‘ Poor Chinese replace Jesus with Xi pics’
Yugan county in Jiangxi province has 10% Christians who are ‘ abandoning’ Jesus to get rich
Beijing, Nov. 15: Hundreds of Christians in an impoverished county in rural China have swapped posters of Jesus Christ for portraits of President Xi Jinping as part of a local government poverty relief programme, a media report said on Wednesday.
The Yugan county in Jiangxi province has a large Christian community and about 10% of its population is Christian. More than 11% of its one million residents live below the country’s official poverty line.
As the local government redoubles its efforts to alleviate poverty, many believers have been told to take down the images of Jesus, the crosses and the gospel couplets that form the centrepieces of their homes, and hang portraits of Mr Xi instead, Hong- Kong based South China Morning Post reported.
The practice hearkens back to the era of the personality cult around late chairman Mao Zedong, whose portraits were once ubiquitous in Chinese homes, the report said.
Mr Xi, 64, who has emerged as the most powerful Chinese leader in the
recent times was conferred a second five- year term by the ruling Communist Party of China in its Congress last month.
He has also acquired the status of Mao and his successor Deng Xiaoping in the party as he is the only leader after them whose thought has been included in the party’s constitution.
In Yugan, the officially atheist party is competing for influence with Christianity. By some estimates, Christian population in China is estimated to be around 90 million.
Under Mr Xi, the CPC has made ending poverty by 2020 a top priority.
The report quoted a local social media account over the weekend that in Yugan’s Huangjinbu township, the CPC cadres visited poor Christian families to promote the party’s povertyrelief policies and helped them solve their material problems.
The officials successfully “melted the hard ice in their hearts” and “transformed them from believing in religion to believing in the party”, the report said.