Is China at the Forefront of a
Worldwide Search for Values?

The Revival of Faith
in Contemporary China

Jay McDaniel, editor Open Horizons
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"It is a country engaging in a global conversation that affects all of us: how to restore solidarity and values to societies that have made economics the basis of most decisions. Perhaps because Chinese traditions were so savagely attacked over the past decades, and then replaced with such a naked form of capitalism, China might actually be at the forefront of this worldwide search for values. These are universal aspirations, and like people elsewhere in the world, Chinese people feel that these hopes are supported by something more than a particular government or law. They are supported by heaven. As the twenty-five-hundred-year-old classic The Book of Documents puts it: 'Heaven sees as my people see. Heaven hears as my people hear.'"
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So writes Ian Johnson in his highly acclaimed The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. His argument is that, with the revival of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and folk religions, China may be at the forefront of a global search for non-materialistic, post-capitalist values.

Below I offer excerpts from his book and from reviews of his work as well as an audio of a lecture he gave at Harvard on the book. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, researcher, and senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Read more about him here.

The revival of "faith" in China is not a revival of "religion" as that term has often been understood in the Protestant-influenced West. It is, in large part, a revival of traditional forms of community life—Daoism, Buddhism, and folk traditions among many Han Chinese, who comprise the majority ethnic and cultural tradition in China. At the same time, this development may, in principle, complement the growth of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, among Han Chinese and may also create a broader context for appreciating what Islam means for many Chinese Muslims. It can unfold in more pluralistic ways.
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Much depends on how the government responds and on the changing relationship between faith and state policy. Nevertheless, there is a widespread sense among many Chinese that the materialist ethos of an economically driven society is insufficient for human flourishing. There is a hunger to reclaim faith, meaning, ritual, and forms of belonging that transcend economic life alone. For many people, that hunger is being satisfied and, particularly as it relates to traditional forms of faith, often supported by governmental policies.

It is possible that the emergence of process philosophy in China can contribute to China's participation in this worldwide search for values, because process philosophy already has many affinities with traditional Chinese ways of thinking. At the same time, it offers an understanding of Heaven—not as a dominating power or imperial ruler standing over the universe, but as a cosmic principle of harmony, indeed a Harmony of Harmonies, in which human beings can participate. Such participation need not be confined to any one religion. It can occur through many religions and also outside formal religion altogether, through practices and ways of life that cultivate beauty, compassion, relationality, and care.

The Souls of China: Religion after Mao

by Ian Johnson
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"From the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, a revelatory portrait of religion in China today—its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China’s future.

The Souls of China tells the story of one of the world’s great spiritual revivals.  Following a century of violent anti-religious campaigns, China is now filled with new temples, churches, and mosques—as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty—over what it means to be Chinese and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is searching for new guideposts.

Ian Johnson first visited China in 1984; in the 1990s he helped run a charity to rebuild Daoist temples, and in 2001 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

While researching this book, he lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. Along the way, he learned esoteric meditation techniques, visited a nonagenarian Confucian sage, and befriended government propagandists as they fashioned a remarkable embrace of traditional values.

​He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle—a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world’s newest superpower.

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For many Chinese the contemporary revival includes learning from an amalgam of faiths

Asking “what faith do you believe in?” Seems like a simple question for people who define religion according to monotheistic norms. They expect a clear-cut answer, like “I am a Buddhist” or “I am a Daoist.” But for most of Chinese history, this sort of question would have been strange. Religion was part of belonging to your community. A village had its temples, its gods, and they were honored on certain holy days. Choice was not really a factor. China did have three separate teachings—Confucianism (rujiao),  Buddhism (fojiao), and Daoism (daojiao)—but they did not function as separate institutions with their own followers. Primarily, they provided services… For most of  Chinese history, people believed in an amalgam of these faiths that is best described as “Chinese Religion.”

Johnson, Ian. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (p. 397). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

The revival is not about doctrine, but awakening to ritual and faith

Johnson uses the term, “religion” for his Western readers but at the outset he explains this term is misleading. Researchers know not to ask the Chinese if they are religious because the answer will be overwhelmingly negative. But their response is not a sign of atheism. It is a problem of methodology and terminology because “religion” is too Western and implies something separate and alien to daily life, as well as dogma. Before the twentieth-century, the Chinese lacked a term for religion. The contemporary term, zongjiao, is a Japanese import.  Instead of religion, Johnson notes that China is seeing an awakening of ritual and of faith (xinyang). He understands ritual the same way Plato has the Athenian Stranger discuss nomoi, the customs and mores of a society. Indeed, the book is structured around the annual cycle of traditional festivals that are returning.

Erin Voegelin, Voegelin Review: https://voegelinview.com/souls-china-return-religion-mao/

"Religion" is a problematic term.

