Belief in a higher power is anathema to the atheist Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that for 100 years has sought to command absolute loyalty and control over its members and the Chinese people. “They just cannot handle an allegiance other than to the state,” Sam Brownback, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, told The Epoch Times. As a result, successive Party leaders have launched campaign after campaign to crush and control people of faith in China. Mao Zedong, the first CCP leader, who oversaw one of the most thorough campaigns to dismantle Chinese religious life, compared religion to “poison” in a conversation with Tibet’s exiled leader, the Dalai Lama. In his autobiography, the Dalai Lama recalls Mao telling him in 1954 that religion “undermines the race” and “retards the progress of the country.”
