Introduction: Religious Revival of Ethnic China

Over the past three decades, Chinese “ethnic areas” (minzu diqu) have experienced widespread religious revival. Religious populations are steadily increasing as the religious infrastructure expands under governmental or non-governmental sponsorship. The restoration of sacred sites appeals to the larger ethnic populations for reasons relating to community and identity (re-)creation. The officially recognised religions are reviving different regimes of transcendence in the ethnically diversified localities. Unofficial, transnational, or radical movements and denominations are engaging in activities either in the sphere of underground proselytising or non-governmental organisation (NGO) instruments. Popular religions are being legitimised through ethnic renaissance and are being embraced by astonishingly large populations. They are also being commercialised by local state agents who are given incentives to generate revenue by translating invented traditions into tourist attractions. Ancestor veneration and the Daoist rituals of consulting almanacs, geomancy, horoscopes and spirit mediums are seasoned with ethnic flavour. However, growing social, political and economic disparities are engendering greater anxiety among people who are seeking answers through the old ways such as oracle reading, mask dances, sutra chanting or karma fairs. The flow of capital, symbols, ideas and practices nationally and globally also poses unprecedented problems of religious pluralism in these increasingly mobile multi-ethnic areas.

Religious revival and ethnic tensions are two emerging challenges to China as well as to the field of China Studies. The subject of religious revival in ethnic areas is rarely broached either in empirical studies or theoretical analysis. The lack of knowledge is partly attributed to the old departmentalisation of disciplines introduced by early intellectuals, i.e., the study of “Chinese religions” has traditionally focused on Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism and the so-called “popular religions”, whereas Buddhism practised in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, Islam in Xinjiang and the northwest, and of Christianity among the Hmong and the Lisu ethnic minorities, have been classified as not “Chinese”. However, 64 per cent of the PRC’s landmass, currently inhabited by over 200 million ethnic people alone, has been under the jurisdiction of “ethnic regional autonomy” for decades. This has always prompted aggressive questioning from scholars of “Chinese religions”. Should they cover alternative centralities, cultural hybridity, connectedness and syncretism? In my cynical view, with the ongoing challenges and periodic breakout of crises related to ethnic-cum-religious issues, is it justifiable for social scientists to look only at China’s “eastern half ”?

This special issue examines the current revival of religious faith and practices in China’s ethnic areas, and investigates the rationale and variations of revival, as well as the implications to China and Asia. It seeks to move beyond the general discussions of applicability of the state-society model to more sophisticated interpretations based on empirical and ethnographic study of the ethnic areas. The five articles here attempt to explore China’s ethnic segregation, ethno-religious nationalism, risk society and folk religion, appropriation of religious practice and temple restoration. Each article focuses on issues of particular importance and can be read in retrospect to draw a unique perspective, but the authors agree that empirical studies on Chinese religion and ethnicity should contextualise the larger challenges of China and Asia in general.

The first article, by Ma Rong, lays out China’s “dual structure” of Han versus ethnic minorities, a dichotomy which is extremely palpable but largely neglected. Tracing its historical roots, Ma argues that the ethnic classification project in the 1950s, together with the high sensitivity attached to the ethnic issues, tight control of discourse and preferential policies, make ethnic minorities increasingly isolated from the overall Chinese society. The dichotomy is manifested in the academic community, education system, government and entertainment industry. Ethnic separation is so ubiquitous that one can argue that, under the current policies, the ethnic minorities are preferentially segregated from the Han under a form of positive discrimination. The article brings forth how Chinese society in general, and the academic circle in particular, view the ethnic minorities. They are “seeing like a state”, by which China is examined only by half as far as many disciplines of social sciences are concerned. This article contextualises the religious issues in the ethnic areas...