Religion in China is, not surprisingly, a tricky beast to have even a basic understanding of without resorting to Western categories or long-established tropes. Writer Ian Johnson (who last year penned an excellent article about China’s renewed engagement with religion in the American magazine Foreign Affairs) foreshadows this perennial issue with some reflections in the second sub-chapter of his newest book, titled “Ritual: The Lost Middle.” He rightly emphasizes that loaded Western vocabulary (including the very word “religion”) is not helpful for surveying the explosion of faith in China due to complex historical and present-day factors. “Instead, it is much more useful to ask people how they act, or whether they believe in specific ideas.” For example, Johnson notes that people respond much more positively when one speaks of xinyang (信仰)—faith, than zongjiao (宗教)—religion.)

from Buddhist Books Global: Review by Raymond Lamb, 2018

The likely winners of the revival will be "traditional" religions:
Daoism, Buddhism, and Folk Religion

In the field of religion and faith, however, the government has tried harder to co-opt groups than to crush them. It has also cleverly tapped into the phrases and some of the ideas of the traditional political-religious state that ran China for more than two millennia. These trends are likely to continue, and the state—like Chinese governments of centuries past—will try to guide or control the country’s moral life. The winners will likely be China’s “traditional” religions: Daoism, Buddhism, and folk religion.

Johnson, Ian. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (p. 397). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims - traditions with foreign ties - are in a different situation.

This growing state support clashes with two trends we noted in this book. One is increasing foreign ties. To some degree, the government welcomes religion’s overseas contacts as a way to push soft power. Thanks to the country’s resurgent Buddhist faith, for example, China has become one of the world’s largest Buddhist nations and has given a permanent home in the city of Wuxi to the World Buddhist Forum. It also sponsors international Daoist conferences and meetings.

But overall, the party is wary of foreign ties. This is true for the Catholic Church and its links to the Vatican, Tibetan Buddhism and its exiled leadership under the Dalai Lama, Islam with its global ummah, and Protestantism’s international activism. As these groups expand, we can expect to see more tensions between believers and rulers. Xi’s predecessors conducted religious policy with what seems now to be a remarkably light touch.

​The government’s challenge now will be to keep a similar balance of managing religion without alienating its followers. The strains are especially pronounced in churches like Wang Yi’s. Alone among China’s major religions, Protestant Christianity is growing quickly among the Chinese majority, and also has extensive foreign ties. This has led the government to try sporadic efforts at control. A key question is whether the government will allow it to continue to grow or if—in its hubris and newfound wealth—it will look to achieve complete control.

I suspect it will not. We see the temptation—for example, the campaign from 2014 to 2016 to remove crosses from the tops of unregistered churches in Zhejiang Province. But when the government held a major conference in 2016 to regulate religious life—the most important conference on religious policy in fifteen years—it did not spread the campaign. It instructed religions to “sinicize”—to become more Chinese—but in a very vague and indecisive way. We can expect more feints and thrusts from the government and growing debate among officials about how to handle religion in the new era. But in the long run, I doubt the government will try to achieve total control, in part because recent history—the Cultural Revolution, for example—shows officials how oppression can actually encourage real faith

Johnson, Ian. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (pp. 397-398). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

The Concept of Heaven (belief in heavenly rights and justice) is key to the traditional Chinese sensibility.
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These foreign links are obvious problems for the government, but religion’s real challenge to state power comes from something subtler that it is helping to create: a reawakened national conscience. If I could summarize the aspirations of the people in this book in one word, it would be “heaven.” The concept of heaven—tian—is central to how Chinese from Confucius to the Ni family have thought of a well-ordered society. It carries with it a sense of justice and respect and is something higher than any one government. Christians like to say that only their religion carries with it the idea of God-given rights. This is wrong. All faiths have ideals that trump temporal powers. For Confucians, they were the teachings of the sage; for Buddhists, the ideals found in the sutras; for Daoists, the ideas of ziran, or the Dao; and for ordinary people, a sense of righteousness—a belief in heavenly rights and justice.

Johnson, Ian. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (p. 398). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

China may be at the forefront of a worldwide search for values.

Out of this is coming a China that is more than the hyper-mercantilist, fragile superpower that we know. It is a country engaging in a global conversation that affects all of us: how to restore solidarity and values to societies that have made economics the basis of most decisions. Perhaps because Chinese traditions were so savagely attacked over the past decades, and then replaced with such a naked form of capitalism, China might actually be at the forefront of this worldwide search for values. These are universal aspirations, and like people elsewhere in the world Chinese people feel that these hopes are supported by something more than a particular government or law. They are supported by heaven. As the twenty-five-hundred-year-old classic the Book of Documents puts it, Heaven sees as my people see. Heaven hears as my people hear.

Johnson, Ian. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao (p. 400). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Lecture by Ian Johnson,

author of the Souls of China at Harvard

Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies · The Souls of China: Religion after Mao, with Ian Johnson

Xi Jinping and Buddhism
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What a Buddhist Monk Taught Xi Jinping, by Ian Johnson. Click here.