In 1974, two years after President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China, I was able to secure a visa and travel through six provinces and five major
cities in China. China was still caught in the partisan struggles of the Cultural Revolution. Not once did I see a church, temple, monastery, or mosque
that was open to the public. All had been shut down and many vandalized by bands of youthful Red Guards answering the call of Chairman Mao to
"Attack the four olds!": old ideas, old habits, old culture, and old customs. It was easy to believe that religion in China had been dealt a mortal blow.
I asked a young woman student on the campus of a formerly Christian university if young people still believed in the old religions. She replied, "There
is no need to. Since the new society is based on scientific materialism, the old superstitions were proved to be false." Asked whether young people
might not be curious and seek out the old religious believers to "learn from the past" (a slogan current at the time), she replied, "Why would anyone
want to discuss the old religions? What do they have to do with our new society? It simply would not interest young people. It's irrelevant."
When I returned to China six years later, religious services were once again being held, and in subsequent visits, traveling in 10 provinces and 3 autonomous municipalities, I have attended packed services in Protestant and Catholic churches, witnessed overflow crowds in Buddhist temples on religious holidays, and interviewed Buddhist, Muslim, and Daoist clerics in reopened mosques and temples. Young people are prominent in religious services of every faith.
Since the Communist Party's December 1978 decision to reinstate limited freedom of religious belief and worship, a religious revival has taken place in a China that is still officially Marxist. What happened in 1966, in a country permeated with religious customs and beliefs, to bring about a total shutdown of religious practices? And why does a Marxist regime today not only tolerate but encourage the revival of religious practice, albeit closely restricted?
In the first 15 years after the Communists came to power, the public practice of religion survived, although increasing government restrictions during those years brought about profound changes. Missionaries were expelled and foreign assistance was cut off. Prominent religious leaders were subjected to public trials and sent to labor camps or prison; religious believers were intimidated; and many places of worship were closed or secularized. The practice of religion was systematically being choked off.
Then, with the eruption of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the public practice of religion in China was totally suppressed. Churches, temples, mosques, shrines, seminaries, and monasteries were closed, converted to secular use, or vandalized. In the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution many of them were destroyed, thousands in Tibet alone. China's ultraleftist leaders during that period, bent on eliminating religion, prohibited all public religious activities and incarcerated thousands of clergy and laypeople from the five officially recognized religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestant and Catholic Christianity. Thousands of celibate monks, nuns, and priests, especially among the Tibetans, were forcibly laicized, and many were reportedly forced to marry. Graveyards were dug up and converted to farmland. Shrines and temples linked to local folk religions, once ubiquitous throughout the countryside, disappeared. Pilgrimages to holy places were banned.
Public religious services did not resume until 1979, following the third plenum of the eleventh party congress. Christian churches and Muslim mosques began to hold services that year, and Daoist and Buddhist temples and monasteries reopened, while renovations began for many others that had been seriously damaged by Red Guards and other vandals. In some cases government financial aid was provided.
China has both a state religion and a bureaucracy for government supervision of religion: Marxism is the surrogate religion, and the Religious Affairs Bureau, which is accountable to the Communist Party's United Front Work Department, oversees religious activities. The rab, with offices at the national, provincial, and local levels, serves as the intermediary between the organized religions and various government agencies.
Religious leaders say that the rab, while providing assistance for tasks such as evicting illegal occupants of religious buildings, often interferes in the internal affairs, including the finances, of local religious congregations, although this seems to have eased in recent years. Some rab cadres are said to have an antireligion bias, viewing all religious believers with suspicion, and obstructing rather than implementing the policy of religious freedom set forth in the national constitution. Protests over the abuse of power by party cadres against local religious groups have appeared time and again in the Chinese religious press.
While "freedom of religious belief" has been written into every revision of the Chinese constitution since 1954, both the wording and the implementation of religious rights have varied through the years. The new constitution, adopted in 1982, includes Article 36 on religious freedom, highlighting "freedom of religious belief" without defining the limits of freedom. Article 36 reads: "Citizens of the [People's Republic of China] enjoy freedom of religious belief. No organ of state, mass organization, or person is allowed to force any citizen to believe or not to believe in religion. It is not permitted to discriminate against any citizen who believes or does not believe in religion.
"The state protects legitimate religious activities. No person is permitted to use religion to conduct counterrevolutionary activities or activities which disrupt social order, harm people's health, or obstruct the educational system of the country."
