How Translation Became a Weapon

China, Palestine & the Battle for Reality

Parishioners pray at the Christ Central Presbyterian Church on Oct. 13 in Centreville, Va. John McDonnell / AP

The failures of translation structure my relationship with my parents. One clarifying example is the distinction between Christianity and Catholicism—a difference that, for some Taiwanese, is inscribed into the language itself. 基督教 (Jīdūjiào, 'Teaching of Christ') and 天主教 (Tiānzhǔjiào, 'Teaching of the Lord of Heaven') are treated as separate, self-evident categories: one is Protestant, the other Catholic, two religions, two worlds. Yet in English, 'Christianity' subsumes both, flattening a distinction that feels obvious to those raised within it. This slippage is more than linguistic; it reveals traces of the powers that form our epistemological understanding.

It is crucial to not simply dismiss the ‘wrong’ translations, as within the misunderstanding, it gives us clues of the geneology and splits of the concepts and how they shape our understanding of the world. This is the uncanny aspect of translation, as all translations are mistranslations. They reveal the structure of belief, as opposed to reality itself. It shapes our relationship with reality. They are not merely labels but architecture, walls that separate and define. And for the Taiwanese, these walls were built long before we arrived.

Through tracing mistranslations, we can uncover the genealogy of power.

The Lord of Heaven and the Empire Below — A Colonial Lexicon

Language does not simply describe the world; it arranges it. It lays down structures, builds pathways, and opens doors. It also locks them, seals them, and makes certain ideas impossible to think. The Jesuits understood this. They understood that to introduce their God to China, they could not simply preach. They had to translate.¹

The first Christians in China were Catholic Jesuits in 1582 who arrived in the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), emissaries of faith and empire. The most well-known among them, Matteo Ricci (利玛窦, Lì Mǎdòu), entered China in 1583, beginning his mission in Zhaoqing, Guangdong. They needed a word for God. They chose 天主 (Tiānzhǔ), the “Lord of Heaven.” It was not a neutral choice. It was a strategic military maneuver.

For centuries, 天 (Tiān, Heaven) had been the organizing principle of Chinese rule. Heaven was not a god but a force, a vast and impersonal moral order. The emperor ruled under its mandate. The people lived within its rhythms. The empire itself was structured under 天下 (Tiānxià)—“All Under Heaven”—a world not divided by fixed borders but by a hierarchy of civilization, where China sat at the center and radiated outward.

By calling their God 天主 (Tiānzhǔ), the Jesuits performed a slight of hand. They made Christianity familiar. They made it legible within the moral cosmology of China—a trojan horse. In doing so, they planted the seed of disruption.

Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China mission. Arriving in China in 1583, Ricci quickly distinguished himself through his mastery of the Chinese language and Confucian philosophy, positioning himself as a scholar rather than a traditional missionary. His approach was based on cultural accommodation, wherein he adopted Confucian dress, engaged in classical Chinese scholarship, and formed relationships with Ming officials. This strategy allowed him access to the imperial court in Beijing by 1601, where he introduced Western scientific knowledge—such as cartography, astronomy, and mathematics—to gain favor. While Ricci sought religious conversions, his mission was also part of a larger Jesuit strategy to embed European influence within Chinese governance and intellectual circles, aligning with early colonial ambitions of Portugal and the Catholic Church.²

While the Jesuits were religious envoys, their missions were not separate from European imperial strategy. The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) operated within a broader geopolitical framework, where Catholic expansion was often tied to the colonial ambitions of Spain and Portugal under the Patronato Real system. Under the Padroado (Royal Patronage) agreements with the Vatican, the Portuguese Crown wielded control over the appointment of missionaries. It used them as instruments of soft power to expand trade networks and European influence in Asia. The Jesuits’ presence in China coincided with Portuguese colonial interests in Macau (established in 1557 as a Portuguese outpost), serving as a strategic foothold for commercial and religious expansion.

By choosing 天主 (Tiānzhǔ, “Lord of Heaven”), the Jesuits were engaging in a calculated linguistic maneuver, aligning Christianity with the Confucian cosmology of Heaven (天, Tiān, Heaven) to legitimize their religion within the existing imperial framework. However, this was more than a mere translation—it reframed religious and political power. The Christian God was not merely a divine order (天, Tiān, Heaven). Still, a ruling sovereign (主, Zhǔ, Lord or Master), introducing a Western monotheistic hierarchy that subtly challenged the Chinese emperor’s claim to Heaven’s mandate. In this way, Jesuit translations functioned as a conceptual Trojan horse, reshaping ideas of sovereignty in ways that later European powers would exploit during direct colonial incursions in the 19th century.³

The Colonial Logic of Translation — Linguistics is a function of power.

