Tag: Winchester

The Bishop of Winchester spoke in a debate on human rights in China on 19th December 2024, empathising the importance of a religiously and culturally informed approach towards China:

The Lord Bishop of Winchester: I am very grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for securing this vital and urgent debate. I congratulate him on his election as chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. There is no one better qualified to fulfil that role.

If we are to understand China from the perspective of human rights, security or trade, or indeed from any other perspective, we must see the country in its own terms and as it sees itself rather than simply through western lenses. To understand China as she understands herself, it will not do to look at her in terms of Marxism or indeed Maoism. If once it was said of the Labour Party that it was more Methodist than Marxist, it can be fairly said of the Chinese Communist Party that it is at least as Confucianist as it is communist. At the heart of China’s concept of itself lies the concept of tianxia, a word that means “all under heaven”—and that I almost certainly mispronounce. Even in those three words, you can grasp a sense of its import. It is an ancient concept, dating at least to the start of the first millennium BC, describing a system of relations across Asia, with China as the centre of the civilised world and the apex of culture, the heart of a sage empire, spreading material benefits and wisdom to all mankind—a geopolitical system with China at the centre and the Emperor at the centre of the centre.