Popular Religion in Modern China

The New Role of Nuo

Lan Li

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317077947
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Essays

Since the early 1980s, China's rapid economic growth and social transformation have greatly altered the role of popular religion in the country. This book makes a new contribution to the research on the phenomenon by examining the role which popular religion has played in modern Chinese politics. Popular Religion in Modern China uses Nuo as an example of how a popular religion has been directly incorporated into the Chinese Community Party's (CCP) policies and how the religion functions as a tool to maintain socio-political stability, safeguard national unification and raise the country's cultural 'soft power' in the eyes of the world. It provides rich new material on the interplay between contemporary Chinese politics, popular religion and economic development in a rapidly changing society.

Chapter 1
Problem and Method

1.1 Overview of the Main Themes

There has been little in-depth research to date examining the role of Chinese traditional popular religion in contemporary Chinese politics. This book aims to fill that gap. The revival and efflorescence of traditional religion have been new phenomena in the post-Mao era and a number of commentators have noted this and have speculated upon it.¹ Economic, political and social considerations have been mentioned as possible reasons why this has occurred in a country in which Marxist atheism has been part of the official ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since it took power more than half a century ago. In recent years, the CCP has allowed religion greater social freedom in the cause of economic reform and political stability while maintaining one-party control. As has been recently observed, ‘religious traditions with completely non-Marxist ideologies are flourishing, which amount to a challenge to the authority of the party and state’.²

In this book I take nuo, a system of traditional religious beliefs and practices, as a case study to illuminate the relationship between religion and modern Chinese politics, a problem that heretofore has not received extended scholarly treatment. This study is based on my twenty years of research work on this particular form of popular religion in different parts of China, placed within the context of a wider range of Chinese popular religious forms. By taking a close look at the way in which nuo, a non-institutionalised and officially unapproved religion, dramatically changed its relationship with the party-state and became involved positively in the process of constructing ‘the Four Modernisations’³ under the leadership of the CCP, I show how the party-state has adopted a uniquely pragmatic attitude towards religion that has maximised its opportunities to use religion, rather than just simply to tolerate or suppress it, to further its political purposes.

Since the theocratic system ended in China more than two thousand years ago, the political status of religion has declined. In the Imperial state, the secular school of Confucianism replaced religion as the state ideology and the official attitude towards religion therefore largely depended on how Confucianism judged it from political perspectives. In the process of China’s transformation from an Imperial to a Republican state, religion was regarded as a reactionary force acting against the modern concepts of science and education. After the CCP took power in 1949, religious institutions and practices were severely constrained and even totally banned during the extreme leftist period of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) as it opposed the orthodox Marxist ideology of atheism as well as representing one of the ‘Four Olds’ (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits and Old Ideas) which were officially proclaimed as having been completely eradicated by the party.

However, in the three decades since China started its economic reform in the late 1970s, the relationship between religion and state has been changing. The atheist CCP does not only officially recognise the five institutionalised religions, namely Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, but has also allowed various forms of popular religion to gain legitimacy and receive official endorsement. The main impetus for this dramatic change is the new, pragmatic policy of the post-Mao CCP in which religion serves as a tool to promote local socio-economic development, to contribute to rapid economic growth, and to help maintain political stability and one-party rule. To this end, the ideological opposition between theism and atheism has been largely dropped, and the distinction between institutionalised and non-institutionalised religions as well as between religion and superstition is deemed irrelevant in the eyes of the CCP. To avoid ideological disagreement and debate, the post-Mao ideologues allow religion to be defined and categorised as a secular subject, as just another manifestation of local culture, custom or belief. The effect of this ideological transformation cannot be understated, as it removes important sources of conflict between religion and official state ideology preventing the effective use of religion by a regime bound by its own Marxist dogma. In the case of nuo, this form of traditional religion has been re-categorised as various forms of culture since the early 1980s, such as a cultural marker of an ethnic minority group, the Tujia, a ‘living fossil’ of primitive culture, a valuable piece of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) at national level and a cultural product supporting the local tourist industry. As such, although nuo remains much the same as it has been practised for generations among the rural populace, it is now being used by the party-state to implement its revised policies on ethnic minorities while demonstrating the ‘evolution’ of Marxist theory and hence buttressing the legitimacy of the CCP. Nuo, along with other forms of local custom, is also being harnessed by the party-state as useful instruments of social control, enhancing the cohesion of the nation and safeguarding national unification, while at the same time ‘culture’ and its local manifestations are being exploited, commodified and commercialised as new product-lines in a fast-growing economy. Consequently, nuo has ceased to be regarded as ‘feudalist superstition’ and has gained official endorsement at all levels: from township government all the way up to the central government of the party-state.

