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Laliberté, André (2011),
Religion and the State in China: The Limits of Institutionalization, in: Journal of
Current Chinese Affairs, 40, 2, 3-15.
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Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 2/2011: 3-15
Religion and the State in China:
The Limits of Institutionalization
André Laliberté
For people reading the mainstream media, the recent travails of the
Shouwang Church in Beijing – a Protestant congregation whose followers have been forbidden to worship in public since being evicted from
the premises they rented – seem emblematic of a confrontational relationship between religion and state in China today (Jacobs 2011a). This
impression appears to be confirmed when we also look at the persecution that adherents to Falungong continue to suffer (Richardson and
Edelman 2011) and the difficult relations that Muslims in Xinjiang and
Buddhists in Tibet experience. However, this is only one side of the
story. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), at least since the administration of Jiang Zemin, has looked with approval at the growth of religion. Party documents have extolled the compatibility between religion
and social stability, and the CCP has encouraged the construction or
rebuilding of temples all over the country (Ren 2007: 195ff). Intellectuals
and local governments are now looking back at China’s traditional religions, not long ago dismissed as “superstitions”, as part of a national
heritage worthy of preservation. The dramatic expansion of Confucius
Institutes all over the world confirms that the party has completely
changed its appreciation of traditional culture and religion, now seen as
assets (Paradise 2009).
The CCP’s Changing Views on Religion
This diversity of views and sometimes contradictory attitude with regards
to religion is not a paradox; it reflects, rather, a major shift in the way the
CCP sees itself, as it celebrates its 90 years of existence. The party is not
only the vanguard organization that has successfully steered Chinese
society from a centrally planned economy to a market-based one, but it is
also the defender of national unity and national identity. In that context,
adherents of Christianity, a faith still seen by many as a foreign religion,
not only collectively represent a small proportion of the population, but
are often seen as a community that seems apart from the rest of the
population in ways that Chinese who observe Buddhist or Taoist rituals
4
André Laliberté
do not. Therefore, and before jumping to conclusions about the persecution against religion in China, it is important to note that a large proportion of the population worship, pray, perform rituals and hold certain
beliefs with the full support of the CCP. And most of that activity affects
people who are not Christians, but subscribe to world views that are
sometimes formally acknowledged by the state and are institutionalized,
or others that are tacitly approved as customs, folklore or tradition. This
reality is now being examined by an increasing number of social scientists and scholars in the humanities, inside and outside China itself
(Goossaert and Palmer 2011; Ashiwa and Wank 2009; Yang 2008; Li
2006).
Since it came to power in 1949, the CCP has demonstrated its ability
to control religion through relations of cooperation and co-optation, and
to use repression only when individuals and groups appear to push the
envelope too far. Before the onset of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP
favoured the institutionalization of religion in ways unseen before in
China’s history: It compelled Buddhists, who had never before had a
national organization, to join the Chinese Buddhist Association (۵ඒ㣇
㢸, fojiao xiehui) in 1953, and in the same year, ignoring the diversity of
communities among Muslims, urged the inauguration of the Islamic
Association ( ْཎ䤣ඒ㣇㢸, yisilanjiao xiehui) of China. One year later,
disregarding the denominational diversity of Christian churches, the
party approved the creation of the National Committee of the Three-Self
Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China (TSPM, ഗᅮඒ
Կ۞䵋㧺劑㣅ࡡ䦱㢸, jidujiao sanzi aiguo yundong weiyuanhui). Three years
later, it finally convinced Taoists, who were even less organized, to act
likewise and approved the creation of the Chinese Taoist Association (ሐ
ඒ㣇㢸, daojiao xiehui). In the same year, Chinese Catholics were asked to
join the Patriotic Catholic Association ( ֚ ඒ 䵋 㧺 㢸 , tianzhujiao
aiguohui), thereby severing links with the Vatican. Through the creation
of these associations, the party sought to use the United Front Work
Department to enforce compliance with its directives. The Cultural
Revolution (1966-1976), which saw the destruction of temples and the
persecution of religious personnel on a grand scale, emerges in retrospect
as an exceptional period.
When Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s paramount leader, the
CCP realized that despite repeated attacks on it, not only did religion not
disappear, but traditional beliefs actually resurfaced, new ones emerged,
and Christianity experienced an unprecedented growth in its member-
Religion and the State in China
5
ship. The return to a United Front approach to religion was not enough
to deal with the situation emerging in the wake of the dismantling of
communes and the sweeping social changes that China underwent afterwards. Perhaps most revealing is that as the country has become more
prosperous and has industrialized further, the number of believers has
increased, in contrast to the predictions offered by mechanistic interpretations of secularization theory. Aware of this development, the party has
abandoned its previous view on the inevitable withering away of religion,
and the United Front approach resumed, but new documents spelled out
the party’s policy more clearly. In Document 19, issued in 1982, the CCP
recognized that religion would remain influential in Chinese society for
“a long time”, and therefore the mission of the CCP would be to ensure
compatibility between socialism and religion. More recently, the CCP
went further and recognized the ability of religion to work for the public
interest, thereby opening the door for accepting the intervention of religious institutions outside of the sphere of religious affairs in a strict
sense.
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, the CCP
still faces enduring challenges in its ability to control religion via this
mixture of inducement and threat: the role of religion as a marker of
identity among non-Chinese national minorities; the difficulty of regulating the inchoate and hard-to-define popular religions (ا吗ࡲඒ, minjian
zongjiao) and popular beliefs (ا吗ॾٛ, minjian xinyang), which take ever
changing forms; and the emergence of associations that are too idiosyncratic to be incorporated as part of the five officially recognized religions. These three issues would require a separate treatment. On the issue
of Tibetan Buddhism, I can point to the excellent study by Gray Tuttle
(2005); on the non-Hui Muslim ethnic minorities, readers may want to
consult works by Christopher Beckwith (2009). With respect to the variety of popular beliefs, I can refer to the groundbreaking writings of
Adam Chau (2006) and Rebbeca Nedostup (2009). For more specific
studies on the intersection of politics and popular religion, I can also
point to Ole Bruun’s (2003) study of fengshui, and to Térence Billeter’s
(2007) monograph, The Cult of the Yellow Emperor. Finally, for works on
new religions in China, the works of David Palmer (2005) and David
Ownby (2008) on Falungong are essential readings.
The articles in this issue focus on the relations between the state and
Catholicism, (Protestant) Christianity and Buddhism, three of the five
religions officially approved by the CCP. These religions, termed by Chi-
6
André Laliberté
nese social scientists as “world religions”, have many adherents outside
of China, and it is only natural that much scholarship on religion outside
of China is devoted to them. Taoism, one of the five religions receiving
recognition from the state, stands out as the only Chinese religion that
has entirely evolved in China and did not expand outside of Chinese
cultural boundaries – that is, the PRC or other societies that can be considered culturally Chinese, such as Taiwan, Singapore, and overseas Chinese communities. Taoism raises a host of interesting and important
issues about the boundaries of religion, religion and national identity, and
the diffused aspect of religion. However, there is no state outside of
China in which Taoists have developed a sufficiently influential pressure
group with the ability to sway governments in favour of Taoists in
China, in contrast to the other four religions, which can count on support from powerful interest groups such as the Christian right in the
United States; political parties, such as the Komeito in Japan; or international organizations, such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The Religious Question in China
Commenting on the fate of a Chinese Christian church harassed by the
government in Beijing, the site for Christian evangelicals “Christianity
Today” noted that China’s “ancient name is, surprisingly, ‘God’s Land’”
(Chen 2011). Indeed, before the “Middle Kingdom” ( խ㧺 , zhongguo)
emerged as the universally recognized self-identification for China in the
twentieth century, China was also known as Shenzhou (壀)ڠ, which can
be translated more accurately as “the divine land”. The conception of
religion attached to that name is emblematic of some of the difficulties
faced by those who strive to conduct detached analyses of the political
dimension of religion in China. Western views on religion have influenced the Chinese interpretation of religious life in China since the last
years of the Qing Dynasty, and as a result, a narrow perspective was
adopted, one which ignored the religious dimension of governance in
China since the beginning of the country’s recorded history. In that selfunderstanding, only organized religions with a professional clergy, canonical scriptures, and a well-delineated place of worship qualified as
“real religions”. As Goossaert and Palmer wrote on these issues in The
Religious Question in Modern China, China stands out as a society “where
the religious, the political, and the social were not clearly distinguished
before the twentieth century”, and where there is no single dominant
Religion and the State in China
7
religion, and as a result, there has been a considerable diversity of religious productions from the twentieth century onwards (Goossaert and
Palmer 2011: 2-3).
