Zhe JI Non - institutional Religious Re - composition among the Chinese Youth

This article seeks answers to the perplexing phenomenon: the increasing widespread youth religiosity in contemporary China. How is it possible for young people to acquire such religiosity in a society where the state vigorously opposes religion through its policy and practice? Using data from my own and others’ field observation and investigations, I show that in the past two decades, religious representations and practices have filtered to the Chinese through a variety of secular and non-institutional forms in the widening social and cultural space. These new reformulations of the religious traditions in turn have provided the youth with a wealth of symbolic framework from which they can select according to their personal needs. To some extent, the strict state control of the religious institutions contributes ironically to the thriving growth of the individual, non-institutional and sectarian forms of the religiosity among the youth in contemporary China.