Christianity does not enter new territories as a neutral presence. It arrives as a reordering force. It does not assimilate; it demands assimilation. It does not coexist; it supplants. The Jesuits were not simply offering China a new faith; they were introducing a different structure of authority—one where power did not flow from the emperor’s mandate, where Heaven was no longer an abstract order but a sovereign, interventionist God who ruled with absolute authority.

The distinction seems theological, but its implications were political. The Christian God is not an emperor. He is not an intermediary. He is the sovereign of all sovereigns, the ruler over all rulers. His commands override earthly kings, and his law supersedes all human authority. To accept their God, 天主 (Tiānzhǔ, “Lord of Heaven”), was to introduce the possibility that the emperor himself was not the final arbiter of power. It was to open the door to a parallel hierarchy—one that did not originate in China but in Rome, in the Vatican, and eventually, in the colonial logic of the West, who were the only people that had the authority to name as well as dictate the logics of the world.

Where Christianity enters, sovereignty fractures.

This was the underlying strategy. Religion was never just religion; it was the advancing force of empire. The Jesuits may not have come with guns or ships, but they came with something more insidious—an epistemological Trojan horse. To name God as 天主 (Tiānzhǔ, “Lord of Heaven”) was to infiltrate China’s foundational logic, to rearrange the architecture of its beliefs, and to introduce the notion that its most sacred structures could be rewritten.

The Weaponization of Heaven

The fundamental rupture, however, was not just theological but ontological. From the Greek, ontos, "being" + -logia, "study of", Ontology refers to the philosophical study of existence, reality, and the nature of being. It examines what entities exist, how they can be categorized, and what it means for something to "be." In religious or ideological systems, ontological shifts occur when external forces alter fundamental assumptions about existence, the self, and the universe.

For example, traditional Chinese cosmology—rooted in Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism—operated on an ontological framework where reality was relational and cyclical, governed by forces such as Qi (气, life force), Dao (道, the Way), and Tian (天, Heaven as moral order rather than a personal deity). Christianity introduced a radically different ontology, replacing an impersonal cosmic order with a personal, sovereign God, dividing the world into creator vs. creation, saved vs. unsaved, believer vs. heathen—a binary ontological structure that did not previously exist in Chinese thought.

In colonial contexts, ontological violence refers to the forced imposition of a new framework of reality that erases or subjugates indigenous ways of being and knowing. Jesuit missionaries, by introducing Tiānzhǔ (天主, Lord of Heaven), were not merely translating a term for God; they were attempting an ontological transformation, reshaping how the Chinese understood divine authority, existence, and hierarchy.

天下 (Tiānxià or Heaven Below) and 天主 (Tiānzhǔ or Heaven Lord) do not belong to the same world.

Confucianism and Daoism of 天下 (Tiānxià, Heaven Below) functioned as a geopolitical order fundamentally distinct from Western colonialism. This system did not seek conversion or total domination but rather the incorporation of others into a hierarchical yet fluid network of relations. The imperial Chinese worldview did not perceive cultural superiority as a justification for annihilation or territorial conquest but rather as a moral responsibility to civilize through integration, trade, and diplomatic relations.

Western colonialism, particularly from the 15th century onward, was based on territorial expansion, resource extraction, racial hierarchies, and forced conversion. The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, and French empires colonized the Americas, Africa, and Asia through violence, land seizure, and the imposition of Western laws, Christianity, and economic systems. The logic was exclusive and eliminative: Territories were claimed, populations were subjugated or exterminated, and indigenous ways of life were erased in favor of Western dominance.

By contrast, when the Chinese engaged with foreign lands—whether in Southeast Asia, Africa, or even the Americas—they did so primarily through trade, cultural exchange, and settlement rather than colonization. There was no doctrine of conquest or proselytization⁴ driving their expansion.

During the Ming Dynasty, in the 15th Century, the famous expeditions of Zheng He (鄭和, 1371–1433), the Muslim-Chinese admiral who led vast fleets through Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Swahili coast, exemplify this model. Unlike European explorers such as Columbus or Vasco da Gama, Zheng He did not establish colonies, claim land, or impose Chinese rule on local populations. Instead, he facilitated trade, diplomatic ties, and tributary relations, bringing gifts rather than guns.

