribution and balance of wealth were considered by some to be better shape than they are nowadays. Deng Xiaoping wanted to “let some people get rich first”, and today we see more and more people complain of feeling increasingly poor. It was not easy for Chairman Mao to win the civil war for control of mainland China, and the new civil war on the economic front is going to be a real test of the intelligence and strength of the younger generation of Chinese Communists.

By George Chen
The opinions expressed are the author’s own.

Mao Zedong led his Communist comrades to defeat the Chinese Nationalists in a civil war, founding a “new” China in 1949. Today, the Hu Jintao administration is fighting a new civil war and the enemy is inflation.

from FaithWorld:

Hungary’s communist leader Kádár summoned priest before dying

Hungary's last communist leader János Kádár met a priest at his own request shortly before he died, former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh revealed on Tuesday, two decades after Kadar's death.

"Aunt Mariska (Kádár's wife) called me: 'My husband wants a priest' she said," Németh, who headed the country's last Communist-era government in 1988-1990, told Reuters.

from FaithWorld:

Cuba’s Catholic Church to open first new seminary in decades

(Photo: Havana's Catholic cathedral, June 14, 2010/Desmond Boylan)

The Roman Catholic Church will open on Wednesday its first new seminary in Cuba in more than half a century in a further sign of its improving relations with the island's communist-led government.

The seminary replaces a similar school for future priests that was  expropriated by Cuba's communist authorities in 1966 and transformed first into a military barracks, then a police academy.