While seminaries and clergy-training schools are now permitted, religious bodies are not allowed to operate schools for secular education or other institutions; the former network of missionary schools, colleges, hospitals, and social service institutions has been absorbed into the municipal or state systems. The practice of religion is confined to designated places of worship.
Foreign missionaries are also not allowed to serve Chinese churches as they did before 1949. The prohibition against missionaries and the "control of foreign countries" is designed to prevent what the Communist revolutionaries call "cultural imperialism." The Holy See has no direct link with the Catholic Church in China, which operates independently, electing its own bishops and administering the church through the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the Conference of Bishops, and the Chinese Catholic Administrative Council. Each of the other major religions has a similar administrative structure: the Protestant Three-Self Movement and the China Christian Council; the Chinese Buddhist Association; the Chinese Daoist Association; and the Chinese Islamic Association.
The most definitive statement on religion and religious policy ever issued by the Chinese Communist Party or government, Document 19, was circulated internally through party channels throughout China in 1982 by the Central Committee. Called "The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question During Our Country's Socialist Period," Document 19 recognized the importance of religious believers for the success of the party's United Front policy. The document analyzed the "Party's handling of the religious question since Liberation" and set forth guidelines for the "Party's work with religious professionals," the "restoration and administration of places of worship," the "education of a new generation of clergy," the "Party's relations with religious ethnic minorities," and the "international relations of China's religions."
There is also a section on "criminal and counterrevolutionary activities under the cover of religion" that is directed against "antirevolutionary or other criminal elements who hide behind the facade of religion." This is aimed at practitioners of superstition, including members of secret societies, sorcerers, witches, phrenologists, fortune-tellers, and geomancers who "swindle money from people who earn their living through their own labor."
Superstitious practices are not protected by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religious belief, but the distinction between religion and superstition is not precisely defined in the constitution or Document 19. This poses a problem for local cadres who are faced with the revival of local popular religious practices, especially in rural areas. Are these practices protected by Article 36 of the constitution, local cadres ask, or should they be suppressed as superstitions?
The definition of superstition has changed over time. During the Cultural Revolution it was called "feudal superstition" and was used indiscriminately to cover all religious or cult activities. Superstition now may define any religious or cult activity that falls outside the five officially recognized religions. These five are considered "world religions," with organized branches in other countries; cults and folk religions indigenous to China are defined as superstitions and denied the constitutional guarantee of "freedom of religious belief."
While Communist Party members are by definition atheists, the policy of tolerance toward religion but not superstition raises this question: if the main reason for the policy of freedom of religious belief is to induce religious believers to cooperate in building a strong, modern, socialist nation, then why are practitioners of superstitions not tolerated?
The reasons can be found in a spate of essays, news stories, and editorials published over the past 15 years. Normal religious practice, by improving social and personal morality, enhances rather than impedes socialist nation building, while rampant superstition has the reverse effect. Superstitious practitioners prey on gullible and ignorant people, swindling them by charging high fees for sham rituals. The time and money wasted not only drains the meager savings of peasant families, it "damages agricultural production, pollutes the social atmosphere, and disturbs social order," as one essay noted. Superstition can even endanger lives when patients fruitlessly spend money on fake cures rather than going to a doctor.
"Carry Out the Policy of Freedom of Belief and Oppose Feudal Superstitious Activities," an article by the veteran Marxist theoretician Ya Hanzhang, was published nationwide in the state-run newspaper Guangming ribao in April 1981. Its obvious purpose was to clarify the distinction between religion and superstition, a distinction that had been blurred during the Cultural Revolution.
Ya began by describing superstition: "When we talk about feudal superstition, we usually mean telling fortunes by using the eight trigrams; feeling a person's bones or studying his physiognomy to forecast his future; practicing geomancy; reading horoscopes; exorcising spirits to cure illnesses; planchette writing; offering sacrifices to gods; beseeching gods to bestow children; offering prayers to gods to ward off calamities and to ask for rain; and so on. These are the dregs handed down from the old society in our country. After Liberation, much work was done to eliminate them. . .but they are still spreading through the country. . .
"Many cadres still cannot distinguish the difference between religion and feudal superstition. They think that anything involving the worship of spirits and gods is religion. Thus they think, wrongly, that the policy of freedom of belief should apply to feudal superstition and therefore allow the practice of feudal superstitious activities. Some cadres turn a blind eye to these activities and do not try to stop them."
Ya went on to define religion. "Religion differs from feudal superstition in many aspects, but the most fundamental one is: religion is a way of viewing the world, while feudal superstition is a means by which some people practice fraud.