Other Chinese traders established merchant networks in Malacca, Sri Lanka, and East Africa, but they did not enslave or dominate local populations as the Portuguese and Dutch did.

By contrast, the white god of 天主 (Tiānzhǔ) is absolute. He does not share power and does not recognize alternative truths. He is a jealous, envious God. He is the one true God, and all other beliefs are false idols. Christianity is not a system that absorbs difference; it is a patriarchal system of annihilation.

The distinction between 天主 (Tiānzhǔ) and 天下 (Tiānxià) is therefore not just linguistic but political. It is the difference between a world that expands through incorporation and one that expands through eradication. It is the difference between a China that saw itself as the center of a moral universe and a Western Christendom that saw itself as the vanguard of a universal truth.

This is why Christianity, historically, has never been simply a belief system but a war machine. It does not just arrive; it conquers. It does not just translate; it transforms.

To call God, 天主 (Tiānzhǔ), was to smuggle a foreign sovereignty into China’s conceptual world. It was to replace a fluid, hierarchical order with an all-or-nothing binary: believer or nonbeliever, saved or damned, civilized lightness or savage darkness. It was not a simple misalignment of terms. It was the beginning of an epistemic war. And like all wars, it did not end with words.⁵

The Legacy of the Mistranslation

Centuries later, Christianity returned to China—not through dialogues between Jesuits and Confucians, but through warships and opium. It came with the First Opium War (1839–1842), when Britain forced open China’s markets under the pretext of trade imbalances and the right to sell narcotics. It came again with the Second Opium War (1856–1860), this time with France joining in, pushing deeper into Chinese territory, eroding what remained of Qing sovereignty. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842) made it official: Hong Kong was ceded, ports were opened, and foreign merchants and missionaries alike were granted extraterritorial rights—untouchable by Chinese law, free to operate under the protection of the empire. By 1860, British and French troops stood in Beijing, looting and burning the Old Summer Palace, a final humiliation before the Qing surrendered again. The gospel followed in their wake. Missionaries arrived under the cover of imperial fleets, their message no longer one of careful translation, but of salvation backed by cannons.

What began as 天主 (Tiānzhǔ) would end as a justification for conquest.

It is worth remembering that when the British bombed Chinese coastal cities, they did so under the banner of Christian civilization. When Western powers carved up Beijing, they saw themselves as victors and redeemers, bringing light to a benighted land. When the Qing empire fell in 1912, when China fractured under the weight of its defeats, when warlords and missionaries and foreign concessions divided its sovereignty, the roots of that rupture could be traced back—not solely to war, but to the slow, deliberate infiltration of language.

To name something is to claim it. To translate something is to rewrite its meaning. And in that act of rewriting, the power to define shifts.

The Jesuits understood this. The colonizers who followed them understood this. The history of China in the modern era is, in part, the history of resisting these linguistic incursions, of refusing to let foreign names define Chinese realities.

To say that 天主 (Tiānzhǔ) does not mean 天下 (Tiānxià) is not a mere technicality. It is a recognition that language has always been a battlefield. That translation is never neutral. Within every word, a structure of power can be traced.

The Jesuits may have called their God the Lord of Heaven, but what they were truly after was the empire below.

On the other hand, Protestantism, what the Taiwanese may refer to as 基督教 (Jīdūjiào), came later, through a different wave of missionaries, a different historical moment. By the 19th century, the game had changed. The British Empire had arrived with its opium and its ships. Protestant missionaries worked within a different logic—one of competition, doctrinal purity, and market expansion. They did not want to align with the Catholics nor with the Qing imperial framework. They needed their own term, their own theological demarcation.

They used 基督 (Jīdū) to mean 'Christ'—not just a phonetic rendering of Christos, but a term layered with meaning. 基 (jī) suggests foundation, while 督 (dū) implies oversight or governance, framing Christ as both cornerstone and ruler. In translation, theology was never just a matter of sound, but of structure.

Thus, Protestant Christianity became 基督教 (Jīdūjiào), the teaching of Christ.

It seems innocent enough, a technical distinction. But this is where language is never just language.

