[By 2008 ] … “over a century of campaigns had not wiped religion out. Religion was booming, and a confident Chinese state was increasingly willing to compose with it – opening a new chapter in the history of religion in Chinese society” (Goossaert and Palmer, p. 3).
These two excellent books tell the complex story behind this new chapter, from the late 19th century on, with Goossaert and Palmer surveying the whole scene in rich detail, and Poon providing a case study of one important city through the Republican period. Both studies emphasize the relationship of the state to religious practices and beliefs, and devote much discussion to the activities of ordinary people. These are a particular concern for Shuk-Wah Poon's book, the primary sources for which are local newspapers from the late Qing and Republican periods, and reports from the Guangzhou municipal government. Poon, an assistant professor at Lingnan University, discusses the appropriation of temples by the local government in 1921–23 during the period when Sun Yatsen and his son Sun Ke were mayors. A total of 570 temples were put up for sale, some to the very communities from which they had been confiscated!
After the Republican government was established in Nanjing in 1928, in response to new national legislation against “superstitious” beliefs and practices the Guangzhou government converted the City God temple into a “Native Goods Exhibition Hall.” Poon describes attempts to transform such local customs as the Hungry Ghosts Festival by recasting them as political and economic commemorations, in this case a memorial for Chinese soldiers killed fighting the Japanese. Attempts were also made to reform Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, though the people continued their traditional worship in them as before. Poon sums up the situation as follows:
The impact on Guangzhou of the modern state's campaign against popular religion was significant in both numerical and spatial terms, as the number of temples fell by more than 70 percent and religious activities were, to a large extent, marginalized and relegated to the city's suburbs. Republican China witnessed the beginning of the withdrawal of religion from the communal life of the Chinese…Yet, the common people's religious life was only refashioned, not destroyed, and they harnessed new political symbols as a protective shield for the traditional religious beliefs and practices that the government had condemned as superstition… the result was the …parallel development of an increasingly standardized political culture alongside a persistent and diverse religious culture (p. 15).
This is a good and useful study of an important topic in modern Chinese history; a fine start on a publishing career.
Vincent Goossaert is deputy director of the Group “Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités” at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, and professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. David Palmer is assistant professor in the department of sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Their new book discusses the background of Chinese state policies toward religion from 1898 on. The first distinction made was that between religion and superstition, between traditions led by educated clergy, such a Buddhist monks, and popular practices such as fengshui, divination, worship of gods in image form, and village festivals. These false practices were said to be keeping China backward and so had to be prohibited. The resulting anti-superstition campaigns led to much destruction of temples and images, particularly in cities, but rural practices continued to survive. By 1912 the state recognized five religions as legitimate – Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism and Daoism – and set up national associations for each of them; all else was technically illegal and subject to suppression, a situation that still continues today. Nonetheless, a variety of popular sects (here called “redemptive societies”) continued to thrive. All of this is by now well known; the chief virtue of this book is to bring it together in one volume that supersedes earlier studies. Goossaert and Palmer also discuss the religious situation in Tibet, Taiwan and Singapore throughout the 20th century. The religious policies of the People's Republic are of course described in detail, as are the revivals of communal festivals in villages since the 1980s, new movements like the falun gong and much else. I myself have published many studies of the material covered here, and having gone through this book carefully I find nothing wrong with it. Those who want to learn about the situation of religion in modern China should start here. Great stuff!
