A Solo, a Duet, or an Ensemble? Analysing the Recent Development of Religious Communities in Contemporary Rural China

This publication may be reproduced for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring or lending of this publication is strictly prohibited. The Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) is a three-year project funded by the European Union to provide advice on China to European policy-makers. It aims to establish a wide network of experts and institutions across Europe who share a common interest in China. For more information, please contact the ECRAN office: [email protected] The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of ECRAN or the European Union. Introduction In contemporary China, a society experiencing rapid economic, social and institutional transition, religious communities are important due to their international and domestic significance. On the one hand, with its close links to important political issues such as minority ethnic group unrest, religious freedom in China has been a hot topic within international human rights debates for decades (Wong 2001; Kolodner 1994); on the other hand, burgeoning religious communities are considered powerful emerging social forces in China's domestic political arena, especially at the grassroots level (Chung et al. 2006; Tsai 2007). Under such circumstances it is no surprise that discussions of 'religious freedom' and 'religious harmony' have frequently appeared in China's official discourse since 1982, when the Central Government's Document No. 19 officially acknowledged the unjust nature of its radical anti-religious policies between 1957 and 1978 and reconfirmed that 'the Party's principal religious policy is to respect and protect religious freedom' 1. Nevertheless, complementary laws and regulations for the implementation of religious freedom have remained frustratingly insufficient and ambiguous in China over the past three decades. This ambiguity has created ample space for interpretation, has provided political opportunity structures for both policy implementers and religious groups, 2 and has made it impossible to assess the development of religious communities in China by simply looking at formal legal and political institutions at the national level. Accurate empirical data and first-hand local knowledge are therefore indispensable for understanding the religious community in contemporary China and its recent developments. [accessed Mar 5, 2012]). 2 Research on petitioning in rural China has demonstrated how grassroots elites and ordinary people use the Constitution, laws and official regulations to protect their rights and pursue their demands. Kevin O'Brien and Li Lianjiang find that petitioning in rural China is more likely to …