A God Who Uses Evil for Good
China's history from 1949 to 1976 under the rule of Chairman Mao Zedong was a period of unparalleled economic changes, educational advances, and ideological shift. It was a time marked by famine, genocide, and disastrous policies.
Yet, through Mao's reforms, many of them enforced by means of brutality, Mao unintentionally created the perfect environment for Christian revival.
Mao Unites the Country
After Mao Zedong's rise to Chairman in 1949, Mao aggressively pushed for the centralization of government power. In his campaign, referred to as the Chinese Land Reform Movement (abbreviated in Chinese as Tǔgǎi (土改)), Mao sought to systematically and violently wipe out China's landlord class, redistributing land to peasants, and by 1953, implementing collective ownership. True to Communist ideology, Mao aimed to create an economically classless society with property rights eventually held solely by the Chinese State.
Mao's methods of reform were undeniably heinous, and yet even in the midst of this evil, God used these massive social changes to open pathways for evangelism—quite literally. The restructuring of society from a feudal to a statist system had broken down regional borders, allowing people in China to travel more freely from one area to another. It was now possible for evangelists to carry the gospel across China while also using an improved transportation system.
Educational Reforms
Another aspect of reform implemented by Mao was the simplification of Chinese written characters. By eliminating an average of more than half the strokes required to form each character, the literacy rate skyrocketed. In fact, before 1949, most Chinese could not read. In tandem with other educational reforms, Mao had opened a treasury of knowledge to the Chinese people. This also meant access to the greatest treasure of all—the knowledge of God's Word. Not only would China hear the gospel, they could now read about who Jesus was for themselves.
Eliminate Tradition
In 1966, in a final effort to boost his hold on power and secure his legacy as an icon of Communist history, Mao launched his infamous campaign known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Rallying millions of Chinese youth into a paramilitary force known as the Red Guards, Mao urged them to wreak havoc on all vestiges of Imperial China, and pointedly antagonize and persecute any Maoist dissenter or rebel.
One of the key missions of the Cultural Revolution was to destroy "the four olds": old culture, old ideology, old customs and old traditions. Ironically, this violent period of history and its mass effort to destroy tradition also broke down what had been before strong barriers to Christianity. Religious allegiances to Taoism, Animism, Buddhism, and Confucianism were weakened. In a spiritual vacuum, China became fertile ground for Christianity to spread and take root.
Foreign Missionaries Kicked Out
Another unexpected outcome of Mao's ostensibly oppressive reforms was that Christianity became indigenous. Under Mao, religion was eventually forbidden, and foreign missionaries expelled from China—leaving the Chinese churches to fend for themselves. The effect was surprisingly positive. By removing Christian missionaries, Mao removed the perception of Christianity being a foreign religion, allowing Chinese believers to take ownership of their faith and apply it to a Chinese context in which the church had the freedom to grow organically.
All of these factors eliminated some of the greatest barriers to the spreading of the gospel, and paved the way for one of the greatest Christian revivals in global history. As Joseph proclaimed to his brothers in Egypt: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20a).