Toxicity in International Affairs: China’s Use of the LDS Church

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) leverages the little religious influence it allows from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS). In 2022, the LDS Church expanded to over seventeen million members across 411 worldwide locations. Currently, 92,350 part- and full-time Mormon missionaries strive to fulfil the global evangelistic vision cast in their scriptures (Doctrine and Covenants 133:37). China has capitalised on growing LDS Church following in China by using the Church’s influence for its own aims, namely promoting Chinese domestic control and protecting its soft power influence in the U.S. state of Utah.

China has only superficially accepted the LDS mission within its borders. In doing so, China enjoys the benefits of LDS citizenhood while simultaneously denying the Church any real power that would disrupt CCP religious control. Despite attempts as early as 1851, the LDS Church only managed to establish a Chinese mission in the inopportune year of 1949. Since that year’s communist takeover, the Chinese Communist Party Government (CCP) legitimises only the religious gatherings it registers and regulates, requiring the up-and-coming LDS Church to neuter its mission in China or else find a way around the law.

Opting for the legal route and hoping for future Chinese leniency, the LDS Church provides its members with meticulous instructions and religious motivation for behaving respectfully in China. Their website reads, ‘Over the years, the Church has built a strong relationship of trust with the People’s Republic of China by always respecting the laws and traditions of that country… because members of our Church have worked to follow government regulations, the Church has a good reputation and is respected’. Chinese laws restrict local LDS church members from meeting with foreign members and prohibit proselytising. These laws alone severely limit the global vision embedded in LDS doctrine. In trying to preserve its relationship with China, the LDS Church enforces the very laws binding its mission.

China continues to withhold legitimate religious freedom from the complicit LDS church. Russell Nelson, the current LDS president, has been re-enforcing the LDS relationship with the Chinese government since his years there as a visiting professor. However, his lack of public stance on the Uyghur re-education camps proves to be rather awkward diplomacy, especially as various religious leaders have publicly joined to condemn it as genocide. It is unclear if the LDS Church’s toe-hold in China has benefited the Church. Nelson’s 2020 plan to open an LDS temple in Shanghai has yet to gain any traction, revealing the CCP’s slippery form of religious tolerance.

In addition to capitalising on the LDS Church’s stunted influence in China, China uses its relationship with the LDS Church to protect Chinese soft power initiatives in Utah. In this way, Xi Jinping has transformed the trail-blazing work of the LDS Church in China into a two-way road. As of the 2022 US census and LDS estimate, the LDS Church comprises about 60 percent of the total population of Utah. Chinese influence has been particularly concentrated in the education system through Chinese language immersion schools. In January 2022, fifty 4th-grade students in the Orem, Utah Chinese immersion school program mailed Chinese New Year cards to Xi Jinping. To the students’ delight, Xi Jinping wrote back, encouraging the students to keep up their language learning and foster U.S.-China friendship. Chinese media took full advantage of the scenario to highlight the positive exchange.

For years within Utah, the CCP has benefited from the Church’s doctrine-fuelled amicability towards China, influencing state-level politics and sympathies via the LDS Church, a chagrined catalyst. Much of Utah politics reflects the heavy LDS Church’s population and political involvement. According to The Associated Press’s 2023 coverage, two Utah residents and baptised members of the Church, Ron Hansen and Ji Chaoqun, were arrested and sentenced to 10 and 8 years in prison, respectively, for spying on behalf of the CCP, making it clear that China was trying to ride the strong LDS socio-political current in Utah. These instances have earmarked other Utah citizens like Taowen Le, a Church member and professor at Weber State University. The FBI has interviewed Le twice concerning his past work for the Chinese Liaoning Province and his influence in delaying Utah policies to close Confucius Institutes and condemn the Uyghur genocide.

Aware of the harmful public perception of the Church’s relationship with China, some LDS Utahns in politics have tried to intervene. Utah Senator, LDS Church member, and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney uses his office to promote policy prioritising state and national security rather than just the LDS Church mission in China. Despite their personal connections to the Church, Utah Representative Brady Brammer and Utah Senator Michael Kennedy sponsored a resolution condemning the Uyghur Genocide. International Business Attorney Jonathan Bench defends the Church’s relationship with China as arising out of pragmatic mutual interest, of which politics may play a part. However, he states that to make a big deal about the Church’s involvement with China is ‘unnecessarily conspiratorial’. While lay members of the Utahn Church may be arguing for a less layered relationship with China, the Church itself has ‘honoured and respected’ itself into an affair more toxic than many would like to admit. While waiting for the Chinese mission field to soften up, the Church has become a virtuous tool for maintaining anti-religious regime restrictions in China and political influence in the United States. It all amounts to a textbook example of China’s stock strategy: targeting sub-political groups to maintain subtle international influence.

September 21st, 2023, marked the 200th anniversary of the Mormon Restoration, when Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, claimed to have been visited by the angel Moroni and given revelation. Since then, the LDS Church’s global presence has increased through Netflix shows, media coverage, published testimonials, and missionary efforts. China’s superficial reception of earnest missionary work demonstrates the two institutions share a penchant for influence despite their conflict of long-term interests. Whether that influence is to be shared, China will decide. Meanwhile, China enjoys proving that it’s possible to have one’s cake and eat it too.

Image courtesy of the White House via Wikimedia, ©2018. Some rights reserved. 

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.