The time–space tactics of Chinese Buddhist and Taoist believers under state–religion tension

2021 ◽  
pp. 0920203X2110609
Author(s):  
Wing Chung Ho ◽  
Lin Li
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Regulatory Control ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Ethnographic Observation ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Ruling Party

This study explores the experience of elderly rural Buddhist and Taoist believers in communist China where the ruling party has maintained decades-long regulatory control over religion. Based on ethnographic observation and oral histories, the analysis begins with how the actors made sense of and coped in their relationship with the state during the fieldwork period (May–June 2020) when state regulations restricted public religious practice because of COVID-19. The analysis then looks back on how practitioners experienced tightening state ideological control from the early 2010s to before COVID-19; further back at the religious revival during the opening and reform (1980s–2010s); and finally, the Cultural Revolution period (1960s–70s) when strict atheistic measures were imposed. Their narratives reveal the practical logic (habitus) which practitioners used to mediate their resistance against and compromise with the authoritarian state. Specifically, four logical modes that involve actors’ different time–space tactics were identified, namely state–religion disengagement, state–religion enhancement, religious (dis)enlightenment, and karma. The implications of these ostensibly conflicting modes of thinking in mediating the actors’ resistance–compliance interface in contemporary China are discussed.

Two Countries, Five Years: Islam in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan through the Lens of Public Opinion Surveys

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Junisbai ◽  
Azamat Junisbai ◽  
Baurzhan Zhussupov
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
Daily Prayer ◽  
Cross National

Drawing on two waves of public opinion surveys conducted in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we investigate the rise in religiosity and orthodoxy among Central Asian Muslims. We confirm that a religious revival is underway, with nearly 100 percent of Kazakhstani and Kyrgyzstani Muslims self-identifying as such in 2012—up from 80 percent in Kazakhstan in 2007. If we dig a bit deeper, however, we observe cross-national variations. Religious practice, as measured by daily prayer and weekly mosque attendance, is up in Kyrgyzstan, but has fallen in Kazakhstan. While the share of those who express preferences associated with religious orthodoxy has grown in both, this group has more than doubled in Kazakhstan. We attribute these differences to political context, both in terms of cross-national political variation and, within each country, variation based on regional differences.

scholarly journals Love as a Liberation in Anchee Min’s "Wild Ginger"

2021 ◽  
pp. 185-192
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Karavaeva
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Home Country ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Citizen ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
Religious Feeling ◽  
Communist China ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
The Times ◽  
Love Triangle

The article explores the motif of love in a totalitarian society in Anchee Min’s novel “Wild Ginger”. Though an American citizen, Anchee Min belongs to a group of modern Chinese-American writers whose interests focus around the past of her home country China. Childhood and teenage years which Min spent in Communist China provided her with a lot of material for her later novels. In Wild Ginger through a classic plot of love triangle the writer approaches the motif of love in the times of Cultural Revolution. The author examines love as a relationship between a man and a woman, and as a religious feeling and communist ideology. Grotesque becomes the main literary device. Over-exaggeration bordering on incredibility expresses the author’s rejection of the surrounding reality. Intertwining comical and tragical situations, the novels brings the reader to a conclusion that love is the only means of attainting personal freedom and maturity in a totalitarian society.  

scholarly journals Online and Offline Religion in China: A Protestant WeChat “Alter-Public” through the Bible Handcopying Movement

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 561
Author(s):  
Carsten Vala ◽  
Jianbo Huang
Keyword(s):  
Religious Practice ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Authoritarian State ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Development Levels ◽  
A Site ◽  
State Restrictions ◽  
Chinese Citizen ◽  
Online Group

Studies of digital religion frequently take democratic regime settings and developed economic contexts for granted, leaving regime and economic development levels as background factors (Campbell 2013). However, in China, the role of the authoritarian state, restrictions on religion, and rapid social change mean that online and offline religious practices will develop in distinct ways. This article analyzes the 2019 Bible handcopying movement promoted through China’s most popular social media WeChat as a way to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of China’s most widely used translation of the Bible. Drawing on interviews by and communication with the movement’s founder, the co-authors participated in and collected postings from a 500-member WeChat group from March to August 2019. We argue that while offline handcopying is an innovation in religious practice due to Chinese cultural and historical traditions, the online group constitutes a micro-scale “alter-public” (Chen 2015; Warner 2002), a site for religious discussion, prayer, and devotion that strengthens an “alternative” Protestant identity alongside that of Chinese citizen of the People’s Republic of China.