The dramatic change in the place of nuo in modern Chinese politics suggests a process of compromise in which the CCP has pragmatically readjusted its ideology to maximise political gain from all possible sources, including religious practices. The post-Mao CCP ideologues say: ‘We hold that religion, as a social substance, is not only an ideology but also a form of culture, a social grouping, a social community of definite economic substance.’⁴ The new discourse of the CCP reveals an attempt to loosen the strictness of the party’s ideology by creating a fuzzy boundary between religion and culture. When religion is defined and categorised as both a form of religion and of culture, it is given a much wider political and social space to secure legitimacy and a positive image, since culture, as F. Yang notes, ‘is an all-encompassing and esteemed term in the Chinese context’.⁵ Therefore, the ideological re-classification of nuo from religion to culture can be seen as a means by which the party-state’s pragmatic policy towards religion could be implemented.

Such a pragmatic official attitude towards religion was never seen in the past. From ancient times until Mao’s time, the political status of Chinese religion was always largely determined by its relationship with official ideology. Nuo is one of the best examples demonstrating this historical process as its origin can be traced back to as early as the Zhou dynasty (1121–249 B.C.). The earliest form of nuo as a religion came at a time in China when religions enjoyed high political status and prestige, as the state was a theocracy at the time. As such, all forms of religion, including nuo, were categorised as state religions and were incorporated into official state ideology. The state–religion relationship changed however after the establishment of the Imperial state in which religion was systematically separated from political power and Confucianism was adopted by the ruling class as state ideology. As a political and ethical philosophy, Confucianism favoured or disfavoured different forms of classic religion according to their political usefulness to the ruling class. Ancestor worship, the worship of heaven and its subordinate system of naturalistic deities and the state (sheji,

were advocated by Confucians, as they were believed to help strengthen their political power and the social order, while all other forms of traditional religious practice, such as exorcism and divination, were discouraged. Consequently, the forms of classic religion favoured by Confucianism were adopted by the Imperial state as official religious rituals, but all others defined as popular religion and were suppressed, or at best tolerated, by successive Imperial regimes. It was in this process that nuo as an ancient exorcist ritual lost its high political status and prestige and was eventually marginalised as a form of folk religion.

However, the situation reversed with a large-scale wave of migration of Han to ethnic minority areas in southwest China during the Ming dynasty. The local political systems in the regions, called tusi zhi

, had been little influenced by Confucianism at the time and the indigenous rulers – indigenous hereditary headmen – therefore favoured the various forms of popular religion introduced from the Han, including nuo, as they saw them as more systematic and powerful than the local religions. As a result, nuo was once again reintegrated with the political system and regained political favour, albeit at the local rather than central level. This favourable relationship with local government did not persist for long, however, as the relationship was forcibly severed by central government through the replacement of the local leaders by Han officials, a policy known as the Bureaucratisation of Native Officers. Once the relationships between local political leadership and nuo specialists was severed, nuo once again declined.