The official recognition by the CCP of only five religions, therefore,
represents only the institutional dimension of relations between state and
religion in China – a limited institutionalization at that. At least three
issues make the management of religion more complicated than the
regulation of the five recognized religions suggests: the traditional forms
of religious practices and rituals, the new religious movements, and the
status of Confucianism. Each raises specific issues that the CCP is not
always well equipped to understand and manage. Many social and cultural phenomena in China have a religious dimension, but they are not
recognized as such by the authorities, who use the modernist concept of
religion outlined above, which, ironically, has been criticized in the West
for its inadequacies in understanding non-Western religiosities (Asad
2003, 1993). The non-organized religions have been dismissed as “superstitions” (ಮॾ, mixin, meaning literally “deluded beliefs”) or “licentious
sacrifices” (呒ߏ, yinsi) (Barrett 2008: 96). The organized religions that
the state does not recognize are stigmatized as “heretical teachings” (ߵ
ඒ, xiejiao). Both types of religion have presented the CCP with a number
of important issues for governance, and now controversies about Confucius have revealed divergences over the core elements of religious
policy and their limitations.
Religious practices that have long been dismissed as superstitions by
the CCP (but also by most intellectuals until recently) include geomancy
(咾ֽ, fengshui), divination (բ伨, yijing), ancestor worship (ਈల, baizu or
ᄃల, jingzu), along with beliefs in spirits and deities ( 壀, shen) and in
ghosts (, gui). These practices, very present in overseas Chinese communities and in Taiwan, are re-emerging in the PRC thanks to official
support from local governments; a more positive appreciation from
Chinese social scientists, who are interested in the reality of religious
belief (Li 2010); and party documents, which now claim that the duty of
the CCP is to promote the national tradition. This is a green light to
encourage the revival of practices and beliefs that are not associated with
the five official religions. Hence, while provincial leaders in Fujian nod
to Taoism with their sponsorship of the Mazu Pilgrimage in Southern
China, the leaders of Shanxi have gone further with their promotion of
worship of the Yellow Emperor (㹂০, Huangdi). These actions do not
mean that political leaders are becoming religious believers, but they do
8
André Laliberté
reveal that they understand the potential of religion to bind together
Chinese all over the world. This is especially clear with respect to Taiwan, whose leaders have been approached in that context, most notably
when Lien Chan (Lian Zhan), in his capacity as Kuomintang (KMT)
(Guomindang) leader, was invited to join a public ritual paying respect to
Huangdi, presented then as the putative ancestor of the entire Chinese
people. But from the perspective of the authorities this worship is not
without peril, especially when individuals try to institutionalize traditional
forms of worship into a more formal religious association.
This was made all the more clear with respect to the “qigong fever”
of the 1990s, when a number of groups promoting breathing exercises
claimed that their practice could improve the bodily and spiritual health
of their followers to such an extent that the state health care system
would become redundant. Such claims, and the hope expressed by some
of these leaders that their spiritual practice could be officially recognized
as a sixth religion, generated heated debates until one of the groups, the
Falungong, addressed its concerns directly to the CCP and was punished
harshly as a result (Tong 2009; Chang 2004). This episode led to a
sweeping crackdown, during which other qigong groups have been dissolved, and security authorities have stepped up their campaign against a
variety of what they call “heretical cults”.
