A Meeting of Emperors – and Priests [China]

Settimana News ^ | 7/12/18 | Francesco Sisci

[marshmallow]

The meeting, the rapprochement, between the Holy See and China has a thousand faces, of course. There are the questions of faith, of religion, of souls approaching one another, of tension toward the afterlife, and communication with people on this side. All are important points, perhaps the most fundamental and profound. But seen from China, the question is essentially about power and politics. So, for the benefit of the meeting and approach, it is perhaps appropriate to understand the Chinese position. This has three acts, as in classic tragedies.

A comparison of empires

For China, the Holy See is first and foremost an empire that must be compared to what in fact is the Chinese empire. The beauty of China lies in its relative simplicity as an empire. Today it has about 1.4 billion people. About 95% of these are ethnic Chinese (so-called Han people) and speak fluently or understand Mandarin Chinese.

Since 1980, Beijing has harshly imposed the one-child policy, which has taken from its population in these forty years approximately 400 million new citizens. In coming days the one-child policy could be completely eliminated. This could relaunch births and therefore population growth, thus avoiding the trap of the progressive aging of the nation, which would also have an impact on economic development. In other words, China is the largest mass of the world’s population, which has grown economically by more than 8% a year over the last 40 years, figures that guarantee the doubling of GDP every eight years. This means that in 40 years the wealth of these 1.4 billion people has increased about 30 times, or 3,000%!

The only other political empire that can be compared in terms of numbers is India. The total number of the Indian population may soon exceed the Chinese. Furthermore, the Indian......

[Mrs. Don-o]

Emperor Bump

[Slyfox]

Since 1980, Beijing has harshly imposed the one-child policy, which has taken from its population in these forty years approximately 400 million new citizens.

That is about 2/3rds the entire population of Europe.