History of Chinese Culture/Chapter 17

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History of Chinese Culture

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Chapter 17: Chinese Religions and Belief Systems

1. Introduction: The Religious Landscape of Chinese Civilization

The religious life of Chinese civilization presents a picture of extraordinary complexity, richness, and distinctiveness. Unlike the civilizations of Western Asia and Europe, where the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have tended to demand exclusive allegiance and to define religious identity in terms of membership in a single faith community, Chinese civilization has been characterized by a pluralistic and syncretic approach to religion in which multiple belief systems — Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and a vast array of local, popular, and folk religious practices — have coexisted, interacted, and interpenetrated for more than two millennia. The famous Chinese saying "Three Teachings flow into one" (三教合一, sanjiao heyi) — referring to the Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist traditions — captures this spirit of religious pluralism, which has been one of the most distinctive and consequential features of Chinese culture.

The concept of "religion" (宗教, zongjiao) itself, as understood in the Western sense of an organized system of beliefs and practices centered on a personal God or gods, does not map neatly onto the Chinese experience. Many aspects of what Westerners would classify as "religion" — ancestor worship, divination, feng shui, the veneration of local deities, the moral philosophy of Confucianism — have been understood in Chinese culture not as "religion" but as dimensions of ordinary social, ethical, and cosmological life. Conversely, traditions that Westerners might classify as "philosophy" (Confucianism) or "superstition" (folk religion) have served functions in Chinese society that are analogous to those served by organized religion in the West. The boundaries between "religion," "philosophy," "ethics," and "custom" in Chinese culture are fluid and permeable in ways that defy Western categories.

This chapter examines the major religious and belief systems of Chinese civilization — Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, popular and folk religion, Islam, and Christianity — and the ways in which they have shaped and been shaped by Chinese culture.

2. Confucianism: The Way of the Sages

Confucianism (儒学, Ruxue, literally "the learning of the scholars") is the intellectual and moral tradition founded by Confucius (孔子, Kongzi, 551–479 BCE) that has served as the dominant ideological framework of Chinese civilization for more than two thousand years. Whether Confucianism should be classified as a "religion" is a matter of ongoing scholarly debate: it lacks a personal God, a creation myth, a doctrine of salvation, and an organized clergy, and Confucius himself famously deflected questions about the supernatural. Yet Confucianism has served many of the social and psychological functions of religion — providing a comprehensive framework of meaning, a system of moral values, a set of ritual practices, and a vision of the good life — and it has been central to the religious life of Chinese civilization in ways that transcend the Western distinction between the "secular" and the "sacred."

The core of Confucian teaching is the cultivation of virtue (德, de) through the practice of ritual propriety (礼, li), humaneness (仁, ren), filial piety (孝, xiao), and the study of the classical texts. Confucius envisioned a social order in which every person fulfilled the obligations appropriate to their position — ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, friend and friend — and in which the cultivation of personal virtue by the ruler would radiate outward to transform society as a whole. This vision of social harmony through moral cultivation became the ideological foundation of the Chinese imperial state and the basis of the education system that trained the scholar-official class for more than two millennia.

The development of Confucianism after Confucius can be traced through several major phases. Mencius (孟子, Mengzi, c. 372–289 BCE) elaborated the Confucian understanding of human nature, arguing that human beings are innately good and that the task of moral cultivation is to nurture and develop the "sprouts" (端, duan) of virtue that are present in every person. Xunzi (荀子, c. 310–235 BCE), by contrast, argued that human nature is essentially selfish and that virtue must be achieved through rigorous training and the discipline of ritual. The "New Text" and "Old Text" (今文/古文, jinwen/guwen) schools of the Han dynasty debated the interpretation of the Confucian classics and the relationship between Confucianism and the cosmological theories of yin-yang and the Five Phases.

The most important intellectual development in the history of Confucianism was the Neo-Confucian (理学, Lixue, "the learning of principle") movement of the Song dynasty (960–1279), which reformulated Confucian philosophy in response to the intellectual challenge of Buddhism and Daoism. The great Neo-Confucian thinkers — Zhou Dunyi (周敦颐, 1017–1073), Zhang Zai (张载, 1020–1077), the Cheng brothers (程颢, 1032–1085, and 程颐, 1033–1107), and above all Zhu Xi (朱熹, 1130–1200) — constructed a comprehensive philosophical system that addressed the metaphysical questions (the nature of reality, the structure of the cosmos, the relationship between mind and matter) that Confucius himself had left unexplored. Zhu Xi's synthesis — which posited a dualistic framework of "principle" (理, li) and "material force" (气, qi) as the fundamental constituents of reality — became the orthodox interpretation of Confucianism from the Yuan dynasty onward and served as the intellectual foundation of the imperial examination system until 1905.

