American Thought Leaders - Inside Communist China’s War on Religion: Marco Respinti

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

There are few people who have played a more important role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Respinti, director-in-charge of the Bitter Winter magazine.“In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us on the ground were arrested in China. … Half of them simply disappeared,” Respinti says.During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Respinti to discuss how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, coopts, and destroys religious movements in China.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

You are listening to American Thought Leaders. If you enjoy our content, please leave us a five-star rating on this platform. There are few people who have played a more consistent role in broadly supporting the rights of religious believers in China than Marco Raspinti, director-in-charge of Bitter Winter magazine. In the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine, some 40 people who were connected to us were arrested in China, and half of them simply disappeared. So we know nothing about that. During the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, DC, I had the great pleasure of finally sitting down with Marco for a deep dive, where he reveals why he fights so

hard for the religious freedom of people of all faiths, as a Roman Catholic himself. And he breaks down how the Chinese Communist Party systematically infiltrates, co-ops, and destroys religious movements in China. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Marco Respinti, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. My pleasure. Totally. Marco, I've had this deep, deep respect for you for quite a long time through your work exposing human rights violations in China, and especially those of religious minorities

in particular. I believe that the freedom of conscience or freedom of belief is probably the most fundamental right that exists. What do you think? I think that the most fundamental right for a human being, for a person, is the right to life. Because otherwise, if you're dead, no rights. In my opinion, this is the first. The second, but it's direct, the relationship, is the freedom of conscience or religious freedom, because they're strictly connected,

one is inside the other. Because it's all about addressing the most fundamental question of all in human life. Does God, or whatever you call it, supreme being, universal force, whatever, it's not the name, does that God exists or not? And if it exists or not, this has a relationship, direct relationship on how you organize your life as an individual and as a member of the community you live in, starting from your family and going to all the intermediate structures between individual and state that the human genius can imagine.

So again, it's truly the second most important question of all. Freedom of religion is not just the liberty you have to believe privately in a closet, in your room, and to pray secretly, but it's also, and fundamentally, the liberty to live accordingly to your belief. So it's public. So it's political in the sense that Greek addressing with the name of polis, the res publica, the public thing. And it's not by chance that America put this freedom as the first right of the American citizens in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It was here to a long tradition of thought which puts this idea of the human being being fundamentally shaped by his or her thought about God, that tradition is the core question

out of which America was born. That fundamental idea in America is still going around and it confronts all the liberty killing regimes, government, and historical experience of many other countries. I've come to understand that essentially every liberal democracy out there right now really took its inspiration from the U.S. ultimately. Do you view it that way? It is correct to say that because for its importance, America is a lighthouse for many democratic regimes. Many liberal democracies try to imitate America, but not all of them are America. They don't understand the natural low Aristotelian roots out of which this country was born. For sure, all the liberal democracy that tried to imitate America but bear the Enlightenment, Jacobin, French Revolution heritage in their bones will have hard times to understand this country

and to imitate it for the best. And why? Because the two things are completely different and they cannot cope one with the other. the American experience is born out of the Aristotelian, Christian, natural law based tradition. And the Jacobin Revolution and the Enlightenment in the French version is the idea of getting rid of that past. Instead of evaluating it, underlining and using it,

correcting the mistakes, of course, as everything. Nothing is perfect when it's human. So correcting even that tradition. But the French Revolution just in the air. And that Enlightenment idea, the Enlightenment project, it has been called by scholars, it's the idea of getting totally rid out of that past because it was judged negative and bringing to nothing. But it's a matter of fact that all the totalitarian

regimes and tyrannies that came after the French Revolution were inspired by that. Instead, democracies that are inspired by America have a different quality in the public life they grant to the citizens. So why this particular interest in China and the realities of the lack of religious freedom in this country? People say that after the end of the Cold War, communism is over. It is not. We have 1 billion, 300 million people in China, the most populated country in the world, who still lives in a

very proud communist regime. No election, no freedom, nothing. So the magnitude of the problem is so big that we need to address the thing. Plus, China is a powerful nation, very smart in finding ways to lure other countries, democratic countries. So I think it is needed to expose the real nature of China. China is a liberty killing regime.

