The Issue of Our Time is Making Information Freely Available in China

I just saw it again on TV this morning. Uprisings are occurring in many parts of Africa. In some countries, the prime minister is forced into exile as it happened in Tunisia. The Islamic world has repressive, totalitarian tendencies, and while many of its people live in what could be called “equality under poverty, ” others are initiating the struggle towards democratization.

People demonstrating in Hong Kong on December 17th 2011, holding up pictures of those arrested and killed when protesting against land condemnation.

After the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai Expo, prices in China shot up dramatically, and Chinese city dwellers have begun to protest. Also, China’s Socialist government used to be able to easily buy people’s private land for government use in a process called “land condemnation, ” but recently many Chinese have begun to refuse letting go of their land. We can observe an influx of Western values through the lower income groups in China.

I believe it could be a ten year struggle until we achieve this, but if we make an effort to bring in more of the ideas that lie at the root of recent resistance movements among the Chinese, China is bound to change eventually.

At the moment, the Chinese government is working hard not to let any information reach their citizens that might show the government in a bad light. Last year (2010) for example, the Hollywood movie “Avatar” was a huge success. When the Chinese government saw “Avatar, ” in which the earth invades and exploits the blue fox-like beings of Pandora that look like the Dogon, they thought the movie was portraying China as a country that invaded other countries, and banned screenings of “Avatar” in China. They replaced it with an earthquake movie, which went on to become the number one blockbuster hit in China.

China is a country where the government controls even cultural aspects like movie screenings, but I still believe the government will lose once the people rise up against it. Once the economy begins to thrive, there needs to be free access to information, or progress will stagnate. This is the issue we are facing today, but the Chinese government will eventually have to yield. It will no longer be able to suppress people’s needs. If people want to see “Avatar” they will have to let them see it. They cannot keep replacing one movie with another to fabricate an alternative blockbuster hit. Wait ten years, and you will see – things are going to change in China.

Ideas, not Weapons Win the Battle for Peace in Asia

We are not going to fight this war with weapons. We are going to fight it with ideas and culture. The teachings of Happy Science are now widely available in Chinese translation. We have started making texts available to them that deal with economic development and personal happiness – topics that offer an easy starting point for them. These are the first areas in which we need to instill new thought patterns in them.

At the moment, the thoughts of Confucius and Zhuangzi are finally experiencing a renaissance in China, and modern people in China cannot be saved enough by learning these famous thinkers thoughts. At the moment, we still have a lot more freedom here than they do in China, and the Chinese will have to fight for their freedom, but I am confident that I can create a better situation.

Chinese tourists shopping in the Ginza, Tokyo (January 2012)

While China tries to censor information, a lot of it seeps through the holes. How else would Japanese trends find their way to China every time? As soon as something sells well or receives high praise in Japan, the average person in China knows about it. Especially the wealthy living along the coast know all about these trends, and I believe this is also true for the activities of Happy Science – your efforts to spread the teachings of Happy Science here in Japan are getting through to China. I am sure of it.

Another thing I believe is important not only for students but also for business people is to teach the Chinese about our way of thinking every time we get a chance to interact with them. The papers say that Ginza and the Imperial Palace are swarming with Chinese tourists, but it would be a wasted opportunity if all they got to take home was their shopping.

You don’t need to go to Shanghai to hand out books. In Japanese department stores, they now make store announcements in Chinese. So just grab every opportunity you can here in Japan to pass on our teachings to the Chinese.

Your activities support the development of a peaceful Asia, so please believe in what you do. We must avoid creating future combat using powers.

The People in China are Originally Religious

Japan is a great civilization, and a strong country that cannot easily be wiped off the face of the planet. China, too, is a great country with a long history, a country that deserves our respect for many of its achievements, and many of its cultural traditions should be continued in the future. For these reasons, it is essential that we form a good relationship with China. We do not want a relationship in which one country takes over the other, but one in which both countries treat each other with respect and have a healthy level of influence on each other.

I believe once El Cantare becomes so famous that there is nobody in Japan who has not heard of our faith based on his teachings, China will automatically think “We need to look into this, too!, ” and our religion will begin to take a stronger foothold in China.

At the moment a lot of Chinese Happy Science followers are operating underground, which is an unfortunate situation. To fight the dangers they are in, we need to make it clear that You must never become a country in which people are arrested and punished for their faith.

We have a high aspiration to the extent that our goal is to enlighten all of China At the same time as suppressing China’s hegemonic ambitions and creating peace in Asia, we need to stop a world war between Islam and Christianity. These are our two missions right now.

So first, we need to spread our teachings in Japan, then we need to spread them all over the world. Due to the biased coverage to religious issues of the Japanese media, Happy Science activities often need to be published abroad before the Japanese media feel confident enough to report them, too. For this reason, I also want to expand our efforts abroad.

The problem is not that the average Chinese person has no piety. The Chinese as a people are very religious in origin – maybe even more so than the Japanese. But everything gets regulated from above, and this is what we need to change. I believe if we spend the next ten years working on changing things step by step, we will be successful.

Or are you willing to lose to Genghis Khan?* (Applause) Water flows from top to bottom, so let us aim high and try to reach as many people with our message as we possibly can.

We, Happy Science members, need to gain higher ability to transmit our messages. Let us pass it on to everybody who comes to Japan.