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Islam and Christianity often get a hard time from China’s authorities, while local beliefs, Taoism, and Buddhism enjoy the support of the government. Journalist and researcher Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, followed local pilgrimages for almost a decade and recently joined the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin to study the relation between those beliefs and the state, he tells in an introduction at the start of his new study.
China regularly ranks among the worst-performing countries on freedom of religion. That makes sense, given the crackdown on Muslim Uyghurs and the the destruction of Christian churches. These are the regular features of reports on China by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as international human rights monitoring groups.
But there is a flip side to the Chinese government’s approach to organized religions: over the past few years, some have begun to enjoy government support. This applies to much of China’s biggest religion, Buddhism, and its only indigenous religion, Taoism. The government has also endorsed folk religious practices that it once deemed superstitious, subsidizing pilgrimages and temples.
Driving these seemingly contradictory impulses is the ruling communist party’s need for new sources of legitimacy. With economic growth slowing, the long-standing social contract of prosperity in exchange for political acquiescence is less tenable. That’s caused the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which still promotes atheism, to give overt support to traditional faiths…
In some ways, the Chinese state’s embrace of religion shouldn’t be too surprising. Beijing needs new sources of support, especially given China’s slowing economy. In addition, the disasters of communist rule in the twentieth century mean that for at least fifty years, few people have bought into the state’s main ideology, communism. Under Xi, China has pushed a return to communist values, urging the country’s nearly one hundred million CCP members to “return to the original mission.” Some of the party’s stated values include widely accepted virtues such as honesty, integrity, patriotism, and harmony. But belief in communism is low, forcing the state to turn to traditions.
In doing so, the CCP draws on China’s imperial past when ruling. Imperial officials often decided which faiths were orthodox and heterodox, regularly banning sects that violated norms. Indeed, traditional China was a religious state, with the emperor serving as the mediator between heaven and earth, and his main palaces—including the Forbidden City—representing the empire’s spiritual focal point.
China’s modern-day rulers have drawn on this past but also on the lessons of modern authoritarian states. Similar to how Russian President Putin evolved from KGB operative in Soviet times to defender of the Russian Orthodox Church today, Xi is positioning himself as a champion of Chinese traditional values. It’s unlikely Xi will ever be seen praying in a Buddhist temple, as Putin worships in churches. But in its own way, the Chinese Communist Party is taking a page out of the same authoritarian playbook, where endorsing traditions as a source of legitimacy is seen as a way to compensate for problems at home.
Over the past few years, the authorities in Beijing have given churches across the country orders to “Sinicize” their faith. According to detailed five-year plans formulated by both Catholic and Protestant organizations, much of this process involves the predictable palaver of state control: “to actively practice core values of socialism, love the motherland passionately, support the leadership of the Communist Party, obey the law and serve society.”1
But the authorities want more than just political control; they want a say over Christianity’s spirit, too. According to one document, “Chinese styles” are to be promoted in the religion’s “building, painting, music, and art,” and also in Christian liturgy and theology. Other documents speak of reflecting Chinese traditions, but what this means isn’t exactly clear—perhaps filial piety, ancestor worship, and explicitly rejecting foreign influence.
While these new regulations affect China’s other religions too, they hit each one in different ways. They probably matter least to Daoism, which is an indigenous Chinese religion, and little to Buddhism, which is a global religion but has been in China for so many centuries that it has spawned local schools and practices. But for China’s other two main religions, Islam and Christianity, the rules raise serious concerns. In the case of Islam, the state’s aim seems to be mainly political control of sensitive border regions, because of the faith’s predominance among several ethnic minorities, especially the Hui and the Uighurs, who live in China’s far west.
Christianity poses a subtler and possibly more profound challenge. This is not only because it has spread among the ethnic Chinese, or Han, majority, who make up 92 percent of China’s population, but also because it has grown fastest not in remote border regions but in the cultural heartland and among white-collar professionals who are supposed to be leading China’s modernization. This makes Christianity the first foreign religion to gain a central place in China since Buddhism’s arrival two millennia ago. Hence the authorities’ unease and their vague desire for Christianity to become something Chinese and nonthreatening.