They prosecute all religions in different ways, but all religions, and especially so-called minority groups. And they do it in a very harsh way. And we see that sometimes in the West, the topic is not addressed as it deserves. Give me a sense of the true scope of the issue or the magnitude of the issue. A very fine Chinese scholar, Anbrilism Feigeniang, a few years ago, described the relationship between the Chinese communist state and religions using the metaphor of three markets, the gray, the black, and

the red markets. He said religion can be divided into these three markets when it comes to the relationship they have with the Chinese Communist Party. The red market is where the Chinese Communist Party and the state tolerates or releases groups or churches. And when I say tolerates, it means that most of the time they infiltrate them and they try to control them from inside. This started back in the 50s, establishing the so-called patriotic Buddhist Catholic Protestant Muslim Taoist association, and it was a way to infiltrate those churches because it could not be possible for the government, even if so much powerful, to destroy them

completely. So they tried to control them from inside, infiltrating them. And then there is the black market. The black market is the place where the groups, religious groups, are described by the regime with a Chinese expression which is called, which is 歇教. It means it's an old expression. It comes from the old days in China. It means heterodox teaching. The Chinese Communist Party revived that old expression 邪教 and it reinterpreted it and retranslated it using the word cult, which is very much popular

in the West. Scholars have abandoned the use of cults, because cults is a derogatory term which has no limit and no boundaries. So basically, it's a way by which the power, whatever it would be, uses to, again, put people aside. So to smear them, basically. Yes. So it's debunked and it's not used by scholars and there are illegal

decisions that say that should not be used in many countries that should not be used in international treaties and documents, official documents, so on and so forth. But what the Chinese Communist Party does is to compile a list of Xie Xiao, and they put all the groups that they can directly repress. Why? Because they have large numbers of faithful, but they are not, for many reasons, are not well known, so not well defended abroad.

And the government have almost a free hand in repressing them. The black market of religion is the place where you have the largest number of death in suspicious condition, in custody, when these people are arrested for just having religious books or praying together or just not signing, I renounce to my faith. You have torture. You have violence on women, you have all kind of bad things on these individuals and groups.

And again, most of this happens because these groups are not well known, not well connected to the protests. And then we have the gray market, which is kind of between the red and the black market, and it's the place where the regime is not able, doesn't have the force to destroy completely these groups and it does not have even the force to infiltrate them. So it's more or less tolerate these groups. But as a matter of fact, Feigen Young and other scholars elaborating on this model, which has been brought about a few years ago, are now saying that this gray market is slowly

disappearing. Because the power of the state is so growing that either the groups belonging to the gray market goes in the red market, meaning totally directly infiltrated by the government, or they tend to be put in the list of the black markets, the usual, cults, and then destroyed the others. So the gray market is a model that scholars use, but it tends to, as a matter of fact, practically, it tends to disappear in recent years. They will be red or black. They will be directly infiltrated or directly repressed. Broadly speaking, these groups that are targeted by the regime that you call the black category, give me some examples of some of the things that you've come across of this type

of persecution of people. It might be difficult for some people to comprehend that are there is a whole list I will name two of the most famous groups in that list Falun Gong and the Church of the Almighty God and these people have been detained in horrible condition tortured some of tortured. Some of them became mad because of what they suffer in prison. I will not go into much detail what women suffer when they are raped. In all sorts of nasty ways, one can imagine. We published things. You can browse Bitter Winter on their graphic description. And we have the plug of organ harvesting, for example, which started with targeting Falun Gong in the old days. But we now know that it went also to Tibetans and

Uyghurs. And also, we have cases of practitioners of the Church of the Almighty God who went. Again, I don't want to go into details, but you know what happens to people when they are organ harvested. Some of them are still alive when this operation takes place and they suffer all kinds of terrible things. I mean it's not easy to think of the testimonies that these people, those who could survive, have given to us and to

other journalists or groups. And I wonder again, how can a human being do those things to an other human being? I mean, take part of his body to sell them to people with money. I don't want to touch on sensibilities of people who need transplants, but this is another topic. How can you do that to other human beings and make an industry out of them? I mean, of course the Chinese government is denying that that happens, but we know for sure that, first of all, the number of death executions in China is a state secret.

And this is especially done on the groups listed as cults in the black market. Why again? Because most of them are not known or not well established or not well connected abroad. Not all of them, but some of them are. So this is why we need to talk more about this problem. The Chinese regime doesn't just persecute these groups within its own borders. It actually has quite some great efforts. I've interviewed Uighurs, I've interviewed Tibetans, I've interviewed Falun Gong practitioners, I've

interviewed democracy activists from Hong Kong, for example, all of which are persecuted in some way, in some cases, in incredibly severe ways, here in America, in Canada, in Europe, other countries. What is the thinking there? Well, transnational repression has been documented in reports by groups and associations and think tanks or activist groups that deal with religious liberty in China. So it's a well established fact.

How long can democratic countries tolerate that people on their land are attacked, harassed by foreign countries? That is a violation of sovereignty of democratic countries. This is an international huge problem. And we need, and parliaments and precedents need to address that quite clearly. It's a plug.