Finally, the remarkable but ambiguous rehabilitation of Confucius
suggests that the CCP remains unsure about the best way to approach its
promotion of Chinese traditional culture and religion. The religious dimension of Confucianism has been debated for a long while, and this
aspect of the tradition is often difficult to separate from popular religion.
However, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, the debate has
taken a new turn, with the promotion of Confucius Institutes and with
leading intellectuals proposing to enhance the status of Confucianism as
a sixth religion or as a prominent Chinese tradition. The displaying of a
statue of Confucius in Tiananmen Square in the winter of 2011 was interpreted as emblematic evidence of this process of rehabilitation (Chang
2011), but in a dramatic reversal the statue was removed a few months
later without any explanation (Jacobs 2011b). This sequence of events
suggests that the CCP’s policy and its religious work are in flux. It must
be clear by now that the articles in this issue on the relation between the
state and four of the five national religious associations do not exhaust
the reality of the relationships between religions and the state in China.
Religion and the State in China
9
They do present, however, an important dimension of that relationship
which bears on China’s relations with other countries.
Overview of Individual Papers
Two of the papers presented here discuss the sometimes tense relations
between religion and the state: David Schak looks at the sometimes conflicting relationship between the CCP and Protestant Christianity, while
Lawrence Reardon examines the relations between the former and Chinese Catholic churches. But as suggested before, the relation between the
state and religion can also be one of mutual accommodation, if not outright cooperation, to promote mutual interests. This is the topic of Laliberté’s article, which analyses the more harmonious relations between
the state and Chinese (but not Tibetan) Buddhists. These contributions
do not claim to cover the whole complexity of relations between the
state and the specific religious tradition in question, and they all more or
less implicitly recognize that a proper understanding of the politics of
religion in China, or the religious dimension of Chinese politics, requires
more than just a focus on formal relations between state institutions and
formal religious institutions. Richard Madsen, who has written extensively on religion in China and whose review article completes this issue,
reminds our readers of that fact.
Madsen starts with the observation that China is experiencing not
only a multidimensional religious resurgence, including the “revival and
re-invention of many traditional forms of Chinese religion”, but also the
emergence of new religious forms. His article offers a review of the writings by an increasing number of scholars who try to analyse, understand
and interpret the meaning of these surprising events. In doing so,
Madsen does not limit himself to the writing of scholars who focus on
the five official religions, but also looks at the numerous scholars paying
attention to popular religions and beliefs, new religious institutions, and
the status of Confucianism. He notes a difference in approaches to Chinese religions among those who work in the humanities and those who
self-identify as social scientists. Although these differences are real and
lead to different interpretations of religion’s effect on Chinese society, it
is also true that the scholarship Madsen discusses in his essay often
bridges disciplinary boundaries. A major problem he sees in the literature
in social sciences is its assumptions about secularization, which is seen as
a “fundamental pillar of modernization”, an assertion that what he calls
10
André Laliberté
the “Chinese religious renaissance” decisively refutes. The survival of
religion in China, despite the often brutal efforts to eradicate it by secular
modernizers since the later years of the Qing Dynasty, he writes, shows
that modernity can evolve in more than one way. Madsen argues that the
new mix of economic performance, technological progress and political
resilience displayed by Chinese societies challenges politics as we understand it in the West. He sees in that challenge the potential for farreaching consequences, ranging from a dialogue between civilizations to
a source of conflicts.
