Atheism in China

A discussion about views on religions in China past and present.

This is a transcript of my discussion with Anthony Vernon about atheism and religions in China.

Paul Hesse:

I'd like to welcome Anthony Vernon back to the Chinese Revolution. You may remember him from the Losing the Mandate of Heaven when he discussed Daoism, Confucianism, the Boxer Rebellion and the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Anthony is a Master's student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico. He graduated with a history degree from the University of South Florida. He's also a regularly published literary writer.

Anthony is here to discuss atheism in China.

Last time, I described the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. Karl Marx is quoted as having said religion is the opium of the people. (“Die Religion...ist das Opium des Volkes”) Marx was very critical of religion. Communist states are generally atheist, although I understand the Jewish Autonomous Oblasts in the Soviet Union and some Muslim parts of the USSR were authorized to practice religion during Stalin's reign.

One author I've read suggests that communism, nationalism, and fascism could be called religions themselves.

The Chinese in the early 20th century knew plenty about opium and its vices, but today's discussion is about atheism and not opium.

Atheism and communism generally go together.

Anthony, what can you tell us about atheism in China? Especially independently of communism. How atheistic were the Chinese people before the communists came to power in China?

Anthony Vernon:

Well Paul, thank you so much for having me. And before I go off on answering that question, I just want to say some details have happily changed.

I have since earned my MA in Philosophy and am now an MFA student and instructor at Oklahoma State University, but...

Paul Hesse:

Congratulations. Congratulations on your master's degree.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. But in terms of atheism in China before the 1920s, we really don't have much to look at. We do see some pre-communist revolution critiques of religious practice, but we really don't have anything that can be pointed to as atheist.

The closest we get to is Zhu Xi, who is sometimes considered a Confucian agnostic. However, this seems to be more so due to his tolerance of Daoism and Buddhism, and there doesn't seem to be any point pre communist revolution where you really have irreligious ideas in China or have individuals conceive of anything close to irreligiosity. But simply critiquing religious traditions that are potentially their own tradition, but maybe aspects of that tradition they don't like or pointing to other religious traditions. Daoists maybe making fun of Buddhists or Confucists and you know, we can switch that triangle around in different directions.

Paul Hesse:

All right, thank you.

Maybe let's talk about what is a religion. And I say that in the sense that a lot of people in the West are used to monotheistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam. On the other hand, Chinese people, pre-communism, there were not members of Christianity or Judaism or Islam in huge numbers, but there certainly were people in China who were Christians, who were Muslims and so on.

There certainly was quite a tradition of Buddhism. You've already mentioned Confucianism and Daoism. Which of those are religions?

Anthony Vernon:

The Chinese sense of religion, and this is both linguistically using Cantonese and Mandarin. The term for religion is the same as philosophy. There is no separate word in any of the major Chinese languages that distinguishes between religion and philosophy, at least not truly before western intervention. And we mean western intervention after a long time. So, even with the emergence of the Chinese Revolution, this linguistic distinction wasn't really made. There have been some attempts at trying to correlate and explain, but there's really no proper way of doing it. For the Chinese for a very, very long time, and still to this day, for many, there is no separation between one's religion and one's philosophy.

Philosophy is religion, and religion is philosophy, and there's something distinct about the Chinese religion is that they're also referred to as the Chinese philosophies. Even in academic settings in the West, we really have a tough time distinguishing between the two. And that's because these religions are so philosophically rich.

And this isn't to undermine the philosophical depth of religions like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. But they're less explicitly philosophical and the way these religions, particularly Western religions, answer metaphysical questions are a lot more ham-fisted. Whereas the Chinese religions have a lot more rich debate going on with the metaphysical questions.

Zhuangzi often disagrees with Laozi on matters where the Neo Confucians very much disagree with Confucius on particular matters. So, there seems to be more an adjustment and a flexibility and the strange thing that occurs is that when one, in the Chinese sense, practices a philosophy, they're also practicing a set of religious traditions, and they're infusing religious assumptions in.

The definition we have for religion in the Western sense is just simply not compatible in the Chinese sense. And that's what makes the understanding of Chinese atheism and irreligiosity so difficult. Because of the way that these native Chinese religions, and we'll talk about how Buddhism got seen as a native Chinese religion, that these native Chinese religions got viewed and got incorporated into the culture and got seen as philosophies. How that kind of shaped the way atheism and irreligiosity are understood in the Chinese context in this day and age and when the Communist party in China was arising.