These concerns have arisen before. Christianity has had a presence in China for four hundred years. Missionaries such as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci got a foothold in the country by acting like Confucian officials: dressing in gowns, learning the formal language of classical Chinese, and downplaying differences between Christianity and Chinese thought. The Jesuits called God tianzhu, or “lord of heaven,” a plausible term for the Heavenly Father, but not coincidentally also the name of an old Chinese deity. Over the following decades, Christianity spread in North China by fitting into familiar folk religious patterns: offering moral precepts that sounded like Confucian principles or worshipping a virgin saint who seemed much like local female deities. Missionaries in this era, before imperialism made them arrogant, softened unfamiliar or disturbing ideas, such as Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.2
The new effort to sinicize Christianity is something different—and probably unique in its encounter with Asia. In years past, Chinese and other Asian governments were weak, and even if Christianity found followers it was later tarnished by the fact that missionaries arrived along with Western gunboats. Now we have a strong government in Beijing that accepts the reality of Christianity but wants it to conform to Chinese foreign and domestic policy. This isn’t unusual in Christian history—look at the innumerable British churches with tableaux and plaques that glorify British imperialism—but Beijing’s firmness is something new in Asia.
With around 26 million inhabitants, the megalopolis is home to a multitude of religions from Buddhism and Islam, to Christianity and Baha'ism, to Hinduism and Daoism and many other alternative faiths, which are constantly growing and evolving.
In the book's introduction, Ian Johnson, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and specialist in Chinese religion, adds: "Freed from being defined by where they were born, China’s urbanites have created new identities, discovering for themselves what they truly believe with the aid of new technologies, social media and convergence of faiths and cultures.
"Some of this religious life takes place in skyscrapers and apartment blocks, but also in the pockets of the past that still dot Shanghai: a traditional New Year’s dinner, the persistence of burning paper houses, cars, and money for the dead, or a rambunctious music group announcing a wedding, birth, or funeral. Faith in China may be vulnerable, yet its unwavering importance is beyond doubt. Its very presence in people’s hearts makes it impossible to eradicate. More than economics or politics, it is these moments that are the new heart of China."
Journalist Ian Johnson, author ofThe Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao reviews a show at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on Tibetan Buddhism for the NY Review of Books, a must read even when you do not make it to New York. Ian Johnson adds on Facebook: "Probably no faith is more stereotyped than Tibetan Buddhism, which has morphed in the West to a sort of feel-good faith led by a nice guy with a Nobel Peace Prize."
Ian Johnson:
Probably no faith is more stereotyped than Tibetan Buddhism, which has morphed in the West to a sort of feel-good faith led by a nice guy with a Nobel Peace Prize.
While that isn't necessarily wrong, its infantilizes (or Orientalizes; pick your stereotyping verb) a complex religion that--like others in the world--has always been closely linked to power and even violence.
That's why I was really excited to see a show at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on exactly this topic--how religion and politics are tightly intertwined in Tibetan Buddhism. I review the show for the New York Review of Books Daily (click on the link below for the review) and think you'll find the piece interesting even if you don't have a chance to see the show. And if the article isn't enough, buy the outstanding catalogue that accompanies the show.
Over the past two decades, religion in China has boomed, and no faith has benefited more than Buddhism. The number of temples has tripled, monks and abbots have become well-known public figures, and China has used the faith to build ties around the world, sending out nuns and monks on goodwill missions.
The person most closely associated with this revival is the Venerable Xuecheng, a charismatic monk who was fast-tracked for success. He became abbot of his first temple at 23 and head of the Communist Party-run Buddhist Association of China at 49.
His use of social media and emphasis on compassion attracted the sort of bright, white-collar professionals who once spurned traditional Chinese religions. Many rank him as the most important Chinese Buddhist reformer in a century.
But over the summer, all of these worldly successes vanished.
Accused of lewdness toward nuns and financial misconduct, Xuecheng, 52, has in recent weeks been stripped of his titles and banished to a small temple in his home province of Fujian. Government investigators now occupy the cleric’s main temple in Beijing, have purged his cadre of loyal monks and are scouring his books for financial wrongdoing.
That makes Xuecheng the most important national leader to be felled in China’s small but tenacious #MeToo movement, a rare case of a politically connected figure here falling to charges of sexual misconduct.
It has also prompted widespread discussion among Buddhists about whether their faith’s rapid growth has come at too steep a cost.
Many worry that Xuecheng’s model of a supercharged Buddhism that embraces social trends lacks the very spirituality that drew people to the faith in the first place. His downfall also presents a potential setback in the Chinese government’s efforts to push Buddhism as a kind of national religion that can win friends abroad and offer moral values at home.
“It’s impossible not to feel pained and sorrowful” at recent developments, two monks wrote in a 95-page report detailing accusations of sexual and financial misdeeds against Xuecheng. They asked the government to act quickly, or “we dare not imagine where Xuecheng will lead this group of Buddhists!”