The Role of the Military in the Formation of Revolutionary Committees 1967–68

1970 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 112-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Domes
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Process ◽  
High Tide ◽  
Popular Resistance ◽  
Regional Leadership ◽  
Communist China ◽  
New Type ◽  
Attitudinal Response ◽  
The Military

When, at a moment of high tide in the Cultural Revolution, the first Revolutionary Committee was established in the Manchurian province of Heilungkiang on 31 January 1967, a new type of leadership organ appeared on the Chinese scene, indicating drastic changes in the regional power structure. At the beginning, these Revolutionary Committees were supposed to act as “temporary supreme organs of power” (Lin-shih tsui-kao ch'üan-li chi-kou), in which capacity they combined the local and regional leadership of party, administration, economy and mass organizations. During the four weeks preceding the formation of the Heilungkiang Committee, violent activity by newly formed Maoist organizations in a number of Chinese provinces and cities had been answered by wide-spread popular resistance, which was in many cases instigated by the local and regional Party leadership. Facing this resistance, Mao Tse-tung, in a personal mandate to his First Deputy and presumptive successor, Lin Piao, on 17 or 18 January 1967 ordered the military to intervene in the power-struggle between Maoists and anti-Maoists. The immediate attitudinal response of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), however, was not wholly convincing. Nevertheless, this call for the military to support the faltering Maoist counterattack against “revisionist” oppositional forces marks the beginning of a definite rise in military influence on the political process in Communist China.

Russia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Church Membership ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Political Character

Chapter 7 addresses the question of how, after seventy years during which religion was violently suppressed, a religious reawakening could have occurred within a few years that is unparalleled in the post-communist states. According to the empirical data, many signs speak for a religious renaissance in Russia. Not only has church membership increased by about 30 per cent, but also belief in God. However, the religious revival can be hardly attributed to a deep-rooted religious mentality, and forms of religious practice are barely used. The religious renaissance in Russia has less a religious than a national and political character, with most people equating being Russian with being Orthodox. Talk should therefore be of a borrowed religious boom, one that has less to do with the internal dynamics of the religious than with political, cultural, and economic factors.

Cultural Revolution

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard King
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Bright Future ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Function ◽  
State Patronage ◽  
Ruling Party

Culture served communist-ruled states by presenting a vision of nations and peoples in transition from a dark and oppressive past into the projected bright future of communism. National and party leaders followed Lenin in ascribing great importance to the persuasive powers of the arts and insisting on their incorporation into the machinery of government. Artists creating works of literature, film, and the performing and visual arts according to the official doctrine of socialist realism presented images of new socialist persons overcoming difficulties and accomplishing tasks to instruct and entertain their audiences. While they might enjoy the benefits of state patronage, artists also risked condemnation and punishment if their works displeased the ruling party and its leadership. The arts of socialism have largely lost their political function and are now viewed as nostalgic memorabilia or kitsch.

The Increasing Power of Lin Piao and the Party-Soldiers 1959–1966

1968 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 38-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph L. Powell
Keyword(s):  
Power Factor ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The State ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Government Structure ◽  
Communist China ◽  
The Military

The events of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” have resulted in Lin Piao becoming the heir apparent of Mao Tse-tung while the armed forces have become the principal power factor in Communist China. However, much of the basis for the greatly expanded roles and power of Lin and the military establishment was actually laid in the period 1959–66. In considerable part, Lin Piao and his lieutenants gained power by establishing themselves as “the most loyal” supporters and potential heirs of the venerable, charismatic Mao Tsetung. In addition, for several years they have been carefully infiltrating into numerous key institutions of the state and Party and have played an important role in seeking to purge the opposition. Many of Marshal Lin's supporters and some of his opponents are professional party-soldiers, who have long been the Party's senior specialists in military affairs. Legally these men no longer have the title of marshal or general, for ranks were officially abolished in June 1965. However, since these powerful figures continue to dominate the massive armed forces, while extending their influence much further into the battered party and government structure, it will help to clarify a complex struggle if those who are primarily party-soldiers are still designated by their previous military ranks. For example, after the party reorganisation of August 1966 there were eight former marshals on the list of members of the new Politburo of the Party.

Embodying Maoism: The swimming craze, the Mao cult, and body politics in Communist China, 1950s–1970s

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (05) ◽  
pp. 1450-1485
Author(s):  
SHUK-WAH POON
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
Constructive Process ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Communist China ◽  
The Masses ◽  
New Phase

AbstractMao Zedong's historic swim in the Yangtze River on 16 July 1966, which heralded a new phase of the Cultural Revolution, was a carefully staged political performance and a notable example of body politics in Communist China. Beginning in the late 1950s, Mao began to broadcast the idea that he was a keen swimmer and to convince the masses to take up swimming. The swim was the climax of those efforts and an integral part of the Mao cult. Swimming in Mao's China offers a useful lens for understanding the close relationship between sports, the body, and politics. Swimming was a means for Mao to mobilize mass support for his political authority and a venue for the masses to practise and perform Maoism. This article examines the constructive process and meanings of Mao's swimming body, and the extent to which the bodies of the populace were regulated through the mass-swimming craze. Drawing on untapped archival materials related to mass swimming in Mao's China, this article argues that swimming both solidified and destabilized the Mao cult and became a venue through which political values were shaped, indoctrinated, contested, and repudiated.

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