The rival school of Wang Yangming (王阳明, 1472–1529) challenged Zhu Xi's dualism with a monistic philosophy that identified the mind (心, xin) as the sole source of moral knowledge, arguing that "knowledge and action are one" (知行合一, zhixing heyi) and that the task of moral cultivation is to realize the "innate knowledge of the good" (良知, liangzhi) that is present in every human mind. Wang Yangming's philosophy had a profound influence on late Ming and Qing thought and was also enormously influential in Japan, where it inspired the "school of the mind" (陽明学, Yōmeigaku) that played a significant role in the political and intellectual upheavals of the Meiji era.

3. Daoism: The Way of Nature

Daoism (道教, Daojiao for the organized religion; 道家, Daojia for the philosophical tradition) is the indigenous religious and philosophical tradition of China, rooted in the concept of the Dao (道, "the Way") — the ultimate, ineffable principle that underlies and pervades all of reality. Daoism encompasses an extraordinarily diverse range of practices, beliefs, and institutions — from the mystical philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi to the alchemical and liturgical traditions of organized Daoist religion, from the solitary contemplation of the mountain hermit to the elaborate communal rituals of Daoist priests — and it has exerted a pervasive influence on every aspect of Chinese culture: art, literature, medicine, martial arts, cuisine, and the very texture of everyday life.

The philosophical foundations of Daoism are found in two texts of the Warring States period: the Daodejing (道德经, "Classic of the Way and Its Virtue"), attributed to the semi-legendary figure of Laozi (老子), and the Zhuangzi (庄子), attributed to Zhuang Zhou (庄周, c. 369–286 BCE). The Daodejing — a brief, enigmatic, and profoundly influential text of approximately 5,000 characters — articulates a vision of the Dao as the source of all things, a formless and nameless reality that cannot be grasped by the intellect but can be accessed through the practice of "non-action" (无为, wuwei) — a state of spontaneous, effortless action that is in harmony with the natural order. The Zhuangzi elaborates this vision through a series of brilliantly imaginative parables, dialogues, and thought experiments that challenge conventional distinctions between self and other, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, and that celebrate the freedom and spontaneity of the person who has transcended the artificial constraints of society and conventional morality.

Organized Daoist religion emerged during the late Han dynasty with the founding of two major movements: the Celestial Masters (天师道, Tianshi dao), founded by Zhang Daoling (张道陵) in 142 CE, and the Way of Great Peace (太平道, Taiping dao), associated with the Yellow Turban Rebellion of 184 CE. These movements transformed Daoism from a philosophical tradition into an organized religion with a clergy, liturgy, sacred scriptures, communal rituals, and an elaborate pantheon of deities. Over the following centuries, Daoism developed a vast body of scripture (the Daoist Canon, 道藏, Daozang, comprising over 1,400 texts), a complex system of ritual and liturgy, and a rich tradition of practices aimed at achieving longevity, immortality, and spiritual transcendence — including meditation, visualization, breathing exercises (气功, qigong), alchemy (both "external alchemy," 外丹, waidan, involving the physical transformation of substances, and "internal alchemy," 内丹, neidan, involving the transformation of the body's vital energies), and the cultivation of moral virtue.

Daoism's influence on Chinese culture is so pervasive that it is often invisible — woven into the fabric of everyday life in ways that are not always recognized as specifically "Daoist." The concept of yin and yang (阴阳), the theory of the Five Phases (五行, wuxing), the practice of feng shui (风水), the traditions of Chinese medicine, the cultivation of tea and wine, the aesthetic of mountains and water in Chinese landscape painting, the martial arts, the pursuit of longevity and health — all of these cultural elements have deep roots in Daoist thought and practice. Daoism has also provided Chinese culture with a counterbalance to the social conformism and hierarchical rigor of Confucianism: where Confucianism emphasizes duty, order, and the cultivation of virtue through social engagement, Daoism celebrates spontaneity, naturalness, and the freedom of the individual spirit — a complementarity that has enriched Chinese civilization immeasurably.

