Religion in China in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

"During the first 30 years of the People's Republic of China the Chinese authorities regarded religion as a distorted world view hindering social progress. Religion became a target of political struggle, and the government's policy toward religion was restrictive after the Great Leap Forward Campaign and suppressive during the Cultural Revolution. During these 30 years religion was reported to be in rapid decline. By the late 1970s it was on the edge of extinction, embraced only by a few recalcitrant elders who still hung on to these feudal superstitious ideas. Religious relics such as temple buildings still survived, but it seemed that religion - as a community of believers or devotees who practice their faith in the open - had disappeared from the face of China."