Prior to 1949, Chinese society was religiously diverse, with regional, class, and ethnic variants. The government tolerated and sometimes encouraged religion, except for those seen as heterodox cults with political aims. The Han Chinese elite's preference was for the Confucian canon. These teachings do not consist of such theology: Confucianism is a set of secular ethical teachings that focus on individual behavior, human relations, and the relationship between ruler and ruled.
Popular Confucianism is expressed in ancestral memorials, recognition of age and gender hierarchies in the family, and care and respect for the senior generation. Household ancestral altars and family burial sites receive careful attention.
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Ancestral spirits are invited to join in large family feasts throughout the year, and anniversaries of their births and deaths are observed with special food offerings. Wealthier descendants kept genealogies and founded ancestral temples where they kept and periodically venerated the name tablets of successive generations.
The correct practice of ancestral memorialization is a key marker for distinguishing between the Chinese and the "barbarians." After 1949, the state strongly discouraged a focus on ancestral ceremonies. Government authorities criticized Confucius and his followers as feudal and reactionary until the early 1980s.
Since then, elaborate ceremonies honoring Confucius' birthday have continued at the Confucius Temple complex in Qufu, Shandong (where he was born), and in some places, families have restored ancestral temples and family altars.
Among the Han Chinese, concern for the spirits of the dead extends to concern for ghosts. These ghosts are considered lonely spirits, not cared for by their descendants. They will harm the living unless they are fed and reconciled. The government continues to prohibit belief in ghosts strictly.
Among many minorities, expressions of concern for ancestors and ghosts take different forms and are often overshadowed by their importance by animistic belief systems that are concerned with honoring or pacifying spiritual forces in all natural phenomena.
Shamans and fortune tellers are respected and sometimes feared by members of the public. Their services are essential to dealing with illness, death, and family crises, as well as during community festivals. Similar shamanic traditions continued among the Han Chinese, as well as divination, pilgrimages to sacred mountains, the myth of the "Dragon King" controlling the seas and rivers, belief in magic, and other elements of folk belief.
However, China's educated elite has long regarded this belief as superstition. On a popular level, the Chinese turned to the worship of Buddhist and Taoist gods centered on temples represented in human form. Some can be identified as historical or literary figures, now turned into gods.
Between the third and first centuries BC, monks from India brought Buddhism to China. For this reason, some Chinese scholars today consider it a "foreign religion". The state officially recognized it at the beginning of the first millennium, and it spread rapidly through sermons and scriptures.
In some periods—for example, in Tang and Yuan—the ruling dynasty actively supported it. Formal monastic Buddhism is divided into several branches: the most widespread is Mahayana Buddhism, whose texts are written in Chinese. Lamaist Buddhism flourished in Tibet and spread among the Mongols and some southwestern minorities.
A branch of Theravada Buddhism, using the Pali text, is found among Dai and surrounding minorities. Monastic Buddhism is a rejection of the world and celibacy. The number of monks and nuns declined drastically after 1949; the government forcibly closed monasteries and assigned priests to regular jobs. In the post-Mao period, several temples and monasteries reopened for worship, and the training of young monks and nuns continued.
These places received assistance from the government for the restoration of their buildings, but it was mostly expected that they would be self-sufficient and that the monks and nuns would engage in productive work.
Often mixed with elements from Taoism and local cults, folk Buddhism was traditionally widespread among peasants and the less educated urban population. The concepts of punishment for sins, life after death or rebirth, and various deities referred to as Buddhas are very popular among the Chinese as well as some minorities. Even the Confucian elite turned to Buddhist monks to perform the necessary rituals around death and burial.
Taoism, like Confucianism, originated in China and is rooted in a philosophical school, in this case, a mystical school that emphasizes harmony with all things. Its religious form, which was formed during the Han dynasty, bears some resemblance to Buddhism, and most people need to distinguish between the two clearly.
It has its own monastic tradition and lay priests who can marry and live in the wider community. On a popular cult level, temples in villages, market towns, and cities often mixed Buddhist and Daoist deities and spirits together and invited priests of both faiths to perform rituals on behalf of the local people.
It is impossible to estimate how many people in China still adhere to Buddhism or Taoism, and the number of re-institutionalized or newly re-instituted priests needs to be more consistent. After 1949, many Buddhist and Taoist temples were taken over for other purposes, with only a small part being preserved as museums or tourist attractions. In recent years, some have returned to their religious functions.
Islam is the dominant religion among at least ten Chinese ethnic minorities, and there is a thriving Hui (Chinese Muslim) community throughout China. This was introduced in multiple forms between the seventh and fourteenth centuries, approaching China from Central Asia via the Silk Road and being transported to southeastern China by Arab traders via sea routes.
Estimates of the current number of practicing Muslims range from 12 million to 30 million or more. They are mostly Sunni and divided into several sects. Sufi orders entered northwestern China during the Qing and were banned by the government in the late Qing because of their ties to the Muslim insurgency in the area.
Because of its identification with some of China's largest minority groups, Islam appears to be less restricted than other major religions after the 1949 Revolution, but even so, the authorities closed several mosques and schools and restricted the training of clerics.
Since the post-Mao reforms, the government has allowed mosques to reopen, and the number of active followers has continued to grow. Conversion by Han Chinese came primarily through marriage, as the state viewed Islam as a shaoshu minzu (national minority) religion rather than a universalist creed.
Since the beginning of Western contact with China, a small number of Han minorities have embraced Catholicism. Like the other religions mentioned above, the government closed places of worship and banned religious activities from the early 1950s to the 1980s, although there is a strong belief that many congregations continued to meet in secret and grew for decades after 1949.
Accurate figures are only possible to obtain. The figure of 3.3 million Catholics, which is frequently repeated in the Chinese media, is identical to the 1949 figure.
The Catholic Church in China must be independent of the Vatican in all respects. As such, China is the only place in the world where one can listen to Mass and other liturgies in Latin.
The activities of the Protestant church began in the nineteenth century. There are at least 5 million Protestants in churches and meeting places recognized and overseen by the Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Christian Council.
Several small seminaries have been opened in recent years to train new members or raise clergy and lay priests. The authorities prevent denominational differences. Broader estimates of Protestants, which include estimates of numbers outside the Three-Self church, vary from 10 million to 25 million or higher.
All major religions are supervised by the Bureau of Religion of the central government and departments at the provincial level and below. It is a secular state bureau that has regulatory control over the Chinese Buddhist Association, China Taoist Association, China Islamic Association, China Catholic Patriotic Association, China Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and China Christian Council.
Representatives of these groups have seats reserved for them in the National People's Congress. Despite these official relationships and legal guarantees of the right to believe or not believe, religion—in the sense of concern with God or gods, spirits, theological teachings, belief in an afterlife, etc—is discouraged by the state. Religious beliefs deprive a person of membership in a Communist party or Youth League affiliation and are viewed as unscientific.
The state-sanctioned ideology is Mao Zedong's Marxism-Leninism-Thought. In several different campaigns over the decades, the government has raised various people as secular models of moral and ethical behavior befitting a socialist society.
In recent years, Party ideologues have attempted to establish guidelines for a "socialist spiritual civilization" and a collection of secular teachings that focus on individual behavior, human relations, and the relationship between ruler and ruled.