4. Buddhism: The Dharma in China

Buddhism, which originated in India in the fifth century BCE with the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha, 佛陀, Fotuo), was introduced to China during the Han dynasty (first century CE) and over the course of the following millennium was transformed from a foreign religion into an integral part of Chinese civilization. The Sinification of Buddhism — the process by which Indian Buddhist doctrines, practices, and institutions were adapted to Chinese cultural conditions and fused with indigenous Chinese thought — is one of the most important and creative episodes of cultural exchange in world history.

The initial reception of Buddhism in China was shaped by the practice of "matching concepts" (格义, geyi), in which Buddhist ideas were interpreted through the lens of existing Chinese philosophical concepts — particularly Daoist concepts such as wu (无, "nothingness") and ziran (自然, "naturalness"). This practice facilitated the initial reception of Buddhism but also led to significant distortions of Buddhist doctrine. The great translation projects of the fourth through seventh centuries — above all, the work of Kumarajiva (鸠摩罗什, 344–413) and Xuanzang (玄奘, 602–664), who traveled to India and brought back hundreds of Buddhist scriptures — gradually provided Chinese Buddhists with more accurate and complete versions of the original texts and enabled a deeper engagement with Buddhist philosophy.

The major Chinese Buddhist schools that emerged from the fifth through eighth centuries represent creative syntheses of Indian Buddhist doctrine and Chinese cultural values. The Tiantai (天台宗) school, founded by Zhiyi (智顗, 538–597), developed a comprehensive classification of Buddhist teachings that assigned each Buddhist text to a specific stage in the Buddha's career, with the Lotus Sutra (法华经, Fahua jing) occupying the supreme position. The Huayan (华严宗) school, elaborated by Fazang (法藏, 643–712), developed the philosophical concept of the "interpenetration of all phenomena" (事事无碍, shishi wuai) — the idea that every element of reality contains and reflects every other element — into a metaphysical vision of extraordinary subtlety and beauty.

Chan Buddhism (禅宗, Chan zong, known as Zen in Japanese) — which emphasized direct, experiential realization of the Buddha-nature through meditation and which rejected reliance on scriptures, rituals, and doctrinal study — became the most distinctive and culturally influential form of Chinese Buddhism. The Chan tradition, which claimed a lineage of "mind-to-mind transmission" from the Buddha through a series of Indian and Chinese patriarchs, developed a unique pedagogical method based on gong'an (公案, "koans" in Japanese) — paradoxical questions and stories designed to break through the habits of conceptual thinking and provoke a sudden awakening (顿悟, dunwu). Chan Buddhism had a profound influence on Chinese art, literature, and aesthetics, contributing to the development of ink-wash painting, the tea ceremony, garden design, and a sensibility that values simplicity, spontaneity, and the perception of beauty in the ordinary.

Pure Land Buddhism (净土宗, Jingtu zong) — which taught that salvation could be achieved through faith in and devotion to Amitabha Buddha (阿弥陀佛, Amituo Fo) and the recitation of his name (念佛, nianfo) — became the most popular form of Buddhism in China, offering a path to salvation that was accessible to ordinary people regardless of their education, social status, or capacity for meditation. The combination of Chan and Pure Land practice — meditation and devotion, self-effort and reliance on the Buddha's compassion — became the dominant form of Chinese Buddhism from the Song dynasty onward and remains so today.

5. Popular Religion and Folk Beliefs

Alongside the "Great Traditions" of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, Chinese civilization has sustained a vast and vibrant world of popular religion (民间信仰, minjian xinyang) — a complex of beliefs, practices, and institutions that does not fit neatly into any of the recognized religious categories but that has been, for the majority of the Chinese population throughout history, the most immediate and most important dimension of their religious life.

Popular Chinese religion is characterized by its eclecticism, its localism, and its pragmatism. The typical Chinese village temple (庙, miao) might house images of Buddhist bodhisattvas, Daoist immortals, Confucian sages, and local deities — all worshipped side by side without any sense of contradiction. The deities of popular religion are an extraordinarily diverse company: they include the Jade Emperor (玉皇大帝, Yuhuang Dadi), the supreme deity of the popular pantheon; Guanyin (观音), the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion who was transformed in Chinese popular religion into a feminine figure of maternal mercy; Mazu (妈祖), the goddess of the sea, particularly venerated in coastal areas of southern China and Taiwan; Guan Yu (关羽, 关帝, Guandi), the deified warrior of the Three Kingdoms period who is worshipped as the god of war, loyalty, and righteousness; the City God (城隍, Chenghuang), the divine magistrate who governs the spiritual affairs of each city; and the Earth God (土地公, Tudigong), the humble but ubiquitous deity who watches over each neighborhood and village.