Paul Hesse:

Okay, well why don't we turn to that. So, Daoism and Confucianism developed in China.

Anthony Vernon:

Yes.

Paul Hesse:

Buddhism, I guess, came over from India.

Anthony Vernon:

Yes.

Paul Hesse:

And then was integrated into Chinese culture a long time ago. Do you want to talk about more of that and where you were going with your last comments?

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah. Basically, Buddhism entrenched itself so long and original forms of Buddhism developed in China that it got seen as a Chinese tradition.

For example, Chan, which is the father of Zen Buddhism, developed in China. There's very distinctly Chinese forms of Buddhism that have enough distinctions and separations from the places that they remain dominant to this day and the places they developed.

And I mean, it's crazy, but it's true that there is more Buddhism in China than there is in India. And we're not just talking about sheer numbers, we're talking about per capita also. In a sense, Buddhism became more Chinese than Indian.

I mean, in this day and age, and with the rise of Modi's party, India's trying to, and hopefully unsuccessfully, establish itself as an only Hindu state. And the thing with that is that India, nationally, is trying to disidentify with Buddhism, whereas China very much identifies with Buddhism as a part of its culture, as a part of its development.

When the other Western religions came in, this was the way that the Chinese figured out how to distinguish apart their own cultures and religions versus the cultures and religions that were coming in. They were basically able to say that these religions that had developed were part of Chinese culture. They're part of the Chinese nation state. They're part of the Chinese understanding and way of being, even if one of them wasn't developed in-house.

Nonetheless, it's been around enough in-house where it's part of the culture, whereas these are such new impositions and have not had time to develop with the culture. These are clearly bad and imposing religions. Whereas Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism came to be seen as more cultural staples than religious staples.

But of course, this took some time. Because in the initial sweep of things and the initial rise of the Communist Party, these traditions of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism were seen as being highly problematic initially and in the modern sense now because they're incorporated with the Chinese culture, they have been given some leeway as being able to be compatible with Chinese atheism and Chinese irreligiosity.

Paul Hesse:

Have I understood you correctly, if I understand you to say that the Chinese communist state or communist administration interpreted atheism or irreligiosity, if it interpreted atheism to mean that we reject foreign religions. That means we reject Christianity, we reject Judaism. But that Buddhism, that Daoism, that Confucianism is something separate.

It is part of Chinese culture and therefore is something different than religion.

Anthony Vernon:

Yes. This is a later development, a more recent development. The other thing that gave the Communist Party, later on, the excuse to, mark Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism as part of an atheist regime, is the fact that they're also highly philosophical, right?

Whereas these other Western traditions, like we've talked about before, are of course, rife with philosophy, but less strictly philosophical. In the initial days, however, when the CCP was coming to power in China, they of course were inspired by Marx. And the Marx quote you brought up is very relevant.

They were very, very honed in on Marxist critiques of religion. In the early days, they viewed figures such as Laozi and Confucius as one being overly superstitious. Also assisting capitalists in maintaining class order. So, the CCP, decided that moving away from religion was best for the state because it got rid of superstitions.

That would allow the state to industrialize and be more scientific, but also it got rid of a tool that capitalists could use to control the masses. They took, of course, the line about opium very seriously, I mean. China saw how in many ways their masses were controlled in part by the British through opium, and they viewed religion as being a drug in the same way.

They did not see Laozi and Confucius as being useful because at the time when the CCP was initially coming to power, they were trying to be part of the global Soviet also, right? The initial CCP was not as concerned with nationalistic elements as it is in this day and age. They weren't concerned about necessarily preserving Chinese nationalistic culture and having communism with Chinese flavors outright. Although they did want to maintain some of those flavors, but not to the Nth degree that they do now.

So, they were very willing to get rid of cultural staples like Laozi and Confucius because they thought that these cultural staples were more harmful to the progression of China's in stricken folks with poverty. They wanted to get people out of poverty first and foremost, and they saw religion and especially the main religions as a hindrance to this progress. Because the main religions, especially Daoism, had a lot of folk and superstition elements.

A lot of people to this day are still using Chinese folk medicine that come from these traditions and instead of using medicines that have more scientifically provable, advantageous. So, that was the concern in the initial phases. And then some developments came in that kind of flipped the script on that.