In the dying years of the Qing dynasty, the Imperial state was greatly weakened by corruption, peasant rebellions, natural disasters and defeats in wars against European powers, and this forced the Imperial government to reform and initiate the so-called ‘self-strengthening movement’. In this movement various forms of popular religion were targeted and the emperor decreed that all the temples of the empire, with the exception of sites for state sacrifices, be taken over by local officials and converted into schools and state offices.⁶ The edict to a certain extent went beyond the Imperial state’s former approach of preserving state orthodoxy (zhengjiao,

against heterodoxy (xiejiao,

, as it represented an attempt to modernise by promoting modern science and education. However, the emperor’s edict still adhered to the traditional ideology of Confucianism in which state sacrifices were regarded as usefully strengthening the Imperial regime, and the sites for state sacrifices therefore were excluded from the prohibition list.

Around the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, however, a set of new modern concepts from the West began spreading in China, such as scientism, evolutionism and nationalism. Alongside this process, the new terms ‘zongjiao’

religion) and ‘mixin’

superstition), which were both taken from the Japanese during Japan’s national modernisation movement, were rapidly taken up among the Chinese political, bureaucratic, religious and intellectual elites. Behind the terms was a new model which distinguished ‘religion’ from ‘superstition’ in a dichotomy of ‘primitive/modern’.⁷ Thus, while confiscating and destroying a very large number of local temples which were labelled as superstitious, the modern Chinese state attempted to establish its fundamental standpoints with respect to religious policies and made itself ready to recognise ‘religion’ as doctrinal, spiritual and ethical systems, but only if they shed their ‘superstitious’ components.⁸ As a result of this, the five world religions – Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism and Daoism – were officially recognised and legitimated by the Republican government and were accorded ‘freedom of religion’.⁹ Here, the modern state adopted a new ideology, which became embodied in the dichotomy of ‘superstition/religion’ and ‘primitive/modern’, to replace the Imperial state ideology of Confucianism, which was itself criticised as a barrier to China’s modernisation and which had declined with the collapse of the Imperial state.

The ideological shift resulted in a division of popular religion which was categorised according to the criteria and standards set up by the Imperial rulers. During Imperial times, Buddhism and Daoism were both at best tolerated by the state as they were regarded by Confucians as two schools opposing the orthodox doctrines of Confucianism.¹⁰ In the Republican era, however, Buddhism and Daoism achieved greater legitimacy and eventually gained official recognition through their redefinition as ‘religion’ since Confucianism could no longer motivate criticism of the two schools. On the other hand, many other forms of popular religion, including the exorcism of nuo, were defined as ‘superstition’ and were not tolerated by the state in the new modern anti-superstition movement. Although nuo and many other forms of popular religion managed to survive the national campaign, they were further marginalised in China through their newly acquired classification as ‘superstitions’.

When the CCP came to power, the Marxist doctrine of atheism was adopted as part of the official ideology that fundamentally changed the state–religion relationship. According to the party’s ideologues, religion does not only represent a ‘backward’ tradition against modernity but also, as ‘the opium of the people’, was employed as a tool of exploitation by the ruling class.¹¹ Thus, although the Chinese Constitution of 1954 guaranteed its people ‘freedom of religion’, this constitutional right was seldom available in actual practice.¹² The five world religions which were officially recognised by the Republican government were strictly controlled by the communist regime through government associations. Many forms of popular religion, which had survived the Republicans’ ideology of anti-superstition due to poor communications and the weakness of Republican local government administration, were more effectively suppressed when the CCP came to power in 1949. The CCP’s policies towards religion were much stricter.¹³ During the Cultural Revolution, political hostility towards religion was strengthened much further as Mao’s regime reinforced its ideology of class struggle and historical materialism. All forms of religion were labelled as part of the ‘Four Olds’ and were subject to severe persecution. Even governmental religious agencies were declared unacceptable and disbanded, and all forms of popular religion, including nuo, were banned as ‘superstit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Problem and Method
• 2 Shenxi and Tujia Society
• 3 Tujia Cosmology
• 4 Nuo
• 5 Nuo as a Cultural Marker of the Tujia
• 6 Nuo and State Ideology
• 7 Nuo, Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Commercialisation of Culture
• 8 Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index