Ancestor worship (祖先崇拜, zuxian chongbai) is perhaps the most fundamental and most distinctively Chinese form of religious practice. The veneration of deceased ancestors — through the offering of food, incense, and paper money (冥币, mingbi) at household altars and at gravesites, through the observation of ancestral anniversaries, and through the maintenance of genealogical records — is rooted in the belief that the spirits of the dead continue to exist in an afterlife that mirrors the world of the living and that they retain an active interest in the welfare of their living descendants. Ancestor worship reinforces the core Chinese values of filial piety, family solidarity, and generational continuity, and it provides a framework of meaning in which the individual is understood not as an isolated self but as a link in an endless chain of generations stretching from the remote past into the indefinite future.

The practice of divination — the use of various techniques to ascertain the will of the spirits, to predict the future, and to determine the most auspicious course of action — has been a central feature of Chinese religious life since the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty. The Yijing (易经, "Classic of Changes") — which uses a system of sixty-four hexagrams, each composed of six broken or unbroken lines, to represent the fundamental patterns of cosmic change — is the oldest and most prestigious divination text in Chinese culture and has also served as a foundational text of Chinese philosophy. Other common forms of divination include fortune-telling (算命, suanming), physiognomy (相面, xiangmian), and the consultation of temple oracles through the casting of crescent-shaped wooden blocks (筊杯, jiaobei) or the drawing of numbered sticks (签, qian).

6. Islam in China

Islam (伊斯兰教, Yisilanjiao) has been present in China since the Tang dynasty (seventh century CE), making the Chinese Muslim community one of the oldest in the world. According to traditional accounts, Islam was introduced to China by Arab and Persian merchants who traveled to China via the maritime Silk Road and established trading communities in the port cities of Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Yangzhou, and Hangzhou. During the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), when China was part of the Mongol empire that stretched from East Asia to Eastern Europe, large numbers of Central Asian and Persian Muslims settled in China, and Muslim administrators, soldiers, and artisans served in the Mongol-Chinese bureaucracy.

Today, China's Muslim population — estimated at 20 to 25 million — comprises ten officially recognized ethnic groups, of which the Hui (回族) and the Uyghurs (维吾尔族) are the largest. The Hui, who are ethnically and linguistically Chinese (speaking Mandarin or other Chinese languages as their mother tongue), are found throughout China and have developed a distinctive Islamic-Chinese culture that integrates Islamic religious practice with Chinese social customs, culinary traditions, and architectural styles. Hui mosques (清真寺, qingzhensi, literally "temples of purity and truth") often combine Islamic architectural elements (minarets, domes, Arabic calligraphy) with Chinese architectural forms (curved roofs, courtyard layouts, dragon and phoenix motifs), producing a unique architectural hybrid.

The Uyghurs, who speak a Turkic language and inhabit the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, have a cultural heritage that is connected to the broader Turkic and Central Asian cultural world. Uyghur culture is characterized by distinctive musical traditions (the muqam, a complex suite of songs and instrumental pieces that was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2005), cuisine (pilaf, lamb kebabs, hand-pulled noodles), literature, and craft traditions that reflect the Central Asian Silk Road heritage of the region.

The relationship between Islam and Chinese culture has been shaped by a long history of accommodation and tension. Muslim scholars in China developed a tradition of Islamic-Confucian synthesis known as the "Han Kitab" (汉克塔布, Han Ketabu) tradition, in which Chinese Muslim scholars — most notably Liu Zhi (刘智, c. 1660–1730) — wrote works in Chinese that interpreted Islamic theology and philosophy through the lens of Confucian and Neo-Confucian concepts, seeking to demonstrate the compatibility of Islam with Chinese civilization.

7. Christianity in China

Christianity's encounter with Chinese civilization is a complex history of repeated introduction, adaptation, and conflict that spans more than a thousand years. The earliest documented presence of Christianity in China dates to the arrival of Nestorian (景教, Jingjiao, "Luminous Teaching") missionaries in 635 CE, as recorded on the famous Nestorian Stele (大秦景教流行中国碑, Daqin Jingjiao liuxing Zhongguo bei) erected in Xi'an in 781. Nestorianism enjoyed a period of prosperity during the Tang dynasty but declined after the anti-Buddhist persecutions of 845 and eventually disappeared from China.

