Contemporary Chinese Policy Concerning Religion

Abstract

The last forty years of Reform and Opening Up in China have brought many changes and corrections in the policies of the Chinese state towards religion. Those policies were incorporated into the overall state policy and recognised as an important part of the Party’s work. The theoretical basis for the state religious policy is the so-called “theory of religion with Chinese characteristics”. In 2015, Xi Jinping for the first time stated the need for “persisting in the Sinicisation of religion”. His particular understanding of “Sinicisation” applies not only to the foreign religions such as Islam or Christianity, but to indigenous Daoism as well, which implies that, in the modern official parlance of the PRC, the term “Sinicisation of religion” has a new meaning, different from the more traditional understandings of the word. In fact, it has been translated in English-language publications as the “Chinafication of religion”; an even more appropriate translation, however, would be the “PRC-isation of religion”, as the afore-mentioned “Sinicisation” most of all means obedience to the CCP’s rule and “adaptation to the needs of the socialist society”. This article outlines the evolution of the theory of religion with Chinese characteristics as it is understood and presented in official publications, and attempts to analyse the scope of the prescribed “Sinicisation of religion” in modern China.