Paul Hesse:

If I understand you correctly, in the early years of the Chinese Communist Party, when it was still reliant on the Soviet Union and Comintern, it was receiving funds and weapons from the Soviet Union. At that point, it was against all religions, not just Western religions, but also mystical Chinese religions like Daoism, but also Confucianism, I would imagine. Because Confucianism is very conservative in many ways. It's certainly not a revolutionary ideology in the communist sense.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah.

Interestingly enough, though, despite of its conservatism, it was the more mystical religions of Daoism and Buddhism that got the brunt. And that's just because, the Chinese home and family life and structure was shaped so much by Confucianism. The way the Chinese understand how to structure a home: that everyone lives together, that the grandparents stay in, that oldest brother follows father, father follows his father, so on and so forth, right? These things were actually harder to remove from the culture, right?

The elements of Confucianism that they really wanted to put aside were the elements about obeying the king and emperors and dukes and these notions of certain people kind of belong in certain places, not by birthright, but by certain merits.

Because obviously, due to capitalist critiques, they were very critical of merit-based activities. Because, in the sense that they believed everyone's merit was being undermined, and that merit was often an excuse towards keeping people down. In a sense there was a lot of critiques towards Confucianism, but it was the more ritualistic faith that got put down.

And this is also because in a strange way these sort of faiths were also seen as being closer to the superstition-ness that the Western religions had and less of the philosophical-ness that Confucianism had. Because Confucianism has a very practical philosophy to it. Whereas Daoism, it can be practical in many ways, but it's a lot more ethereal in its initial metaphysics and a lot harder to grasp in certain ways.

And Buddhism is an extremely metaphysical tradition, even though the Buddha tries not to talk about metaphysics. The most interesting aspects, at least in my opinion, of that faith are its metaphysical arguments.

But the issue at hand also is that the CCP looked at these faiths and were like, okay, Buddhist ethics are interesting, but we don't need the Buddhism to do it.

Let's take what is good and leave out the rest. The Confucian family structure we like, and this makes sense for us. We take that and leave out the rest. And Daoism, they really couldn't find much use. Laozi was kind of the most trashed figure in the rise of Chinese atheism. And, to this day, Daoism has had a very hard bounce back in recovery due to the large amount of targeting the CCP had towards Daoism in particular.

Paul Hesse:

That's interesting. I've been to China and I've seen Buddhist temples in China. So even now they exist and some of them are very old. I'm sure there's been up and down history on them. And certainly, with Confucianism, there's been an up and down history within the People's Republic. I mean, this isn't the moment to get into the Cultural Revolution. But there certainly were times during the Cultural Revolution, when everything old was being attacked, including Confucianism. Including old Ming tombs being dug up and so on.

But one thing that I've experienced with a person from mainland China today is that person identifies as an atheist, but also speaks about revering ancestors and that there are a lot of traditions, perhaps spirituality, incense burning and so on, associated with ancestor reverence or worship. What would you say about that?

Anthony Vernon:

I think before getting into that directly, it's important to know that the atheism of China is largely a political push and that the atheism of the Chinese Communist Party as official party doctrine is a hard atheist doctrine.

What I mean by that, it's an atheist doctrine that removes the possibility of God, right? There is just a hard no. There's not even hints or sprinkles of agnosticism in there. And it's not the atheism of disbelief in all the God claims. It's a disbelief in any God claim that could possibly be presented.

A soft atheism is something closer to, like out of all the God claims I've seen, I'm not convinced by any of them. You could potentially present me with one, but I remain an atheist because there is no proof.

Whereas the hard atheist would say, there is no possible proof. There is nothing you could ever give me that could dictate a God being the case.

So, you have that as official party doctrine mixed in, with that folk elements never really went away, even with the cultural push and the Cultural Revolution, right? There was a need for the Cultural Revolution according to Mao because he saw how implanted in folk elements were and realized that a revolution needed to occur to push these things out.

It did not succeed. It was an unsuccessful revolution in the long term. The country was too spread out. The elements were too entrenched in and technologically at the time there were not the means to dissipate them. And over time, the Communist Party saw that these folk elements, as long as they were not claimed to be religiosity, were no threat to the regime itself.

So, it kind of became this thing where people held onto their traditions but did not make the metaphysical claims out loud. Now, whether they believed in themselves, I'm not going to speak for individuals. They may, in some cases. They may not. I do not know. But these folk elements became more akin to the type of person who has lost their Catholic faith, but will still show up to their abuela's funeral, right?