The possibility of dialogue or conflict across different forms of
modernity appears clearly in the difficult relations between the CCP and
Catholics, the subject of Lawrence Reardon’s article Ideational Learning
and the Paradox of Chinese Catholic Reconciliation. Although Catholics, who
number one billion people outside of the PRC, are spread among many
countries in different areas of the world with different cultural legacies,
they share some central tenets, in particular on family planning, which
clashes with CCP policies. Reardon looks at the current conflict between
the Vatican and Beijing as one case of a policy failure. He notes the
paradox that while PRC leaders do not tolerate interference from the
Vatican in China’s internal affairs, they have been more tolerant of foreign interference in China’s economy. Reardon unpacks this paradox by
arguing that Chinese elites have gone through a process of learning regarding economic policy, and as this process has started to affect other
dimensions of Chinese society, CCP leaders have realized that the
growth of civil society that ensued has threatened their control. In response to this, Reardon explains, the state has reverted to the revolutionary paradigm that tightly controlled religion in the 1950s, thereby
hampering reconciliation between the CCP and Catholics. He concludes
that the party-state has to accept playing a lesser role in religious affairs
and let foreign religious institutions play a greater role. As long as the
state refuses to go that way for fear of facing challenges to its legitimacy,
he writes that the
Chinese Catholic Church will continue to be divided internally, estranged from the Chinese Catholic communities in Taiwan, Hong
Kong and Macau, and separated from the universal church.
Another complex relationship, the interaction between the Chinese state
and its Protestant population, is the subject of David Schak’s contribution Protestantism in China: A Dilemma for the Party-State. Protestants also
number over one billion adherents spread over all continents, but they
Religion and the State in China
11
do not have a unified leadership. Moreover, there are arguably more
Christians than Muslims and Catholics in China, and observers agree that
this is the fastest-growing religion in China. Schak notes that the CCP
sees religion as a positive factor and a moral force supportive of its development strategy, but remains fearful of its potential to mobilize civil
society. Schak explains that what makes this dilemma all the more difficult to resolve is the complexity of the relationship between the state and
a religious community that is divided between registered and unregistered churches, thereby making a uniform technique of control difficult
to apply. His paper presents a number of case studies that show the wide
range of approaches used by the state, which are sometimes strict, sometimes more laissez-faire. He also sketches out a few hypotheses to help us
understand why the state may choose to restrict the activities of
churches. Schak concludes that the CCP is going to steer a middle-ofthe-road approach in its dealings with Christian churches: On the one
hand, it will show great tolerance toward religion, but in exchange it will
continue to expect compliance with state control over belief and practice. The state, he argues, is going to take that road despite the increasing
strength of the churches and their assertion of independence and, at
times, their refusal to submit to state authorities.
Buddhism, another international religion, with most of its adherents
in East and Southeast Asia, is the subject of André Laliberté’s article
Buddhist Revival under State Watch. That tradition presents a situation different from Islam and Christianity because there are more Buddhists in
China than in any other country, and moreover, there are arguably more
Buddhists than adherents of any other religion in China. Buddhism is
receiving more attention from the government than other religions and
is seen as less of a threat. Laliberté presents the relations between the
CCP and Buddhists as evidence of a more benign approach to religion.
He writes that the growth of Buddhism is seen positively by the CCP
because it has the potential to help it implement three policies: projecting
the image of China as a peaceful rising power, achieving the goal of a
“harmonious society” in domestic policies, and enhancing cross-Strait
relations. Laliberté argues that Buddhist temples and local associations
often enhance the legitimacy of authorities at lower levels when they
offer social services. This is made possible, he explains, when Buddhist
institutions present themselves to outsiders as valuable sources of cultural capital attracting the investment that comes in the wake of tourism
and that facilitates the delivery of social services. An additional benefit of
12
André Laliberté
these collaborative relations, he notes, is the improvement of relations
between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, thanks to the activities of
Taiwanese Buddhist associations in China. The CCP’s lack of opposition
to the growth of Buddhism, if not the outright encouragement of that
expansion, is not well known outside of China, and yet it may be one of
the most important dimensions of its policy on religion.
The CCP’s Exclusion of Religious Believers
In sum, the relation between state and religion in China defies easy generalizations because of the complexity of religious affairs in that country,
even if we limit our focus to institutionalized religions. On a formal level,
the institutionalization of Catholicism, Islam, Protestant Christianity and
Buddhism, by favouring the engagement of Chinese adherents to these
religions with co-religionists all over the world, gives China an additional
diplomatic instrument. The institutionalization of Taoism can play a
similar role with the overseas Chinese communities on all continents.
