Buddhists A Majority In China As Christianity’s Growth Struggles
The growth of Christianity in China has stagnated over the past decade, while one-third of the country’s adult population identifies as Buddhist, according to a new report.
A Pew Research Center report issued Wednesday found that only 10% of Chinese adults identified with any religious group — but the number rose significantly when survey questions focused on spirituality, customs and superstitions.
Since Pew Research could not conduct its own survey about religion in China, the center said its “demographers combed through data from various other sources — primarily surveys run by Chinese universities — to discern recent trends.”
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“Depending on the source used, estimates of the share of Chinese people who can be described as religious in some way — because they identify with a religion, hold religious beliefs or engage in practices that have a spiritual or religious component — range from less than 10% to more than 50%,” the report said.
China, which has a population of 1.4 billion, is governed by a totalitarian government and officially considered an atheist state. The country’s Communist government formally recognizes Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism are recognized separately) and Islam. Over the past two decades, there has been a growing recognition of Confucianism and Chinese folk religion as part of the Asian country’s cultural heritage.
“Another challenge in measuring religion in China is that some affiliations, beliefs and practices are less officially acceptable than others — and thus, presumably, less comfortable for Chinese people to disclose in surveys,” Pew said in its report.
In recent years, government enforcement has varied by province, but since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, local officials have been less likely to overlook such activities.
Religions that are not officially recognized are subject to a host of controls, while groups like Falun Gong are completely banned. Muslims, primarily Uyghurs, face harsh treatment. The U.S. State Department has described abuses against Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as genocide. The government has also increasingly persecuted Protestants and Catholics.
Only 10% of the population identified with any religious group in the 2018 Chinese General Social Survey.
However, it should be noted that the language wording of this question — “What is your religious (zongjiao 宗教) belief (xinyang 信仰)?” — can be understood in China to measure formal commitment to an organized faith tradition.
As a result, just 13% of Chinese adults say religion (zongjiao) is “very important” or “rather important” in their lives, according to the 2018 World Values Survey, which Pew used to compile its data.
“Although these measures have fluctuated over time,” the report added, “none have clearly risen over the last 10 to 15 years.”
In 2010, for example, 23.2 million adults in China self-identified as Christian. In 2018, 19.9 million adults did so, a figure Pew researchers said is not a “statistically significant gap.”
Among Chinese Christians, the percentages have experienced stagnation — 38% said they engaged in such activities once a week in 2010, but that figure dropped to 35% in 2018.
“Since measures of Christian belief and practice have not been repeated consistently in surveys, we cannot track how beliefs and practices associated with Christianity have changed since 2010 in the Chinese public,” Pew said in its report. “We don’t know, for example, whether overall belief in Jesus Christ or attendance at Christian worship services has risen, declined or remained stable.”
Buddhism enjoyed the widest acceptance. For example, 33% of Chinese adults said they believe in Buddha, according to the 2018 China Family Panel Studies survey. However, just 4% of adults claim Buddhism as their religious belief.
“In East Asia, the boundaries between philosophical, cultural and religious traditions — such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Taoism and folk religions with local deities and regional festivals — are often unclear,” the Pew report noted. “People may practice elements of multiple traditions without knowing or caring about the boundaries between those traditions, and often without considering themselves to have any formal religion.”
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor at Religion Unplugged. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event” and previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.