That it's growing. Why it's growing? Things that it's growing. Why it's growing? No, things don't remain stable. Either they become worse or they become better. In this case, if we don't act, if politicians don't act, it will tend to expand. We have seen countries where Chinese policemen can easily go in the streets. There are countries where secret police stations, Chinese police stations have been secretly established for which reason? Why? Can a democratic society tolerate this infringement on its sovereignty? And let's go back to the people, the people who escape China trying to find safe harbor in other countries, say Italy, say the United States of America, say Canada. Do we want them to

fear not safe in our free country because China has a free hand to get after them? I think politics needs to address that topic. So we've been seeing each other the last few years at these international religious freedom summits here in So we've been seeing each other the last few years at these International Religious Freedom Summits here in Washington, DC. What is the significance of this event? What is the value of it? As far as I understand it, this is one of the most successful experiments in bringing together different religious leaders from all over the world,

persecuted people, put them around the table, not just to chat, but to confront, share experience, and try to affect public society and even governments possibly with real concrete examples and testimonies, I think this is the most successful experiment in trying to really build a movement of religious liberty defenders, which is not a common thing. I think this is something unique and it's so far very successful. It took places in different countries. In Europe there are imitations of this model. It has been done in Taiwan, in Japan, in other places. So it moves around in order to build this new coalition to

address this most important topic. Sam Brownberg, who is one of the initiator of this just today, said, we are not going to stop. Religious liberty is violated in many places, directly or indirectly. We need to fight for that, for the people who suffer on the ground. I'm a journalist.

We live in the West, in a democratic West, in a comfortable location. Those people suffer. It's very important. You're a deeply believing Catholic. It's not necessarily obvious that people of a particular faith should be standing up for people of all these other faiths. It is sometimes not, but I would say it should be. If you're a believer, whatever religion, your first duty

would be, I think, to defend the freedom of people of whatever religion to exercise their religion. Because otherwise, I wonder what you really believe in. If you don't believe that the relationship of a human being with God is so important to be defended at all costs. I wonder how much serious you can consider your personal relationship to God in your own tradition. To answer more directly, as a Roman Catholic, I feel that it's my strong Duty to defend the freedom of every human being to believe to to enjoy the freedom I have As a Catholic they may be Muslim Buddhist

whatever if God has given us Muslim, Buddhist, whatever. If God has given us liberty, and this is one of the qualities that make human beings similar to God, we should respect that and defend that, whatever cause. In terms of success, have there been tangible changes in policy or reductions in persecution of groups or people through some of the work of this IRF summit? Yes, I would say yes. Sometimes some laws have been passed, sometimes things that were not known to many people came to the surface. And this is very much important because totalitarian regimes

and prosecutors, when a case, a group are highlighted and become public, they kind of step back a little bit in what they do because they have the light of the world on them. So exposing cases, groups, obscure groups, unknown groups, this is very much important and it's effective. This can bring, as I said, to some legislation the Uyghur Labor Act. First Labor Protection Act. Yes. Passing this country was born out of a wonderful lobbying work that we goes and their friends Did in this country and it passed also through this movement that is

starting or have been Going around for for a while Thanks to the IRF, International Religious Freedom, summits. I think that much more needs to be done. And this is why, first time I attended these meetings, I just saw it today. I met one third of the people like so in the room today in a roundtable that precedes the IRF summit.

This is a good sign. More people are getting in. More people are willing to be recognized as friend of religious liberty. And if it's true what we said before, this is quite a noble task. Maybe there is nothing like this on earth. The U.S. has been involved in all sorts of engagements around the world. Some people have described it as the world's policeman. And there's a shift

in thinking and desire to not have America be as engaged in so many different things, so many different places. What do you think America's role should be in this type of a context? As someone that's looking in from the outside, as someone who is obviously a lover of the American idea, and of the sort of independence and liberty that it fosters. Being an Italian national, I don't want another country to run my country. And I think this is fair to say even in

face of a country which I respect. Yes, some people are right when they say that America should not be arrogant, be the policeman of the world and run the show all over the world. Fine. This is easy to say, but let me repeat it. Western Europe should be thankful for the freedom they have because Americans died for that freedom. So we should never forget that. And I think that the role that America had in liberating directly or indirectly Eastern Europe is another point. But the most important thing to me is, to answer your question, is that the American idea, it's American, but it

can be contagious to other countries. I think that every country should find its own way within its own tradition to address in its own way the same question that the American idea is, or the American founding is addressing for America. America found its own way. All the countries need to find their own way to address the same question.

