In 1601, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci was granted permission to settle permanently in Beijing, where he would stay until his death in 1610. He had been trying to secure this approval since the year 1583, when he first arrived in China. The contacts and friendships he developed during the years he spent at the Chinese capital would form the basis of the Christian mission in China for the next 120 years. These friendships would also launch a profound dialogue between China and the West in the cultural as well as scientific field. Firm in his objectives, flexible in his methods, always respectful of Chinese laws and ways of proceeding, Matteo Ricci set a standard for what is now called intercultural dialogue. Ricci's modus operandi remains valid and meaningful, especially when one contrasts it to the methods which would subsequently mar contacts between China and Christianity. For a better understanding of the situation of Christianity in today's China, two tragedies especially deserve to be recalled.

First, the Chinese rites controversy within the Church at the beginning of the 18th century concerned the legitimacy of the ceremonies held for Confucius and the ancestors. The acrimonious debates and divisions that followed almost ruined the Catholic Church in China. Second, Christianity was reintroduced to China as a direct outcome of the Opium War. It would be most unfair to evaluate the subsequent missionary efforts only in the light of the "original sin" of linking imperialism and Christian preaching, but it is also important to understand the anti-Christian feelings sometimes manifested in China date back to this historical fact. One is almost led to think that China had first to be liberated from Christ as brought by the West to be able to discover him anew, in its own way. This might be the mysterious fruit of the ill-fate met by the Church after 1949.

In a "White Paper on Freedom of Religious Belief," released by the Chinese government last October, the name of Matteo Ricci is not mentioned, nor is this very active period of cultural intercourse of the 17th and early 18th centuries. A historical conjuring trick allows the authorities to jump directly from the seventh century, when a few Syrian monks brought Christian teachings to China for the first time, to 1840, when missionaries came back with opium and canons.

However, the tombs of Matteo Ricci and his colleagues have been restored in Beijing, with governmental approval, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is preparing an edition of his complete works in Chinese for the symbolic date of 2001. The very fact that this founding experience of contacts between China and Christianity is not mentioned can be interpreted in a positive light. The Chinese government has not come with a definite judgment on this period yet, and could be ready to give it a positive significance, thus endorsing a similarly positive interpretation of the role of Christianity in China.

Is this only wishful thinking? Several elements plead for a more optimistic interpretation. First, Matteo Ricci and his companions were observing the laws of China at this time, creating opportunities out of the openings that they encountered in this limited framework. Today, Chinese authorities are less concerned with religion than with public security, and could certainly tolerate a more active religious presence from abroad as long as the commitment to work within a given legal framework (whatever judgment one can make on that framework) is seen as serious. Second, the cultural exchange opened by the first generations of Jesuits in China took place under the auspices of reciprocity and equality, before the time of imperialism. The Ricci model is appropriate for contemporary China, which is growing more confident and more inclined to see its relationships with the West in the light of reciprocal benefits.

The Chinese government is looking for an ideological model with which to codify this new dynamic with the West. True, the handover of Hong Kong came with a flurry of Opium War recollections and rhetoric about national humiliation. But the attractiveness of the adversarial model is already fading, and China needs a discourse and historical examples through which it can enhance the flux of international exchanges vital for its future. In the speech delivered at Harvard University last November, President Jiang Zemin sketched the outlines of what he calls a "culture of cooperation."

This is where Christianity can contribute to China even more than Ricci did in his time. Western learning is already an integral part of the Chinese soul. Now the issue is no longer bringing the West to China, or even bringing in the Gospel. The issue is to present the Gospel as a living interlocutor and also a force able to contribute to the redefinition of Chinese culture itself.

Christianity has to engage with others in the gigantic task of reinterpretation, enabling the Chinese people ultimately to rid themselves of the ghosts of the past and invent their own future, rather than resign themselves to fate and indisputable authority. A renewed dialogue between Chinese culture and Christianity is a creative process--the ongoing creation of values and interpretative models for making sense of the past, and the discovery of common ground for the present.

Going one step further, one could argue that Christianity could help China invent a culture of peace. China still lives under the shadow of a culture of war or, at least, of intense competition, emphasizing short-term perspectives, verbal confrontation, revenge and blind obedience. Conversely, a culture of peace relies on a few assumptions. For instance, forgiveness shows more inner strength than revenge. Public discussion takes everyone's voice into account. Dialogue is conducive to peace. And peace itself is not a state of things given once and for all but an ongoing creative process. Christianity could contribute these to China; is China now ready to appropriate such a challenging set of values?

Ahead of the 400th anniversary of his arrival in Beijing, Matteo Ricci still has a few things to teach us about the encounter between the Christian faith and Chinese culture. First, you can make the most of circumstances, even when they seem adverse. Second, you have to participate in an ever changing cultural market, and show people that what you bring is indeed relevant to them. Third, the meeting between culture and faith in China is not only about politics or the "East meets West" love-hate relationship, but is primarily a process of creativity and mutual conversion.

Missionary arrogance remains a strong impediment to spreading the Christian faith in the Chinese world. Only by understanding the actual life setting of people can new modes of thought be engendered. Perhaps the contributions of Christianity to China will soon be welcomed in Beijing, 400 years after Matteo Ricci initiated a model for this encounter.