The result was that 基督教 (Jīdūjiào) came to mean Protestantism rather than Christianity as a whole. From that moment onward, the split was embedded in the Chinese-speaking world, a linguistic fracture that made Catholicism and Protestantism seem like two separate religions rather than two branches of the same tree.

Interlude: What About the Anglicans?

Baba asked about the Anglicans. Where did they fit in? And why was there a war in Ireland between Catholics and Protestants? What did that have to do with the English?

In Chinese, Anglicanism is 圣公会 (Shènggōnghuì), literally “Holy Public Church.” The name refers to the Church of England and its global branches, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S.. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, Shènggōnghuì is the common term for the Anglican Communion, a Protestant tradition that retained many Catholic forms but severed ties with the Pope.

To understand Anglicanism, we must go back to King Henry VIII. In 1534, when the Pope refused to annul his marriage, Henry declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, splitting from Rome. This wasn’t about theology—it was about power. By breaking from the Catholic Church, England seized church lands, consolidated royal authority, and forged a new Protestant identity. Under Queen Elizabeth I, Anglicanism became England’s official religion, and Catholicism was increasingly seen as a threat to national security, given that England’s rivals—Spain and France—remained Catholic.

The divide was exported to Ireland, a Catholic-majority land under English rule. Anglicanism became the religion of the colonial elite. Catholic Irish were stripped of land, banned from holding office, and subjected to systemic discrimination. Religious differences became a justification for colonial subjugation, deepening into cycles of war, repression, and rebellion.

The conflict erupted violently in the 20th century during The Troubles (1968–1998), when Protestant Unionists (who wanted to remain in the UK) fought against Catholic Nationalists (who sought reunification with Ireland). This was not just a religious war—it was a colonial struggle disguised as sectarian violence. The English state’s role in suppressing Irish Catholic resistance ensured that the Anglican Church remained not just a faith but an instrument of British imperial power.

Anglicanism’s history in Ireland offers a parallel to Hong Kong and Taiwan’s relationship with China. In both cases, religious or ideological differences became the language of domination.

In Hong Kong, British rule (1842–1997) created a separate political and legal system, just as Protestant England created an elite separate from Catholic Ireland. Even after the 1997 handover, tensions over identity and governance persist—much like how Ireland remained under British rule but never fully accepted it.

In Taiwan, the parallel is even sharper. Just as Ireland’s Catholics resisted English rule, Taiwan resists absorption into China. England viewed Irish Catholic identity as a threat to its sovereignty, much as China sees Taiwan’s independence as illegitimate.

To be Catholic in Ireland was not just about faith—it was about resisting English domination. To be Taiwanese is not just about politics—it is about resisting absorption into a greater power. The names change, but the struggle remains.

A Problem of Structure

Psychoanalysis tells us that the unconscious is structured like a language. But it is also true that language structures our unconscious. When you are raised speaking a language that has already divided Christianity into two distinct categories, the possibility of their unity does not even occur.

It is a kind of epistemological foreclosure: what does not exist in language does not exist in thought.

If a Taiwanese person hears the word “Christian,” they instinctively translate it as 基督教 (Jīdūjiào—the teaching of Christ), assuming it refers to Protestants. If a Westerner hears “Christian,” they assume it includes Catholics (天主教 Tiānzhǔjiào, "Teaching of the Lord of Heaven"). The two interlocutors proceed with total confidence, entirely unaware that they are not speaking about the same thing.

What is lost is not just accuracy but the ability to recognize an alternate structure of meaning, as well as political allegiances.

What Remains Unspoken, What Is Lost?

But why does this distinction persist? Christianity, in its secularized form, remains the unseen structure behind modern Western society. Its symbols, its legal frameworks, and its ethical mandates have been transferred, not erased. Democracy, with its faith in salvation through progress, inherits the eschatology⁶ of Christian redemption. With its so-called invisible hand and self-regulating order, the market mirrors divine providence. Human rights, framed as inalienable and universal, are but the moral theology of secular Christendom, divorced from its original metaphysical roots but carrying its imperialist, white supremacist logic.

The West has abandoned Christianity only in name. However, its substance remains, transformed into the guiding ideology of liberal democracy and global racial capitalism. The missionary zeal remains intact, manifesting in humanitarian intervention, freedom exports, and regime change. The world must be saved—whether by the cross or by the ballot box provided by the high priests of the CIA.

Yet the categories hold. Christianity's function has not disappeared; it has simply mutated, embedding itself into new forms, including Zionism.