"When we say that religion is a way of viewing the world, we mean that it has a concept about the creation of the world (including the creation of mankind itself). It says that everything in the world has been created, arranged, decided, and controlled by God (or Allah or the Creator). If people desire happiness, the only way to achieve this is to believe in God and to restrain their words and deeds strictly according to religious doctrines and canons in order to gain eternal happiness in the life to come. This world outlook is, of course, wrong, but pious religious believers consider it correct.
"Although feudal superstition also talks about believing in spirits, gods, and the mandate of heaven, its aim is to make people believe in order to cheat them out of their money and possessions. . . Feudal superstition is not a world outlook but an extremely foolish and ignorant activity and an indecent means by which professional practitioners cheat others out of their money so that they can live parasitic lives. These activities are in essence a disguised form of man exploiting man, and are as incompatible with the socialist system as water is with fire."
For years, Ya Hanzhang was the leading Marxist theoretician and party spokesman on religious matters. His voice carried weight in 1981. In subsequent years a new generation of scholars who study and write about religion has emerged. The Institute for Study of World Religions, attached to the National Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, is the premier research center, with an entire faculty of well-trained scholars, many with advanced degrees earned in Europe and North America. Where earlier articles on religion invariably were written from a Marxist viewpoint, today's scholars, seeking objectivity, have convened academic conferences and published the results of their field studies. Free of Marxist rhetoric, they are making an effort to reexamine the role of religion in society, and to guide the party and government toward a new policy on religion compatible with the current period of reform and opening.
Peng Yao, for example, writing on "New Trends of Religions in China" in the March 1995 issue of the Beijing-based journal Studies in World Religions, explains the resurgence of religious practice in the 1980s as a natural response to the return of freedom of religious belief after a period of suppression and, in his view, is no cause for alarm. "Under the new social circumstances since the reform and [opening to the world]," he writes, "and after a thorough review of the current situation of religions in China, we believe that the development of religions in recent years in China is, on the whole, normal and stable."
Peng goes on to describe and explain six new trends in religion: the correlation between the development of religion and economic growth; the popularity of Western religion, especially Protestant Christianity; the pluralization of Chinese religions; the secularization of religions in China, especially among young people caught up in the fever to get rich in the new market economy; the entanglement of religion and ethnic minorities affairs; and the growing tolerance of religion by the general public.
Of particular interest is the author's explication of the pluralization of religions, which he breaks into three subtopics: the emergence of new sects; the emergence of splinter groups dissociating themselves from the leadership of regular religious organizations; and the emergence of "underground" religious groups.
New sects of Protestantism, Peng writes, have infiltrated from overseas, and new, indigenous Christian sects have arisen locally as well. The Catholics are divided between the "underground" Catholics loyal to the Holy See, and the "official" Catholic Church. Some Buddhist and Daoist temples, monks, and priests have broken away from the national Buddhist and Daoist associations, while sectarian disputes have divided the Chinese Muslims as well.
Peng Yao describes the resurgence of the "great number of folk religions" in recent years, particularly in the southern provinces, and a new trend, the appearance of religions from overseas "trying hard for a foothold in China": these include the Baha'i faith, the Unification Church, the New Testament Church, and Jehovah's Witnesses, among others.
Where the framers of China's religious policy hoped to keep the state oversight of religion manageable by limiting religious groups to the five organized religions, Peng is not concerned by the increasingly complex religious situation. Since religion in China "no longer has any relationship with imperialism, feudal forces, or exploiting classes," it offers no threat to the nation. In the end, religion must adapt to changing social conditions, and the party and government must adapt to the new religious realities as well.
The resurgence of religious practice in China since 1979 can be seen by anyone who visits a place of worship, but statistical estimates of the resurgence's size vary widely. The number of Protestants is a case in point; estimates by researchers in Hong Kong range from 12 million to 65 million, in either case an astonishing increase over the 936,000 baptized members reported by church leaders in 1949. None of the five recognized religions keeps accurate membership records or publishes a statistical yearbook.
A recent government report lists 9,500 Buddhist temples and monasteries with 170,000 monks and nuns; 6,000 Daoist priests and nuns with 600 temples and monasteries; 17 million Muslims with 26,000 mosques; 4 million Catholics and 2,700 priests with 4,000 churches; and 6.5 million Protestants with 8,000 churches, 20,000 chapels and 18,000 clergy.
