Why China has "censored" Christmas

Law and Politics

Photograph: Eldon Tse

In 2006, 10 doctoral students from the top Chinese universities, including Tsinghua and Peking University, posted a joint proposal to boycott the celebration of Christmas in China. They criticised the Chinese people for celebrating a foreign festival “mindlessly”, claimed the pervasiveness of Christmas – or the “soft power” of the “Western world” – to be a threat to the Chinese customs, and encouraged the removal of all elements of Christmas in our public and private lives.

In recent years, the Chinese government, with the support of a considerate part of society, has increasingly enacted these ideas. This past Christmas, almost all schools, companies, and other public institutions have prohibited any forms of Christmas celebration, in the name of “preserving [so-called] cultural confidence and promoting Chinese customs”.

To explain why Christmas has been so critically “persecuted”, we must first understand why a culturally alien festival has become so popular among the Chinese people. Firstly, many people simply see Christmas as an initiative to jump out of their mundane, repetitive daily lives and do something special with those around them, such as exchanging cards, putting up a Christmas tree, and appreciating the array of decorations in public. Some, typically the younger generation, adore Christmas for the absence of dogmatic procedures and awkward reunions. For businesses, Christmas is an opportunity to introduce various preferential events and encourage consumption. Lastly, with increasing government regulations on traditional Chinese festivals, such as banning fireworks and firecrackers for environmental concerns during Chinese New Year and restricting the exchange of traditional gifts to eliminate corruption, people see Christmas and similar foreign festivals, where methods of celebration were not restricted, as a sign of freedom.

The motivations behind the government’s actions are varied. However, the underlying objective is to detach from the West. With declining economic growth and exacerbated foreign relations continuously stirring up domestic unrest, the Chinese government has been seeking a firmer grip on society. As a result, it is crucial to diminish foreign influence in China, such as Christmas, to enhance the importance and authority of the Chinese government via the augmentation of Chinese customs (tragically, the CCP has been accepted as the representation of centuries-old Chinese customs). Furthermore, the government fears that opportunities for legitimate public gatherings, such as Christmas, would give way to opposition; satire, the mortal enemy of authoritarianism, could be employed surreptitiously during these gatherings, such as when people wrote “he who ought to go stays, but he who deserves to stay has left us” when mourning for Premier Li Keqiang; during celebrations of Halloween, people dressed up in protective suits which were utilised during the COVID lockdown period to express their discontent towards the government’s policies and attempts to erase the memories of those atrocities for the past year. Such satire is unacceptable in today’s China, and thus opportunities such as Christmas must be monitored.

For the past years, the government has been manipulating mainstream media to promote a sense of guilt in celebrating foreign festivals. Today, the Chinese media is dominated with works shaming those celebrating Christmas Eve – emphasising that the 24th of December was also the day when the “People’s Volunteer Army” won the agonising Battle of Chosin Reservoir in 1950 (a tragedy in itself used extensively for propaganda – a story for another time), and that it is what “all Chinese people must only remember at the forefront of our heads, for they are the ones who brought us ‘peace’”; previously, some alleged, for the same cause, that the appalling destruction of the Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan) took place on Christmas day in 1860. This was later refuted in date. Such argument lacks coherence: no advancement could be made if we dwell in past defeats and never look forward; a painful event to some almost certainly took place every day in the year if we look back long enough in history, however, that does not justify the disgracing of those enjoying themselves on that day.

Others have argued that the prohibition of Christmas celebrations is, again, “preserving [so-called] cultural confidence and promoting Chinese customs”; in reverse, embracing and celebrating Christmas – and other foreign festivals – deteriorates our cultural confidence and diminishes Chinese customs, which is non compos mentis. Hu Shih, a pivotal essayist and diplomat in Chinese history, once said: “Tolerance is the basis of freedom”. On the one hand, true “cultural confidence” should be the confidence that one’s own culture will remain valued and luminous even in a sea of rich international cultural heritage; driving out all other cultures rather should be a sign of “cultural scepticism”. Ironically, the government extensively celebrates instances of traditional Chinese festivals being celebrated abroad by foreigners, publicising it on numerous government-controlled media. On the other hand, if the acceptance of foreign customs is contemptible, we ought to drive out all elements of foreign influence from China, including the Pinyin system, which of course utilises the Roman alphabet; the Arabic numerals; and even the concept of Sunday. This, of course, is absurd as well.

For more than a century, Christians have played a significant role in building China’s foundation for its transformation into a modern nation. It was the devout and selfless Christian missionaries, passionate about helping those in need, who built the first modern university, library, and hospital in China; it was also the Christians who helped to translate ancient Chinese literature into English and Latin, presenting our culture to the world. Yenching University, one of the most well-known institutions of higher education in China, for instance, was established by the Christian church. Notably, Zhou Youguang, the founding father of the Pinyin system, was educated at St. John’s University, Shanghai – another university founded by Christian missionaries. Furthermore, the Christian church initiated the popularisation of education for girls of ordinary backgrounds in China, setting up the North China Union College for Women and much more. The Christians also introduced China to the Western library systems and medicine, which was later adopted throughout China for its efficiency and accuracy. In addition, the centralisation and development of braille and sign language in China were also founded by Christian missionaries.

Therefore, simply in gratitude for the myriad contributions the Christian world has offered China, not to mention the plethora of other rebuttals, it is unjustified to ban the celebration of Christmas in China.