There is an anxiety here, one that exceeds religion itself. Taiwan, after all, is a place caught in the tension of competing genealogies, in the constant act of naming and renaming. What is Taiwan? What is China? What is its history? What is its place?

A name is not just a name.

The words 基督教 (Jīdūjiào, Protestant Christianity) and 天主教 (Tiānzhǔjiào, Roman Catholicism) remain not because of their truth but because they provide clarity and a scaffolding for thought. The real difficulty is that the scaffolding is an illusion. There is no structural reason to divide Christianity this way, only the historical contingency of political movements and colonial ambitions.

But once a word enters everyday use, it begins to feel natural. It is difficult to dismantle a system when mistaken for the world itself.

On loss

To ask what was lost is to ask what is missing in the language we use now. The introduction of Christianity into China did not just bring in a foreign god—it brought in a foreign way of structuring the world. Before the missionaries arrived, before the treaties were signed, before the warships, there was a way of understanding that did not require an omniscient deity to judge and anoint. Confucianism was never about salvation. Daoism never needed redemption.

There was no Fall, no exile from the Garden, no ultimate rupture between the human and the divine. The emperor ruled not by divine right but by 天命 (Tiānmìng), the Mandate of Heaven, a force that was neither benevolent nor cruel, only shifting, withdrawing, and reconfiguring according to society's moral state. The people did not need to be saved. They needed to govern themselves well enough that Heaven would not forsake them.

But after the missionaries came, there was suddenly something to be saved from. The world was rewritten as a battleground between good and evil, believer and heathen, good and evil. This was a war not just on theology but on ontology itself, on the ways a civilization understands what it means to be.

Historically, China's moral framework did not rest on absolute moral binaries or an ultimate judgment of the soul beyond death. Confucianism, with its emphasis on relational ethics—君君臣臣,父父子子 (Jūn jūn, chén chén, fù fù, zǐ zǐ: the ruler must be a ruler, the father must be a father, the son must be a son)—prioritized the maintenance of order and continuity over moral absolutes. However, this was not the only ethical system at play. Daoism introduced a more fluid, non-hierarchical understanding of harmony, while Buddhist cosmology brought concepts of karmic retribution and cycles of rebirth. In some matrilineal traditions, kinship structures deviated from Confucian patriarchal ideals, foregrounding maternal authority and alternative forms of moral duty. Rather than a singular, rigid moral order, China’s past contained overlapping, sometimes contradictory systems of meaning, each shaping how people understood their obligations to family, society, and the cosmos.

When the West arrived, that continuity was broken.

Now, morality had a telos—an eschaton beyond this world, where judgment was final, righteousness singular, and the soul’s fate sealed in heaven or hell.

China did not resist Christianity only because it was foreign. It resisted because it did not need it.

Toward a linguistic discernment

If precision is our aim, then our terms must be precise.

• 基督宗教 (Jīdūzōngjiào), Christianity in its totality, encompassing all its traditions.

• 基督教新教 (Jīdūjiào Xīnjiào), Protestant Christianity, to specify the Protestant tradition.

• 罗马天主教 (Luómǎ Tiānzhǔjiào), Roman Catholicism, to situate Catholicism within its global context.

But language is not so easily rewritten. It clings to its past, its errors, its power. To insist on correction is to insist on disruption. Sometimes, people would rather remain in their misrecognition than confront the instability of the Real.

Still, if we are to think clearly, if we are to name things as they are rather than as they have been told to us, we must begin here:

白馬非馬” (Báimǎ fēi mǎ) — The white horse is not a horse. Thus “基督教非基督宗教” (Jīdūjiào fēi Jīdūzōngjiào) — Protestantism is not Christianity. It is only a part of it. And when we mistake the part for the whole, we are left speaking a language that can no longer see the world for what it is.

What is the leftover excess?

Christianity’s real victory in China wasn’t conversion. It was embedding itself in modernity’s institutions, shaping the frameworks that now govern the world.

The language of human rights, the doctrine of progress, and the belief in an ultimate, universal truth are not neutral ideas. They are secularized remnants of Christian theology, transformed into economic and political dogma.

The missionary has become a humanitarian, the Bible has become an international treaty, and the cross has become a ballot box.

When the West speaks of “universal values,” it does not speak of Confucian, Buddhist, or Daoist values. It speaks of a moral framework it still assumes to be superior, even in its secularized form. The West has abandoned the church, but not its eschatology.