The reference to Confucianism, whose status remains debated, in the
promotion all over the world of Mandarin Chinese, can be added to the
panoply of instruments used by the PRC to promote Chinese “soft
power” abroad. However, despite these signs of state support for religion, the CCP remains an organization that religious believers cannot join.
Even though this is sometimes ignored by elderly veterans, low-ranking
members, or members of national minorities, this requirement for party
membership was spelled out clearly in print by State Administration for
Religious Affairs (SARA) official Wang Zuo’an (Wang 2002: 381-385)
and reiterated in a 2008 visit to the US (Brookings Institution 2008: 21)
before he was selected to head the SARA in 2009. This requirement for
party membership suggests that religious believers are second-class citizens in the PRC who cannot participate fully in the country’s public
affairs.
This obligation for party members has two far-reaching consequences: First, it does not encourage people to be forthcoming about
their beliefs, views or religious practices. The low numbers of religious
believers in official statistics should be understood in that context.
Moreover, the poor appreciation granted by officials to religious believers – as opposed to the praise for official religions as a stabilizing factor
in society – can indirectly encourage the behaviours that the party seeks
to discourage in the first place. For example, the celebration of science at
Religion and the State in China
13
the expense of religion has led enthusiastic practitioners of traditional
spiritual practices such as qigong to claim that their methods of selfcultivation are not religious practices, but in fact a form of Chinese science superior to Western science, as David Palmer explained in great
detail in his study of the qigong movement (Palmer 2005). In other words,
such misunderstandings make it very difficult for the CCP to have a clear
and candid appreciation of religion in the country.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, by excluding people with religious beliefs from effective and meaningful political participation, the
party runs the risk of making many of them opponents to the regime ipso
facto. The management of religious affairs by the state is, in the end, a
task that costs more than it delivers, especially if we factor in the criticism the CCP has endured for its handling of religions such as Falungong (Chang 2004). The most devout religious believers in any society
tend to have misgivings about secular rulers, and all the more so as the
latter tries to exert control over their lives. For a majority of religious
believers, who are not necessarily committed exclusively to one religion
over the course of their lives, state control is simply an unwelcome intrusion into a deeply personal matter. The thinking of the CCP on religion
appears less bold than its approach to the economy. It is somewhat surprising that even after the CCP relinquished control over important parts
of the economy – that is, the fundamental infrastructure of society according to the ideology it claims to subscribe to – it remains reluctant to
loosen its control over the superstructure of religion and beliefs, which is
supposed to be “only” the reflection of relations of production. Should
we read into this that the CCP is changing its views on that basic tenet of
Marxism as well? Or should we expect that the CCP will make further
adjustments on religious affairs soon?
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Tuttle, Gray (2005), Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China, New
York: Columbia University Press.
Wang, Zuo’an (⥟ᅝ) (2002), Ёⱘᅫᬭ䯂乬ᅫᬭᬓㄪ, (Zhongguo de
zongjiao wenti he zongjiao zhengce, China’s Religious Question and Religious
Policy), Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe (Religious Culture Publishing House).
Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui (ed.) (2008), Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Dr. André Laliberté is a professor at the School of Political Studies at
the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has written articles on religionstate relations and on Buddhist philanthropy in China and Taiwan and is
co-editing a volume on models of secular states in Asia.
E-mail: <andre.laliberte@uottawa.ca>
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 2/2011: 1
Contents
Introduction
André LALIBERTÉ
Religion and the State in China: The Limits of
Institutionalization
3
Research Articles
Richard MADSEN
Religious Renaissance in China Today
Lawrence C. REARDON
Ideational Learning and the Paradox of Chinese Catholic
Reconciliation
David C. SCHAK
Protestantism in China: A Dilemma for the Party-State
André LALIBERTÉ
Buddhist Revival under State Watch
Min XIA
Social Capital and Rural Grassroots Governance in China
Andy YEE
Maritime Territorial Disputes in East Asia: A Comparative
Analysis of the South China Sea and the East China Sea
Contributors
17
43
71
107
135
165
195