Most Western media reports focus on the oppression of religion in China, and miss one of the most important developments in the country when it comes to religion, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Maoin the China Zentrum. "Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life."
Ian Johnson:
[F]ocusing on oppression can blind us to a greater truth: that China is in the midst of an unprecedented religious revival, involving hundreds of millions of people – best estimates put the figure at 300 million: 10 million Catholics, 20 million Muslims, 60 million Protestants, and 200 million followers of Buddhism or traditional religions in China.
This doesn’t include the tens or even hundreds of millions of people who practice physical cultivation like Qigong or other forms of meditative-like practices.
The precise figures are often debated, but even a casual visitor to China cannot miss the signs: new churches dotting the countryside, temples being rebuilt or massively expanded, and new government policies that encourage traditional values. Progress is not linear – churches are demolished, temples run for tourism, and debates about morality manipulated for political gain – but the overall direction is clear. Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life.
What drives this growth? I would argue that hundreds of millions of Chinese are consumed with doubt about their society and turning to religion and faith for answers that they do not find in the radically secular world constructed around them. They wonder what more there is to life than materialism and what makes a good life. As one Protestant pastor (female) told me, “We thought we were unhappy because we were poor. But now a lot of us aren’t poor anymore, and yet we’re still unhappy. We realize there’s something missing and that’s a spiritual life...
If we take all this together, the most important conclusion is that religion, far from being an issue of fringe or esoteric interest, is back in the center of Chinese politics. This is the result of hundreds of millions of worshippers pushing for a place in society. And now, because they have not died out but instead proven to be an irreplaceable part of modern-day, the Communist Party has decided to try to coopt some of this new social force, creating opportunities but also growing tensions.
For millennia, religion was the ballast that kept the Chinese state stable. For over a century, the state cast it overboard and Chinese society heaved to and fro, swinging from dictator-worship to unbridled capitalism. Now, religion is back but the question is if it will be a stabilizing force in society, or unmoored by counterproductive government policies, a loose cannon that crashes through the decks.
The less-than straightforward relation between China's communist rulers and religion is one of the complicated concepts author Ian Johnson ofThe Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Maotries to explain. From repression, to tolerance and now moving to a idea to use religion to restore some order, that relationship has changed profoundly, he tells The Politic, although it varies depending on what religion you look at.
The Politic:
President Xi Jinping´s administration has embraced different traditions, including religious ones, that serve his party. Can you talk a little bit about this, what has he done, and why is it important now that he has been re-appointed for another five-year term?
After he took power in 2012, he very quickly made a series of highly symbolic visits. He visited the hometown of Confucius in Qufu, and he prayed to Confucius. He made another visit to UNESCO in Paris and praised Buddhist tradition, and he also had public meetings with Buddhist leaders. So then, they began to push this propaganda campaign of the China dream—this is Xi Jinping’s signature slogan—and this dream is a national rejuvenation, but it’s also social justice, and they use traditional images and traditional ideas and concepts to promote that.
That was the beginning of the efforts. This is one of the reasons he is very popular, and it’s probably because they feel that society went out of control. His campaign against corruption is very popular, [the thinking is], “Yes, we need to stop corruption, but we also we need some kind of frame to get society in order.”
If you think about it broadly, you got the Mao Era, and the Reform Era, and then the government backed away from the control of society, and they let people do what they wanted to do as long as they didn’t challenge the government. By the 2000s, people thought that things had gotten out of control. The internet was coming up, [new] NGOs were forming, and they didn’t want the Party to be challenged. So, starting before Xi Jinping, but especially after he took power, there’s been this effort to reassert control over society. I think they see religion as a useful tool in the overall effort to restore some sort of order in society.
From what I understand, in the 19th century, religion and politics were very intertwined. And now, apparently, it is becoming intertwined again, so how are people receiving these changes? And what are the implications of this?
Well, I don’t think they can go all the way back. In the old system, the emperor was a quasi-deity, the son of heaven.
One implication is that there are other religions in China besides the ones the government is happy to support. The government is comfortable with Buddhism, Daoism, these so-called traditional religions, but it is less comfortable with Christianity and Islam, which also have significant populations. I think this could be a source of tension in the future. Already there are quite Islamophobic bloggers who write against Islam and question whether Islam is part of China. Actually, Islam has been in China for over a thousand years, so it’s not like it arrived last year. And about half of the Christians of China are not part of the official church, they are part of unregistered churches. I think they want to make them register with the government, those roughly thirty million Christians, and that’s going to be difficult, it can cause a lot of tensions.