And so, the world is still divided between the saved and the damned—only now, the saved are democratic, rational, liberal, and the damned are authoritarian, corrupt, backward. The logic remains the same. The war remains the same. The missionary now wears a suit.

What Would a Chinese Modernity Look Like?

For two centuries, China has pursued modernity under the assumption that modernity is Western—that progress means adopting the institutions of those who once sent gunboats up the Pearl River.

But must it?

What if modernity did not follow the script of Europe’s historical contingencies—its religious wars, so-called Enlightenment, colonial economies, and Protestant work ethic recast as neoliberal inevitability? What if the state did not need to be secular-Christian, the economy did not need to be capitalist, and the individual did not need to be pried from the collective?

The problem is not simply that Christianity was once a Trojan horse for colonialism. The problem is that its secular descendants still dictate the terms of civilization itself.

Even in language, we still live within their impositions. Jīdūjiào (基督教, “Teaching of Christ”) and Tiānzhǔjiào (天主教, “Teaching of the Lord of Heaven”)—to a Taiwanese ear, these are two separate religions. One is Protestant, the other Catholic. The split feels natural, obvious. But step into the West, and the distinction collapses: Christianity includes both. The categories that define belief, that structure identity, do not map cleanly across histories.

This is not just a mistranslation. It is the residue of power, a reminder that naming is never neutral. Jīdūjiào was a later construction, born from Protestant missionaries arriving alongside empire. Tiānzhǔjiào was the first incursion, embedded by the Jesuits who sought to make their God legible within Chinese cosmology. Each name marks not just a theology, but an agenda, a different phase in the long process of infiltration.

To say that 天主 (Tiānzhǔ, the “Lord of Heaven”) is not 天下 (Tiānxià, “All Under Heaven”) is not a mere linguistic distinction. It is a question of who gets to define the world, who is considered fully human, and who has the authority to determine history’s direction. The future, like language, is something that can be rewritten.

To name something is to claim it. To translate is to impose an order. The Jesuits understood this. The colonizers understood this. And the world still operates on this principle. The confusion between Jīdūjiào and Tiānzhǔjiào is not an accident—it is a wound left by translation, by the slow, deliberate rearrangement of meaning.

To contest translation is not pedantry—it is resistance. To refuse imposed names is to refuse an imposed reality.

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翻译的失败如何塑造我与父母的关系

翻译的偏差并不仅仅是语言上的错误，而是历史权力如何塑造世界认知的体现。例如，"基督教"和"天主教"的区别——对很多中国人来说，这是两个截然不同的宗教，一个代表新教，一个代表天主教，两个世界，两种信仰。然而，在英语中，"Christianity"（基督宗教）涵盖了两者，模糊了这种在汉语世界中显而易见的区分。

这种差异不仅仅是语言学上的问题，它反映了历史权力如何决定知识的分类方式。

我们不能简单地把“错误的翻译”视为误解，因为这些误解本身就是历史的痕迹，透露出概念如何被分裂，以及它们如何塑造我们的世界观。这就是翻译的诡谲之处——所有的翻译都是误译，误译所揭示的不是客观现实，而是信仰的结构。语言不仅是标签，它是建构，是边界，是权力的象征。而这些权力关系，早已在我们出生之前决定了世界的框架。

透过研究误译，我们可以揭示权力的谱系。

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天主与天下——殖民语言的政治

语言不仅仅是描述现实的工具，它还决定了现实的边界。它创造结构，构筑道路，同时也设下障碍，使某些思想变得难以表达，甚至难以思考。16世纪进入中国的耶稣会士深谙此道，他们明白，想要让中国接受基督教，光靠传教是不够的，必须通过翻译来改变知识体系。

1582年，第一批进入中国的基督徒是明朝时期的天主教耶稣会士。
其中最著名的是意大利人利玛窦（Lì Mǎdòu），他于1583年抵达广东肇庆，开始他的布道工作。但语言是障碍，翻译是武器。他们需要一个“上帝”的名字，而他们选择了“天主”（Tiānzhǔ），意为“天之主宰”。

这个词并非简单的翻译，而是一场精心策划的战略行动。

在中国古代政治结构中，天（Tiān，Heaven）是最高的道德秩序，它不是神，而是一种宇宙性的原则。皇帝“奉天承运”，治理天下（Tiānxià，"天下"）。人民则在天道的律动中生活。因此，中国传统政治并非建立在西方式的神权之上，而是建立在“天命”的概念之中。