But the question should be the same. And it should be posed in the same correct way. What is that can grant freedom most for human beings? What is the most decent, not perfect, decent regime for human beings. America has found a way to try to respond and answer to this question in quite an interesting way. All the countries should do the same within their own tradition and if they say find some good Example elsewhere they could imitate it. I think the American founding And then the in the whole American experiment or experience, which is a better word addresses the most

This most fundamental question. What about liberty? What is liberty? What is the material of liberty? What is the best regime for human beings to guarantee that liberty? This doesn't mean that America doesn't have mistakes or faults or spots. It does everything that is human does. So that is not an objection to say, you know, America tried and so far it succeeded. Well, what is the correct role for, you know, America or say, you know, a vibrant, a vibrant, liberal democracy, a functioning liberal democracy?

Inspiring support, if needed help, to be yourself. This help question is the one that's the hard one. I know. I mean, this help question is the one that's the hard one, right? I know. What does that mean? What is appropriate? What isn't appropriate? Well, it depends on the situation, I think.

There is no metaphysical answer to this because according to situation, I'm not against military, political, economic help for America if limited, clear, transparent, and supportive for good causes. There may be occasions where these things are needed, God forbid, but I'm thinking right now of military intervention, for example. But what about Europe under a Nazi rule? It's pretty clear in the answer there. And so again, should be limited, should be correct, should be transparent, should be well-drafted.

That could help. So what do you hope happens through this opportunity you have to meet with all these advocates for religious freedom? Learn from them. And the most interesting and even emotional part is meeting with survivors, with refugees, with people who really escaped persecution just for what they believe. This is unbelievable, that people can be killed, harassed, tortured, raped, organ harvested for what they believe.

It blows my mind, literally. I don't think there is, there can be no reason. When you really meet people in person and you look them into the eyes and you are saluted by a person that you don't remember because you meet so many people, but she or he remembers you because you wrote an article and comes and greets you and says thank you. That is the things that make you learn the importance of what is not just a job. It's a vocation. Is there an example that comes to mind of some of your work where you

saw it translate into helping someone that you can think of? I will not go into details because I cannot reveal some names or because of security for them, but we were able to stop the repatriation of a person into the People's Republic of China and it was almost done. The thing was almost done. The thing was almost done. And these people had a relevant role in a religious group so we knew for sure that what could easily happen to this person once repatriated was simply death. We were able to stop it almost last minute, and this person

is now free in a free country. And I'll name one that you can guess. Well, that's amazing. It is. I mean, unfortunately, it doesn't happen every other day. And it's quite rare, because we are confronted with powers where we are almost a magazine. We are just a magazine with some connection to a group of activists.

But you actually have access to people inside China who risk quite a lot. I know because we cultivate all sorts of deep sources inside China, inside the regime. These people are risking everything to share information and you have that. You burn that trust. Yes, we have that. Unfortunately, it's decreasing these days in numbers, the kind of view we have, because the Chinese regime is very smart in finding these people. Let me remind you that in the first six to eight months of our existence online as a magazine some 40 people who were connected to us on the ground were arrested in China and half of them more or less have been released sooner or later and half of them simply disappeared so we know nothing about them. That is the the value of the work we can do with people in China on the ground giving us information. That is invaluable.

But it's becoming difficult. And it has risks. So all the credit should go to those people, not to us. Well, and it's just something struck me, right? Obviously, for those people, it's incredibly valuable. Yeah. This is why they thank us for what we do. But as a matter of fact, it's us thanking them.

Because again, as I always say, they deserve all the credits. They are the people who suffer. I'm just a reporter. I tell stories, hopefully true stories, but they suffer. And they deserve all the credits. So many times at meetings when they can escape and move or by emails, they thank us.

And I always say, no, it's we. It's me thanking you. Well, Marco, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation. Do you have a final thought as we finish? Religion is the most important asset for a human being. This is not preaching. This is an objective thing.

It's the faculty of a human being to address the most important question in life. If God exists, your life is shaped in a way. If God doesn't exist, whatever in the name you give to him or her, your life takes another way. So we must always give this possibility to every single person. The world will not be free and humanity will not be accomplished until all the people will be free to say God exists or doesn't exist and to live accordingly. The consequence is between them and God if it exists as I believe, but that is another topic. We as human beings should grant all human beings this fundamental, unrenounceable freedom. Well Marco Respinti, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. It's my pleasure, totally.

Thank you all for joining Marco Respinti and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek. You are listening to American Thought Leaders. If you find this episode valuable, please share it with a friend you think might also enjoy it.