Why do they oppose Christianity and Islam?
I think they don’t oppose it per se. I think what they don’t like is the foreign influence, foreign ties. It is the same with NGOs. NGOs in China can form, but they can’t take foreign money. So, with Christianity and Islam, you have inherent foreign ties. In Catholicism, bishops must be appointed by the Vatican, and in Protestantism, you also have ties with global, Evangelical movements. They send, not missionaries, but trainers, especially Chinese-Americans who come with a tourist visa and then teach and train pastors. Then, Islam also has a really strong global component, for example with the pilgrimage to Mecca. Some countries also want to donate money to build mosques, and the government is always trying to limit that.
Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novelon prostitution in China discusses Buddhism, freedom and fun as part of the background for her book with Radii China. “Without the inhibition of writing in my mother tongue, I can take an adventure in my adopted language” .
RadiiChina:
Like the lead character Lotus, my grandma was a Buddhist prostitute. I found it fascinating that [a] high percentage [of] working girls have faiths of some sort. I believe religion plays a role of ritualized cleansing, something to make themselves feel cleaner and better. It is driven by survival. Religion plays a different role in Bing’s life. He starts to take an interest in religion as he is going through his first existential crisis. In other words, he is looking for the meaning of life. [They have] different levels of needs.
How does the concept of freedom influence your writing, especially in contemporary China?
Art/literature and freedom are synonymous. I think one of the many reasons that the Chinese literary scene is not as vibrant as it should be is due to censorship, as well as writers’ self-censorship. I suffered from this censorship. Some twenty years ago, upon the invitation of a Chinese publisher, I wrote a book about the Western image of Chairman Mao while I was living in the UK. But the book failed to pass censorship. So I made the decision to write in English, so that I can freely express myself. By writing in English, I also gained unexpected literary freedom: without the inhibition of writing in my mother tongue, I can take an adventure in my adopted language. Besides, writing is the space where a writer can feel most free.
In your book, you show that a lot of these women actually chose to go into the profession where I think a lot of us think sex workers are “raped, dumped by husbands, or tricked by human traffickers.” The other available professions to these migrant workers, like working in a factory or a restaurant, are grueling and low-paid. Why did you decide to show that a lot of these women actually chose to get into sex work as opposed to the traditional narrative that it’s more forced on vulnerable women?
My extensive research shows that the vast majority of sex workers enter the trade on their free will, but are often obliged by some unfortunate circumstances: having been abandoned by their husbands, having lost their jobs; having some family members seriously ill; or falling for the wrong men. Yes, there’s the temptation of money. Generally, to turn tricks is one of the few or only option they have. I hope the stories I described reflected the reality. By the way, for upper-class prostitutes, it is often a question of lifestyle choice.
Fo Guang Shan is perhaps the most successful of these groups. Since coming to China more than a decade ago, it has set up cultural centers and libraries in major Chinese cities and printed and distributed millions of volumes of its books through state-controlled publishers. While the government has tightened controls on most other foreign religious organizations, Fo Guang Shan has flourished, spreading a powerful message that individual acts of charity can reshape China.
It has done so, however, by making compromises. The Chinese government is wary of spiritual activity it does not control — the Falun Gong an example — and prohibits mixing religion and politics. That has led Fo Guang Shan to play down its message of social change and even its religious content, focusing instead on promoting knowledge of traditional culture and values.
The approach has won it high-level support; President Xi Jinping is one of its backers. But its relationship with the party raises a key question: Can it still change China?
Fo Guang Shan is led by one of modern China’s most famous religious figures, the Venerable Master Hsing Yun. I met him late last year at the temple in Yixing, in a bright room filled with his calligraphy and photos of senior Chinese leaders who have received him in Beijing. He wore tannish golden robes, and his shaved head was set off by thick eyebrows and sharp, impish lips.
At age 89, he is nearly blind, and a nun often had to repeat my questions so he could hear them. But his mind was quick, and he nimbly parried questions that the Chinese authorities might consider objectionable. When I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by spreading Buddhism — proselytizing is illegal in China — his eyebrows arched in mock amusement.
“I don’t want to promote Buddhism!” he said. “I only promote Chinese culture to cleanse humanity.”
As for the Communist Party, he was unequivocal: “We Buddhists uphold whoever is in charge. Buddhists don’t get involved in politics.”
“As one guy who told me, 'We used to think we were unhappy because we were poor. Now, we’re no longer poor, but we’re still unhappy,'” says Ian Johnson, a long time correspondent in China, most recently writing for The New York Times and the New York Review of Books, and author of the new book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao.
