Last August, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated the centenary of its founding in 1921, and during most of those decades, the party sought – according to its critics – to restrict or obliterate traditional religious practices that it considered part of China’s “feudal” past.
But since the late 1970s, the Party has slowly allowed the revival of religion in China on a multi-faceted and far-reaching scale, and more recently, Xi Jinping, the current Chinese President and Communist Party leader, has advocated the Party’s continued tolerance of religion as filling a moral vacuum developed in the midst of the accelerating economic growth of China. China.
The Conversation website published an article by Mario Bosicki, Professor of Buddhist Studies and Chinese Religions at the University of Florida, on the phenomenon of the growing religious renaissance in China, and the reaction of the ruling Communist Party to this revival.
The writer says that this tolerance was accompanied by caveats, restrictions and continuous control by the ruling party, which is engaged in a delicate balancing process, on the one hand, confirming its dual role as a guardian and custodian of traditional Chinese culture, and also being a sponsor of religion, on the other hand.
As a scholar of Chinese religions, “these major changes are of particular interest to me,” says the author.
renaissance religion
Atheism remains the party’s official ideology, with members prohibited from converting to religion.
The party’s endeavors to obliterate all religious beliefs and practices reached their greatest extent during the turbulent decade of the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, during which all temples and churches were closed or destroyed, and all forms of religious activity banned even when there was vigorous promotion of the reverence or worship of the Chinese leader. Mao Zedong who assumed the role of religion officially backed by the authorities.
As part of the major reforms and loosening of social controls that began in the late 1970s, the party slowly accepted a set of behaviors and traditions that catered to religious needs or provided spiritual outlets. Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Islam and Protestantism (the five officially recognized religions) returned in phases, albeit at a varying level. .
There are increasing numbers of local temples, associations, and festivals, increasing numbers of Buddhist, Christian, and Taoist clergy, and many religious sites are open for private worship and community service, and are frequented by people.
Local governments often restore and strengthen religious institutions, largely to stimulate tourism and local economic development.
As a result, a metropolis like Shanghai has become home to religious institutions large and small, official and secret, ranging from local shrines to Buddhist and Taoist temples, churches and mosques, and there are also new participants in the religious arena, exemplified by the yoga centers that have spread in many Chinese cities.
People seem to have welcomed these policy shifts, and a 2020 Pew Research Center study found that 48.2% of China’s population had some form of religious affiliation.
Although the validity of the data is different – according to the writer, who believes that it is difficult to conduct reliable research in China – these results indicate that many Chinese participate in various activities that can be described as religious.
A mixture of religious practices
Traditionally, most Chinese people do not profess a single faith or construct a narrow religious identity. The Chinese engage in diverse beliefs and practices, a pattern of religious practices that goes back centuries to the ancient Chinese empire.
This includes aspects of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, as well as many practices called “folk religion”.
These practices range from visiting temples, attending pilgrimages and festivals, praying, offering incense, and worshiping ancestors. There are also folk practices of fortune-telling or “feng shui”, an ancient art of harmonizing humans with their surroundings, as well as divination.
These rich traditions often have regional variations, such as the veneration of Mazu (sea goddess) especially prevalent in southeastern China and Taiwan. local.
Confucian Convergence
The Communist Party stopped criticizing the teachings of Confucius, the famous philosopher and teacher in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. During most of the 20th century Confucian teachings were dismissed as discredited relics of the imperial past, but that has changed over recent decades, as the party has sought to reposition itself as a guardian of tradition. Chinese, and this has contributed to the revival of Confucianism greatly.
The ethical framework of time-honored Confucianism provides guidelines for navigating the often harsh realities of life in a highly competitive society, but the party has also found it useful to harness aspects of Confucianism that resonate with its core interests, such as obedience to authority and respect for the leader.
Accordingly, the government supported the re-establishment of Confucian temples and institutes, sponsored conferences on them, and even organized lectures for party officials on Confucian teachings.
Controlling and nurturing religion
With its adoption of positions and methods and with well-established precedents in the history of the ruling dynasty of the Chinese Empire, the communist government established itself as the final arbiter of orthodoxy and heresy or healthy and improper religious practices, and religious leaders should support the party and follow its guidance.
The authorities maintain strict administrative control over all religious expressions and organizations by whatever means they deem wise or necessary.
According to reports by Western scholars and journalists, this control ranges from subtle forms of domination, the common choice of religious groups, to outright prohibition or repression.
In 2015 the government removed 1,200 crosses from church buildings across Xinjiang Province, in 2016 a court in that province sentenced a Protestant pastor to 14 years in prison for resisting a government order to demolish his church cross, and in 2018 the government demolished the Golden Lamp Church in Shanxi Province.
As a result, most religious groups tread carefully and engage in self-censorship as the same author and others have observed during research trips in China.
China tends to treat religions bluntly from a cognitive standpoint that they are seen as a potential threat to the existing public order, especially if foreign relations or separatist tendencies are suspected. It aims to suppress the cultural and national identities of Tibetans, in contrast to the more relaxed attitudes toward Buddhism practiced by the Han majority.
As for the party’s recent harsh campaign to suppress Uyghur Muslims, the party interpreted it as aimed at countering “terrorism and separatism.”
The Uighurs are a Muslim minority in Xinjiang, a nominally autonomous region in northwest China.
According to leaked documents, up to one million Uyghurs have been detained since 2014 in “re-education camps”, which is part of a hard-line policy of imposing secularism and “Sinization”, which means assimilation of Uighurs into the majority Han culture, losing their religious and ethnic identities, According to the author.
At a time when the Chinese Communist Party celebrates the centenary of its founding, it seeks to highlight the image of China as a unified nation that calls for global political and economic hegemony, the writer continues.
But the party at home faces multiple problems and is engaged in a balancing act: asserting its dual role as guardian and custodian of traditional Chinese culture on the one hand and religion on the other, but in a way that enhances rather than undermines its power and authority.