The Jesuit mission of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — led by Matteo Ricci (利玛窦, Li Madou, 1552–1610) — represented the most sophisticated and culturally creative encounter between Christianity and Chinese civilization. Ricci and his fellow Jesuits adopted Chinese dress, learned Chinese language and classical texts, and sought to present Christianity not as a foreign religion but as a teaching compatible with — and indeed perfecting — the best traditions of Confucian philosophy. The Jesuits' strategy of cultural accommodation produced remarkable achievements in cross-cultural exchange, including the introduction of Western science, mathematics, cartography, and painting techniques to China and the transmission of Chinese philosophy, history, and literature to Europe.

The "Chinese Rites Controversy" (中国礼仪之争, Zhongguo liyi zhi zheng) — a bitter debate within the Catholic Church over whether Chinese Christians could continue to practice ancestor worship and participate in Confucian ceremonies — ended in 1742 with a papal decree forbidding these practices, effectively destroying the Jesuit strategy of accommodation and contributing to the imperial Chinese government's decision to ban Christianity.

The Protestant missionary movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries — which arrived in China in the wake of the Opium Wars and the unequal treaties that opened China to Western penetration — had a profound impact on Chinese culture, introducing modern education, medicine, journalism, and social reform while also becoming inextricably associated with Western imperialism in the minds of many Chinese. The establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 led to the expulsion of foreign missionaries and the creation of state-controlled "patriotic" religious organizations.

Today, Christianity in China — both in its state-sanctioned forms and in the rapidly growing "underground" or "house church" movement — is experiencing dramatic growth, with estimates of the total Christian population ranging from 60 to 100 million or more. The cultural significance of this growth — what it means for Chinese identity, for the relationship between Chinese civilization and Western civilization, and for the future of religion in China — remains one of the most important and most uncertain questions in contemporary Chinese culture.

8. The State-Religion Relationship

The relationship between political authority and religious practice has been a defining feature of Chinese civilization. Unlike the Western pattern of church-state relations — in which organized religion and political authority have often been understood as separate and potentially competing spheres of power — Chinese political culture has generally assumed that religious practice falls within the purview of the state and that the ruler has both the right and the responsibility to regulate, control, and if necessary suppress religious activities that threaten social order or political stability.

The concept of the "Mandate of Heaven" (天命, Tianming) — the belief that the ruler governs by virtue of a mandate from Heaven that can be revoked if the ruler fails in his duties — gave Chinese political authority a religious dimension from the earliest period. The emperor served as the mediator between Heaven and humanity, performing the great state sacrifices at the Temple of Heaven (天坛, Tiantan) and the other ritual sites of the imperial capital. The imperial state regulated the construction of temples, the ordination of Buddhist and Daoist clergy, the content of religious teaching, and the forms of religious practice, and it periodically suppressed religious movements that it perceived as politically threatening.

The Communist revolution of 1949 introduced a new dimension to the state-religion relationship: Marxist atheism as official ideology and the systematic suppression of religious practice as "feudal superstition." The most extreme phase of religious persecution — the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) — saw the destruction of temples, churches, mosques, and monasteries on a massive scale and the persecution of religious practitioners of all faiths. The reform era has brought a significant relaxation of religious policy, with the Chinese government recognizing five "patriotic" religious organizations (Buddhist, Daoist, Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant) while continuing to regulate and restrict religious activities that fall outside state-sanctioned channels.

9. Conclusion: Religion in Contemporary China

The religious landscape of contemporary China is one of extraordinary dynamism and complexity. The reform era has witnessed a dramatic revival of religious practice — Buddhism, Daoism, folk religion, Islam, and Christianity are all experiencing significant growth — alongside a resurgence of interest in traditional spiritual and philosophical traditions (the guoxue movement, the Confucian revival, the popularity of meditation and qigong). At the same time, the relationship between religion and the state remains contentious and uncertain, with the government continuing to assert its authority over religious practice while accommodating the evident desire of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens for spiritual sustenance and meaning.

The future of religion in China — and the ways in which Chinese civilization will negotiate the relationship between its diverse religious traditions, its secular modernity, and its political system — remains one of the most important and most unpredictable dimensions of China's ongoing cultural evolution. What is clear is that the religious dimension of Chinese culture — far from being a relic of the feudal past — remains a vital, creative, and deeply consequential force in the lives of the Chinese people and in the broader story of Chinese civilization.