Where they'll listen to the Latin sermon, you know. They'll pray with everybody. They'll see the things on the cross, right? So, there's still a respect and reverence, but the belief is not there. It's one of those things where it's so old and so enrooted and it belongs to not only a great-grandfather, but a great-great-grandfather and a great-great-grandfather that you would almost lose a sense of home and a sense of identity without these traditions. Without the respect and without the reverence.

And in a sense, it would also be a loss of Chineseness. What makes, in large part for many people, I shouldn't say all, but many people, what makes them feel a part of the broader Chinese culture. That's kind of how these two things are able to go together. Its practice of particular rituals and particular reverences, without having certain claims.

I mean, there seems to be no contradiction in saying I'm an atheist, but also my ancestors may be in the spirit realm. These two can perfectly go together. Or there doesn't seem to be any claim. Oh, there's no possibility of a God and I'm still going to make a shrine for my deceased grandfather.

You know, these two things can go together logically also. And I'm sure that's something that a lot of people personally have been able to make the connection towards also on top of all this.

Paul Hesse:

And today, the Chinese state will often talk about socialism with Chinese characteristics or communism with Chinese characteristics.

So, I suppose that could be said to be a Chinese characteristic. It's like this Chinese cultural asterisk beside the Karl Marx hostility towards religion.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah. And, with the break that China had from the Comintern, they focused more on these Chinese characteristics and allowed for more of these Chinese characteristics.

Not in the initial days of the split, but over time as there was further emphasis into the Chinese characteristics.  You have individuals like Xi Jinping in tiny ways promoting the reintroduction of talking about Confucius and Laozi. Because the point being made, is that China wants to talk about its rich cultural and philosophical and even religious history to a degree. Because the philosophical is the religious.

So, they want to show the contributions that they've made to global history and global thought. China's trying to show itself in the modern sense as a player on the global stage. Not just now, but throughout time. To show their right as being a global player now. An advantage that they have over the United States in larger geopolitical games.

And so there has been this idea, at least in Communist China, that we can look at these figures in their cultural sense without having the belief to match. That we can do rituals at home and hold ritual practice without holding particular belief. Now, whether belief can be enforced, that's a whole other thing. But that's just how the Chinese Communist Party has been able to justify these tendencies of not only saying they're an atheist state but being an atheist state, while tolerating folk religious practice. While even, in part, promoting the study of religious figures.

Paul Hesse:

I think you said something important earlier when you said, as long as it doesn't threaten the state or threaten the party's place in the state. If it was politically threatening, then that would be a separate question.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah. And this isn't to say that this is an exclusively Chinese thing. I'm not trying to be out here to necessarily villainize any nation state or any political party over any other. I mean, we can look at this right now in the United States where, you know, certain medical practices are being banned due to belief systems, right?

So legal and belief systems always kind of carry into each other, right? The Christianity of conservative states dictates medical practice in the same way the belief practices of the Chinese Communist Party affect the home life. So, there's always this game that occurs in modern politics where the belief of a political entity very much shapes the personal lives. In turn, then shapes the religious practice.

There's this thing where belief affects belief, in sort of a belief domino and fundamentally alters how people go about religious practice. Because one of the things that's very easy to forget about religious practice, it doesn't just exist in a religious bubble.

It exists in geopolitical and socioeconomic context.

Paul Hesse:

Indeed, and China's trying to show itself to be a great nation. And that's part of why it's cultural revival, telling the thousands of years history of Chinese culture, is part of the party's priority right now.

What else can you tell us about atheism in China?

Anthony Vernon:

Well, in regards to atheism in China, it's very self-reported, right? In regards to how we know the stats about irreligiosity. In its current context, at least how the numbers are reported we can point to China as one of the most irreligious states in the world, if not the most irreligious. Depending on the numbers and figures and calculations et cetera.

Which is a crazy turn, from before 1920s there not really being the concept of atheism, irreligiosity in the state, at least to a large degree against small elements, but not really. So, we have this dramatic turn and we really don't see a shift in religious thought happening faster.

The only example of expediency we have of this degree about religion spreading this fast is the early Islamic empires. The Umayyads and the Abbasids who were able to expand Islam. Mainly the Umayyads, of course, expanding Islam to an incredibly fast degree, but this turn of Chinese irreligiosity is even faster.

It's very interesting from a sociological standpoint how you can alter individual self-reported beliefs so fast. And a lot of this was done intentionally. This wasn't a natural change. Kind of like how in the United States irreligiosity is increasing and I would say it's more natural.