If it’s tempting to pull out the old saying "money can’t buy happiness," many Chinese are more interested these days in figuring out what can. And so, a search for meaning has intensified in recent decades, as the descendents of those who once revered Mao Zedong and the Communist Party, and Chinese emperors before that, now embrace new centers of meaning, and new communities that share their values...
“A lot of it is driven by this feeling that there are no shared values in Chinese society anymore,” says Johnson. “People constantly talk in social media –—and this is uncensored (by the Chinese government), it’s OK to talk about it — this lack of minimum moral standards in society, that anything goes, as long as you don’t get caught.”
Another driver, Johnson says, is a desire for community in a society that has rapidly urbanized, with rural Chinese moving to new cities, and old urban-dwellers losing their neighborhoods to demolition and construction of new developments.
The Communist Party officially recognizes five religions — Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam, and tries to control each under the umbrella of the state, forbidding most ties with foreign centers of power, such as the Vatican. The party has long been wary of competing parallel power structures, including "house churches," gatherings of Protestant Chinese who seek to practice their faith outside of the strictures of Communist Party rules. Many such adherents still remember and respect Watchman Nee...
Turning to religion or spiritual practice is one way Chinese are now looking for meaning, but, as in the past in China, what starts with finding a new moral center, can lead to a yearning to shape new relationships and rules in society. China is still finding its moral compass and its direction, some 40 years after Mao’s death, and what started as a search for meaning may yet lead to more sweeping societal change. It’s a prospect that makes the Communist Party nervous, and keeps it vigilant.
“I think all religions have an over-arching idea of justice and righteousness, and heaven, ‘tian,’ that ‘s above all else,” Johnson says. “It helps create among people that it’s not the government that gives us rights and laws. It comes from something higher. And I think that’s the change that could come to China in the future.”
In 1982, two men arrived in this dusty provincial town. One was Shi Youming, a Buddhist monk who was taking up a post in the ruins of one of Zhengding’s legendary temples. The other was Xi Jinping, the 29-year-old son of a top Communist Party official putting in a mandatory stint in the provinces as a bureaucrat in the government he would eventually lead.
The two forged an unusual alliance that resonates today. With Mr. Xi’s backing, Youming, who like most Buddhist monks preferred to go by one name, rebuilt the city’s Linji Temple, the birthplace of one of the best-known schools of Buddhism. Even after Mr. Xi was transferred, he regularly visited Youming in Zhengding and sent officials there to study the partnership between the party and religion.
Mr. Xi’s early encounters with religious life give insight into a man who has run China with a firmer hand than any other leader since Mao Zedong. Although he is best known abroad for his efforts to expand China’s territorial reach in the South China Sea or his high-profile campaign against corruption, at home the president is engineering a remarkable about-face for the Communist Party: an effort to rejuvenate China’s spiritual life through an embrace of some religions.
As an organization that has tried to squelch religion, the Communist Party under Mr. Xi is now backing it in ways that echo the approach of strongmen like Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who use faith to legitimize their rule. Faced with growing social tensions and slowing economic growth, the government is turning to religion to bolster its hold on power.
Mr. Xi, by making China a guardian of a major faith like Buddhism, also sees religion as a way to promote China’s position in a world still dominated by the United States, which he tentatively plans to visit for a meeting with President Trump early next month.
Indeed, one of Mr. Xi’s signature lines is, “If the people have faith, the nation has hope, and the country has strength.”...
I’ve found that Mr. Xi’s embrace of faith is incredibly popular among most Chinese. While Christians may cringe at his views, many more others see his support for traditional faiths as positive — a re-creation of the imperial Chinese state’s support for certain faiths and belief systems. Far from being an anomaly in Mr. Xi’s rise, his stint in Zhengding is most likely something else: a template for the mixing of faith and politics — a reimagining of the political-religious state that once ruled China.
Like most skeptics, she asks where God was when the most destructive earthquake in the 20th century took place in Tangshan, China, on July 28, 1976. More than two lakh people died, including Lijia’s cousin. “If there is a God how could He allow such things to happen? Why is He so cruel? Why does He allow good people to die like this?”
Lijia says that when you look at the concept of God rationally, there is no evidence that He exists. One reason for Lijia’s doubts is because Communism was forced down the throat of the people for many decades. “As a result I am cautious about blindly believing in any organised religion,” she says. But thanks to her curiosity, she has read many religious books including the Bible. “I find it difficult to believe in the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary,” she says. “It lacks logic.”