当耶稣会士选择“天主”作为基督教上帝的称谓，他们不是在翻译，而是在进行意识形态的重塑。他们在中国的思想体系中植入了一个不同的权力概念，一种超越皇权、直接统治一切的“唯一真神”。这是一场隐藏的认知战争，是对中国思想体系的重组。

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翻译的殖民逻辑——语言即权力

基督教从来不是被动地进入新文明，它始终伴随着新的权力架构。
它不只是一个信仰体系，它是一种秩序的重组，它不与其他信仰共存，而是试图取代它们。

耶稣会士进入中国，带来的不仅仅是传教，而是一整套全新的权力结构——一个不以皇权为最高权威的思想体系。
基督教的“上帝”不是皇帝，他的律法超越一切世俗法则。接受“天主”这个概念，就是承认皇帝并非最终的权力来源，而是接受了一种源自欧洲的、完全不同的秩序——一种最终被西方列强用于瓦解中国政治结构的秩序。

这是一场语言的渗透，而不仅仅是翻译。

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天主 ≠ 天下

中国的“天下”观并不是基于固定疆界的民族国家概念，而是一种文明等级体系。西方殖民体系则完全不同，它是通过领土扩张、经济剥削、意识形态控制来进行统治。

耶稣会士的翻译策略，最终并未真正令中国臣服，但它埋下了影响深远的种子。19世纪，当西方重新进入中国，它不再是通过传教，而是伴随着炮舰和鸦片战争。基督教不再仅仅是信仰，而是帝国主义扩张的借口。

当英军炮轰广州、上海和天津时，他们打着**“基督文明”的旗号；当西方列强瓜分北京时，他们认为自己是“带来光明的胜利者”**；当清政府在内外交困中崩溃时，基督教已经不再需要翻译，它作为意识形态的工具，已经在政治上占据了一席之地。

翻译不是中立的。命名即权力，语言即控制。

当耶稣会士选择“天主”（Tiānzhǔ）作为“God”的翻译，他们不仅仅是在寻找词汇，而是在改变中国思维的基本结构。语言战场的争夺，并未随殖民战争的结束而终结。
如今，我们仍然生活在这些翻译遗留下来的世界观之中。

所有的翻译，都是权力的痕迹。

1. See Dr. Thorsten Pattberg’s The Shengren: China’s Gateway to the Global Civilization, where he critiques the Jesuit translation strategy in China. Pattberg argues that Western missionaries, particularly the Jesuits, did not merely translate concepts but actively reshaped them to fit a European-Christian framework. For example, they rendered the Chinese term Shengren (聖人)—which traditionally refers to a sage in Confucian thought—into "philosopher" or "saint," distorting its original meaning to fit Western intellectual categories. This act of linguistic imperialism demonstrates how translation is never neutral; it functions as a colonial mechanism of epistemic control, determining which ideas are assimilated, altered, or erased. The Jesuits' engagement with Confucianism was not just a matter of language but of power and world-making, deciding how China’s intellectual traditions would be understood—or misrecognized—within a European frame.

2. See a detailed account of Liam Matthew Brockey's Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724.

3. See George Dunne, Generation of Giants: The Jesuits in China in the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty, for a broader geopolitical analysis of the Jesuit role in imperial strategy.

4. Proselytization refers to the act of actively seeking to convert others to a particular religion, ideology, or belief system. The term comes from the Greek proselytos (προσήλυτος), meaning “one who has come over” or a new convert. In the context of colonial expansion, proselytization was a central strategy of Christian missionary work, particularly among Jesuits, Franciscans, and Protestants, who sought to replace indigenous spiritual traditions with Christianity.

Unlike cultural diffusion, which allows for mutual exchange, proselytization operates on an exclusivist logic, assuming that one truth must replace all others. This contrasts with systems like Confucianism and Daoism, which historically did not demand conversion but encouraged integration and adaptation of foreign elements into a larger civilizational order.

5. Epistemic comes from the Greek word epistēmē (ἐπιστήμη), meaning knowledge or understanding. It relates to how knowledge is produced, structured, and legitimized within a given system.

An epistemic war refers to a conflict not just over material resources or political power but the fundamental ways reality is understood and interpreted. It is a struggle over who has the authority to define truth, establish knowledge systems, and dictate the framework through which people understand the world.