While doing field research in 1988, I was shown a restricted document prepared by the provincial Religious Affairs Bureau of Fujian province that gave these statistics for religious believers in the province:
Buddhists 70,000
Protestant Christians baptized 201,000
Preparatory members 168,000
Catholic Christians 188,706
Muslims 1,350
Daoists [no information]
Neither document makes mention of their sources or methodology. No religious census had been taken; terminology was not defined. For example, what is a Buddhist? In the case of Fujian, which is said to have the most lively Buddhist revival of any province in China, there must be many more Buddhists than 70,000 in a population of 25 million; perhaps this refers only to jushi, lay devotees who live at home, since monks and nuns are listed separately in provincial tables of statistics, but we cannot be sure.
Identifying Muslims in China is a different case. Islam is both a culture and a religious faith, passed on from generation to generation within the culture group. A map of religions in China would show concentrations of Muslims in the northwest provinces, with scattered communities in virtually every other province, including Tibet. Islam is the dominant religion and culture of 10 ethnic minorities in China, including the Hui, who are Han Chinese. In 1995 the Islamic Association of China reported that China has 30,000 mosques, 30,000 imams, and 30,000 mullahs. It gives no figures for Muslim believers, but estimates range from 17 million to 25 million.
Tibet is also a special case for this discussion, because religion and politics cannot be separated there. The Dalai Lama, now in exile, is revered by Tibetans as their religious and political leader. Because the Chinese authorities want to maintain political control over Tibet, they refuse to recognize the Dalai Lama, and in recent months have chosen a young boy as the successor to the late Panchen Lama, ignoring the boy selected by Tibet's religious leaders with the Dalai Lama's blessing. (In the eyes of the Tibetan people, the Panchen Lama is second only to the Dalai Lama.)
Tibetan Buddhists are intensely religious. Pilgrims throng the streets of Lhasa. The thousands of Tibetan shrines and temples destroyed by Chinese Red Guards and military units during the Cultural Revolution are being rebuilt by the people. How many Tibetans are believers? In an interview in 1988, the director of the Religious Studies Center in Lhasa told me that "all the people in Tibet are believers. . . All believe, except Communist Party members, and some of them are believers. . . "
Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, is the fastest growing religion in China, and because the Christian churches are better organized at local and national levels than the other three recognized religions, more information is available. Protestant Christianity is called simply Jidujiao, the religion of Christ (denominational distinctions from the missionary era were dropped in the early 1950s). Church leaders report that three new churches are opened every two days somewhere in China. Over 2 million Chinese Bibles were printed and sold last year. Both Catholic and Protestant churches are "three-self," which means self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. Seminaries have sprung up in almost every province, with national seminaries in Nanjing (Protestant) and Beijing (Catholic).
The Catholic Church faces problems common to all religions in China, the most pressing a shortage of trained clergy. A problem unique to the Catholics, however, is their separation from the Holy See, a situation that divides the church into "patriotic" and "underground" Catholics, with the latter refusing to attend the "patriotic" churches. Although this division makes accurate figures impossible, there are an estimated 5 million to 12 million Catholics today, up from 3.3 million in 1949.
While there has been a remarkable revival of religious practice since 1979, problems remain, primarily because local cadres have failed to implement fully the constitutional guarantees protecting religious practice. China's religious leaders have called for legislation to spell out the rights of believers, but the political authorities continue to oversee religious affairs using arbitrary regulations as guidelines.
In a statement to the press in Beijing in September 1994, Dr. George Carey, the archbishop of Canterbury, spoke of the abuses of power at the local level. He noted that "such violations must be seen against the general background of great encouragement for the Christian Church. In the main, religious toleration is a reality. The church is growing and that growth is generally unimpeded. The picture, however, is uneven. Last year the China Christian Council received over 500 complaints, which ranged from property issues to reports of violence against church members. . . The shadows exist, but the general picture is most encouraging . . . "
The revival of religious practice in China after years of repression has astonished not only the Marxist policymakers but all those who know of the steps taken to eliminate religious belief and practice: the intimidation of religious believers; the destruction or secularization of temples, shrines, mosques, and churches; the incarceration and laicizing of the clergy; the hiatus in clergy training for an entire generation; the mandatory teaching of atheism in the schools; and the total isolation of Chinese believers from religious colleagues outside China. It remains to be seen whether China's policymakers will agree with the theoretician Peng Yao's view that "the development of religions in recent years in China is, on the whole, normal and stable," or will view the resurgence of religious practice in China with alarm, and impose more stringent controls.