COUNTRY
ChinaPOPULATION
1,343,239,923 (July 2012 est.)GDP PER CAPITA
$8,500 (2011 est.)RELIGIONS
Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%, Muslim 1%-2% note: officially atheist (2002 est.)AT THE CENTER
RELATED RESOURCES
ORGANIZATIONS (3)
China Islamic Association
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association
National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China
Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association
National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China
PEOPLE (10)
QUOTES (15)
China
Events (10)
China has a long tradition of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, which have undergone a revival due to many of the government’s restrictions on religious practice having been lifted since the 1980s. The Han Dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE) promulgated Confucianism as the state culture, which it has largely remained. Buddhism gained significant influence by the 5th century and mixed considerably with native Daoism. The Communist Party implemented state atheism when it came to power in 1949 and attempted to expunge religion from society during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). However, religious practice surged as prohibitions eased. Chinese religious policy is freedom of belief and practice with government oversight of organization and political action. The government oversees officially organized religious bodies, though underground organizations also exist, particularly for Christianity. Foreign proselytism is illegal, and Communist Party members are required to be atheist. Internal conflicts tend to have a religious element, as seen in the cases of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Xinjiang province.
The last several years have seen an official revival of Confucianism in China. President Hu Jintao has developed the idea of a "Harmonious Socialist Society," drawing on Confucian ideas. The government has set up a network of cultural Confucius Institutes around the world. And earlier this year, a statue of Confucius was erected in Tiananmen Square. How extensive is the Confucian revival and what are its contours? What is its cultural, religious, and political significance? Dr. Li Yiu, a...
Christianity has been growing rapidly in China despite government restrictions. Chinese government policy on Christianity has changed from “suppression” (1949-1966) and “eradication” (1966-1979) to “controlling to weaken” (1979-1995) and “controlling to contain” (1995-2010). The number of Protestant Christians has multiplied from fewer than 1 million in 1949 to 30 to 60 million today. Catholic Christians have persevered as well. In addition to Christians in rural areas, several new categories...
The Berkley Center co-sponsored a Ramadan Iftar dinner with the Muslim Students Association. Faculty, staff, and students came together to break the fast of Ramadan and enjoy fellowship and conversation.
William James once quipped that "in this age of toleration,no one will ever try actively to interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy it quietly with our friends and do not make a public nuisance of it." Unfortunately--at least for the privatizers and the secularists--religion is a very public matter for a simple reason: most religions make definitive moral claims that implicate the common good. So says Rabbi David Novak in his new book about religious liberty, why it is...
The religious landscape in China has unique features that are poorly understood outside the country. While Buddhism, Christianity, and other "World Relgions" are present in the country, China is also home to a rich array of traditional religious practices. Contemporary social forms of Chinese religions fall into four basic types, each with complex historical roots: Confucclesia (the Confucian Assemby), Forest (a space for certain Buddhist and Daoist practices), Jianghu (the "gray" public...
The "Wenzhou Model" is often touted in China as a successful model of rural economic development and rural industrialization. Based on privatized household production, flourishing commodity markets, and rapid urbanization and industrialization, the local people of Wenzhou have rapidly transformed themselves from being one of China's poorest rural areas in the 1970s to one of its most prosperous today. This talk showed how the Wenzhou Model as described by economists and sociologists has...
Over the course of the last half-century, evidence from China has been used first to support and later to confound simplistic arguments about the decline of religion in the face of modernity. Without launching a defense of secularization theory in general, Dr. Michael Szonyi argued that there is something to be gained from situating scholarship on Chinese religion in relation to recent debates in the theory. He suggested on the one hand that secularization theory can be a useful tool in...
Peter van der Veer, University Professor at Utrecht, explored different patterns of secularism in India and China, with special attention to the historical legacies of colonialism and the nation-building projects first undertaken in the 19th century. The government hostility towards religion in China, evident both before and after the 1949 revolution, was in part a reaction to the negative colonial and missionary experience. In India, a more constructive relationship between secularism,...
This event was the first in a series of three symposia on religious freedom on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act of 1998, which mandated the promotion of religious liberty around the world as an element of US foreign policy. This first symposium addressed the origins of US IRF policy in both domestic politics and international developments. Subsequent symposia, held in April and October 2008, discussed the development of that policy to date...
Are “universal” human rights in fact an imposition of western or Christian ideas? Is democracy, the “rule of the people,” compatible with God’s law? How does religion inform – and impede – the struggle for human rights around the world? The Berkley Center conference on “Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights” brought together leading anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and political scientists to explore questions on the...