In the context of Christianity’s introduction into China, this meant imposing a Western, monotheistic worldview that restructured Chinese cosmology, morality, and concepts of divine authority. The Jesuits’ translation of God as 天主 (Tiānzhǔ, Lord of Heaven) was not just a linguistic decision but an epistemic maneuver, challenging the existing Confucian-Daoist understanding of Heaven (天, Tiān) as an impersonal moral order rather than a singular deity.

By introducing Christian epistemology, the missionaries initiated a battle over knowledge itself, reshaping what was considered true, sacred, and authoritative—a war fought not with weapons, but with language, ideas, and the redefinition of reality.

The concept of epistemic war, as seen in the Jesuit mission to China, is also central to the settler-colonial project in Palestine. Just as the Jesuits reframed Chinese cosmology through translation, Zionism reframes Palestinian history by erasing alternative narratives. Where Tiānzhǔ replaced Tiānxià, Eretz Israel replaced Filastin. The process is not merely about land but about controlling meaning itself. This manifests in the erasure of indigenous history, the delegitimization of resistance, and the imposition of Zionist narratives as unquestionable truth. The claim that Palestine was a “land without a people” serves as an epistemic maneuver, denying Palestinian presence and sovereignty much like how Jesuit missionaries redefined Chinese cosmology through religious translation. Similarly, the framing of Palestinian resistance as terrorism mirrors the colonial tactic of invalidating indigenous struggles by imposing a binary of civilization vs. barbarism.

Settler-colonialism functions not just through military conquest but also by replacing Indigenous epistemologies with the colonizer’s framework. In Palestine, this is seen in the erasure of the Nakba from Israeli education, the destruction of Palestinian archives, and the legal imposition of Israeli authority over occupied lands. Just as Jesuits restructured Chinese thought by introducing Tiānzhǔ (Lord of Heaven) to replace Tiānxià (All Under Heaven), Zionism seeks to replace Filastin (Palestine) with Eretz Israel (Land of Israel).

This epistemic war is waged globally through media control, academic exclusion, and the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. By dictating the terms of discourse, Zionism ensures that even when Palestinians resist militarily or politically, they are already defeated in the global imagination.

See:

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 2–4

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020), 42–50

Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassell, 1999), 1–5

6. Eschatology comes from the Greek eschaton (ἔσχατος), meaning “last” or “final,” and logia (λογία), meaning “study” or “discourse.” It refers to the theological study of the end of history, humanity's ultimate fate, and the final judgment or redemption.

In Christian theology, eschatology concerns the Second Coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the Last Judgment, and the establishment of a new divine order (Heaven or Hell). It provides a linear, teleological view of history, in which the world moves toward an inevitable climax of salvation or destruction.

Secular ideologies, including liberal democracy, capitalism, and Marxism, inherit eschatological structures from Christianity. The belief in historical progress, human rights as a universal goal, and the idea that history “ends” in a perfected system (whether free-market capitalism or communism) all mirror Christian eschatology—transforming religious salvation into secular utopias.

Marxism, like liberal democracy and capitalism, inherits an eschatological structure from Christianity—an assumption that history moves toward an inevitable resolution. Just as Christian theology envisions an end of history through divine judgment, Marxism constructs a teleological progression from feudalism to capitalism to socialism, culminating in communism. However, this universalizing model is profoundly Eurocentric, treating non-Western societies as deviations or needing to "catch up."

Decolonial thinkers like Frantz Fanon, José Carlos Mariátegui, and Sylvia Wynter challenge this, arguing that race, coloniality, and Indigenous modes of resistance do not fit neatly into classical Marxist categories. The idea that capitalism is the final stage before socialism overlooks societies where pre-colonial communal structures already resembled socialist forms, as Mariátegui noted in Indigenous Peru. Similarly, Aníbal Quijano’s "coloniality of power" shows that capitalism is not just an economic system but a racialized global order rooted in colonialism—one that persists beyond the fall of capitalism itself.

A decolonial Marxism must rupture its own eschatology, rejecting the idea of history as linear progress and recognizing multiple temporalities, non-Western revolutionary paths, and the persistence of colonial power even in post-capitalist futures. Instead of treating communism as an inevitable telos, decolonial thought reframes revolution as an ongoing, non-linear struggle against colonial structures that shape class, race, and knowledge itself.