Yes, it's still a very fast compared to past religious trends, but it's more natural through the internet. And yes, it sounds weird saying the internet's natural, but natural in the sense of not being coaxed by entities of power. But in this case, it's a nation state, particularly aiming towards irreligiosity and achieving it in large part.

The most accurate numbers put about 75% of the state as holding irreligious views. So, while I did say earlier that the cultural revolution failed, it still found a lot of success and in a sense it's still an ongoing project as shown through the irreligiosity of China, which in a weird sense, is not growing at this point.

It's actually going backwards. But nonetheless it's a force in China that now cannot be removed from the zeitgeist unless something equally as dramatic happens.

Paul Hesse:

You said something interesting there, Anthony. You said that the trend may be changing.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah. More particularly, I should say amongst the Han Chinese. But it does kind of translate to the population as a whole. Because the majority of the population is, of course, Han Chinese. And I think the reason why, is because with this openness of the CCP to talk about the existence of Confucius and Laozi and the Buddha. On the matters of self-reporting, individuals feel more comfortable to report outside of being irreligious or atheist.

And there doesn't seem to be any punishments that come with reporting oneself as holding to religious beliefs. The only thing you can't be is an official party member. And some people are willing to sacrifice party membership to be open about their religion.

However, where the trend is getting worse is in the minority populations in Tibet and the Uyghurs to the northwest.

The issue at hand here...

Paul Hesse:

There are documented cases of minority repression or religious repression in those provinces.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah. That stuff. To say the least. To give it a painfully small summarization.

But in these populations, religion is repressed because the party stance is still atheism. So, while they won't repress members of the Han per se, right. There is a Han privilege that exists in China.

These minority populations that hold on to other faiths that aren't the ones being prescribed by the Han. The Buddhism of Tibet is very different from the Buddhism of the rest of China. It's a particular form.

The Tibetan Buddhism is its own rich tradition, and then Islam, which is very much seen as an outside tradition in China. These forces have been repressed and brutalized and put down with things like the Chinese Communist Party wanting to install the next Dalai Lama and, of course, the massive prison camps.

Paul Hesse:

In Xinjiang.

Anthony Vernon:

Yeah, Xinjiang. And for the Uighurs, not just in Xinjiang, but mainly in Xinjiang for sure.

And with this happening amongst these populations, it's hard to get an honest reading on what's happening with their religious numbers. We can presume in part that they are by official numbers and official stats. China's going to report that they're going down. But, of course, there also may be a countervalence to that amongst the people's true internal beliefs that they might see this outside oppressive force and hold on tighter to their religious traditions.

It's really hard to know. So, while the overall numbers of religious individuals that report as being religious are going up. It is a complicated picture, nonetheless. And I’m glad that you asked me this question because I definitely don't want to oversimplify that. The party is still very brutal on religion at times, but they're very selective and they don't want it to be those who are seen as being proper Chinese getting the brutalization. It's more of the territorial entities they hold and states that are not seen as properly belonging to what is seen as normal Chinese, if that makes any sense.

Paul Hesse:

Well, I think perhaps I'm viewing it in a certain way, but I think it's also a question of does it harm the Party? And I think a decision has been made that some Han Chinese going to a Buddhist temple is not harming the Chinese state or the Chinese Communist Party. But on the other hand, if autonomous regions had strong and different beliefs, ones that the Chinese Communist Party might label as feudal or foreign, that's a different question.

Anthony Vernon:

And I think you're completely right there, especially with nailing the feudal aspects of Tibetan Buddhism. Because the Dalai Lama is seen not only as the religious leader of Tibet, but he's also seen in many ways as a political leader. Whereas Islam is very much a foreign imposition and seen as a threat to the state because China really has no interest in getting pulled closer to the Arab world. It has an alliance with Pakistan, but it wants to keep it as sort of distant from religious matters and more focused on the geo-politics of that.

I think you're very much right that the Han going to temple or practicing folk practices is not seen as a threat, Whereas these elements that are seen as feudal or foreign are seen as a threat to the Chinese Communist party's power.

Paul Hesse:

Anthony, I'd like to thank you for joining me today, talking about atheism and religion in China.

Anthony Vernon:

And thank you for having me. It's always been a pleasure coming on and I hope we could do this again if there's an opportunity.

Paul Hesse:

Appreciate it and congratulations again on your master's degree.

Anthony Vernon:

Thank you.