Religious Change in Post-Mao China provides a compelling examination of key transformations in contemporary Chinese religious traditions. The author, an associate professor of sociology at Zhejiang University, achieves this goal by undertaking thoughtful comparisons of the growth trajectories between different religions and variations within religious traditions, while comparing her data to earlier time periods as well as Taiwan. These results are based on an institutions-in-context approach that assesses how institutional features can help or hinder a religion’s development in different contexts, as well as the ways in which institutional features may change over time. This approach benefits from a broad-based perspective that views all of post-Mao China’s religions as coexisting in a religious ecology, with each religion occupying a specific niche yet engaging with other religions in different ways.
Apart from the Introduction and Conclusion, Religious Change in Post-Mao China is divided into five chapters. Chapters one and two explore the rapid growth of Protestantism while also considering why Catholicism did not enjoy a similar growth spurt, arguing that the institutional features of both religions are key to answering this question. Of particular import are Table 1.2 (p. 30), which shows Protestantism’s six institutional features, including fervent evangelism, regular worship, decentralized authority structure, global support networks, etc., and Table 2.3 (p. 65), which compares core institutional features of Catholicism and Protestantism, including reliance on clergy vs. lay activism, hierarchical vs. polycephalous power structures, etc.
Chapter three explores phenomena Sun claims have characterized the resurgence of territorial cults, especially feminization, bifurcation and Buddhification, while also maintaining that such cults are in the midst of a “profound crisis” (p. 14).
Chapter four assesses how China’s religious ecology could be conducive to the rise of new religious movements (NRM) during the modern era, with the decline of state power and traditional institutional religions resulting in room for small and local NRMs to take root and thrive due to their proselytizing zeal and strong master–disciple bonds, as well as their ability to appeal to nationalist sentiments and synthesize different religious traditions (pp. 117–119). Sun also considers how these features contributed to the rapid rise and fall of Falun Gong, with a charismatic leader whose followers engaged in protests posing a threat to the state that prompted harsh suppression.
Chapter five contemplates why post-Mao Chinese Buddhists did not feel a need to adopt or emulate their competitors’ institutional features, particularly those arising from the growth of Protestant groups mentioned above. This response appears to have differed from what occurred in Republican China and postwar Taiwan, when Buddhist groups actively emulated Christian congregational structures, proselytization, and activism in philanthropy and education (pp. 141–144).
The book’s conclusion is mainly devoted to a detailed presentation of Xi Jinping’s religious policies (pp. 176–196), which, while highly convincing, might have been moved to an earlier section of the book to make it easier for readers to follow Sun’s analysis.
Religious Change in Post-Mao China deserves credit for clearly demonstrating how and why, in the decades following Mao’s passing, some religious traditions proved able to flourish while others ended up struggling – sound conclusions that are based on analysis of both internal institutional factors plus a wide range of social, political and cultural contexts. Sun’s results will be of immense benefit to both the scholarly community and non-experts wishing to better comprehend developments in Chinese religious life during the past five decades.
As with any path-breaking study of this magnitude, there are issues that require more careful consideration, perhaps the most significant being an occasional lack of historiographical rigour. On p. 2 of the introduction, for example, Sun states her intention to investigate “how the religious ecology emerging in the post-Mao era diverges from the historical religious ecology that crystallized during late imperial China (1368–1912)” (emphasis added), and indeed the introduction contains a section entitled “Religious Ecology of Late Imperial China” starting on p. 15. Just three paragraphs later, however, her emphasis shifts to examining “the post-Mao religious situation in comparison with earlier periods, particularly late Qing and Republican China,” thereby overtaking the late imperial era. Arguments on p. 3 continue to stress the late Qing period, while also expressing an intention to avoid “using the religious landscape of Republican China as the baseline,” implying that the Republican era has been eliminated from consideration, yet the very next paragraph states that “I also compare the post-Mao situation with that of Republican China.” Page 3 also features the assertion that “Using the religious landscape of the Maoist era … as the baseline would be even more misguided,” yet the same paragraph concludes with the intention of examining “how the institutional legacies of the Republican and the Maoist states continue to shape the post-Mao state and its religious policies.”
The role of feminization in territorial cults prior to the Maoist era merits further consideration as well. For while Sun correctly observes that old women have played vital roles in post-Mao temple reconstruction projects (p. 92) – even though the committees that manage temples remain mostly male (p. 95) – such devotion and commitment to these forms of religious life hardly appear to be new phenomena in the area being studied (River County in central Zhejiang), with Sun noting that “in pre-1949 local society, women constituted the main category of participants in voluntary activities associated with territorial cults and formed an enduring bond with them” (p. 103), with evidence for such participation including a poem dating to 1754.
Turning to Taiwan, the assertion that “the growth of Protestantism … has been overshadowed by the more vibrant presence of Buddhism, Daoism, popular religion, and NRMs” (p. 4) might need to be rethought in light of that religion’s impact on postwar politics (many leading figures, including current and past presidents have maintained close ties to Protestant congregations), while the fact that Buddhists in postwar Taiwan were seriously concerned by the Christian challenge (pp. 152–154) would seem to argue against such a conclusion.
Finally, while Sun deserves credit for engaging in reflexive anthropology by informing readers of the challenges that she faced doing fieldwork (see pp. 4–5 and Appendix I), there are only oblique hints that her ethnography was in fact a form of indigenous anthropology (we learn that she speaks the local dialect on p. 211, and she refers to “my family’s experience” in River County on p. 120). Appendix II, a list of primary sources consulted during research for this book, might also have benefitted from a similar reflexive perspective on the textuality of such works and challenges that can arise when using them.
Despite these minor flaws, however, Religious Change in Post-Mao China successfully achieves its goal of demonstrating the ways in which China’s religious ecology has changed during the post-Mao era. Moreover, Sun’s successful blending of historical and ethnographic methodologies, as well as the adoption of a broadly comparative perspective, constitute a model for future research efforts.
