Religion, Nature and Modernization in China

 James Miller. 2010. Religion, Nature and Modernization in China. Pp. 107-122 in Technology, Trust and Religion: Roles of Religion in Controversies on Ecology and the Modification of Life edited by Willem B. Drees. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

One of most important concepts in the Weberian theory of modernity is summed up in the German term Entzauberung, usually translated into English as ‘disenchantment’ or ‘rationalization’. A concise summary of this concept can be found in an essay published in 1987 by the British sociolo- gist Ernest Gellner. He writes:

The modern world is organized in a rational way. This means that clearly specified goals are pursued by a calculated allocation of means; the means include not only tools but also human activity and men them- selves. These things are treated instrumentally and not as ends in them- selves. Effectiveness  and evidence  are kings. The procedures  are also rational in the sense of being orderly and rule-bound: like cases are treated alike. (Gellner 1987, 153)

According to this view, therefore, modernity presupposes a rational, logi- cal and orderly view of the world, one that is best managed by rational procedures and gives rise to the legalistic, bureaucratic institutions of the modern state. Rationalization, moreover, is not something that ‘happens’ to society. It also has consequences for the way that moderns view and engage the natural world. Gellner continues:

It is not only the procedures  of organizations  which are in this sense ‘bureaucratised’; the same also happens to our vision of nature, of the external world. Its comprehensibility and manipulability are purchased by means of subsuming its events under orderly, symmetrical, precisely articulated generalisations and explanatory models. This is Disenchantment: the Faustian purchase of cognitive, technological  and adminis- trative power, by the surrender of our previous meaningful, humanly suffused, humanly responsive, if often also menacing or capricious world. That is abandoned in favour of a more a more predictable, more amenable, but coldly indifferent and uncosy world. (Gellner 1987, 153)

As Gellner’s explanation makes clear, the Weberian concept of Entzau– berung has at least two aspects to it, evident in the two English terms that are commonly  used to translate  it, rationalization  and disenchantment. On the one hand, Entzauberung involves a belief in the possibility of the rational ordering of the world; on the other hand this belief is predicated on an instrumental  view of nature, one in which nature is not valued as an end in itself, but becomes a means for the attainment of rationally cal- culated ends. Entzauberung is thus more than a process that takes place within the ordering of society. Rather it also ‘happens to our vision of na- ture’ conceived as the world that is ‘external’ to the self. Thus, according to this theory, the rationalization and bureaucratization  of society that we are familiar with in the modern period, is also accompanied  by the secu- larization of space and the disenchantment  of nature.

Recently,  however,  this  understanding  of disenchantment  has  begun to be questioned  by social theorists.  In particular, Bronislaw Szerszynski (2005) has argued that the reordering of society and nature in modernity should not be viewed as a final stage in the process of disenchantment and secularization,  but rather  as a moment  within the ongoing transforma- tion of the sacred throughout histor y. This transformation is not so much a gradual process of the sacred’s absenting itself from society and from nature, but rather a continuous reordering of the sacred within the world. The view of modern society as the highest stage in some gradual evolution towards rationality and secularism  is a view from a particular evolution- ary perspective, one that has been informed by centuries of Western theo- logical history, or as Szerszynski terms it, ‘the long arc of monotheism’. As Szerszynski writes:

The illusion that the sacred has disappeared is arguably a feature of all historical transitions from one form of the sacred to the next in a given society. Each transition can seem like an eclipse  of the sacred in the terms in which it was organized in the closing epoch; from a larger his- torical perspective,  however, it can be seen as the emergence  of a new sacral ordering. (Szerszysnski 2005, 26)

This paper aims to consider the disenchantment  of nature in modern China from the perspective  of this debate  within  social  science  theory. First  it examines  the  process  of modernization  in China  as a self-con- scious process of disenchantment  and rationalization. In this process the state assumed rational control over religious spaces and religious orga- nizations.  It was able  to do so in part  through  the  development  of the concept of ‘superstition’ in which the religious activities associated  most overtly with nature were prohibited.  All this seems to indicate the value of the Weberian view of modernization. This chapter follows Szerszynski, however, in arguing that this process should not be understood as the absolute  secularization  of Chinese  society  but rather  as the creation  of a new form of the sacred in Chinese society, this time the creation of a transcendent  monotheism  focused  on the  abstract  concept  of the  state and concretely  embodied  in the  Communist  Party. In effect,  therefore, the process of modernization in China has not been about secularization but rather about the establishment of a new sacred order in which the diversity of Chinese religious values became increasingly subordinated to a new transcendent  monotheism.

The Rationalization of Sacred Space

In an article entitled ‘Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Moderni- ty: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China’  Prasenjit  Duara  (1991) argued  that  the  newly  emerging  modern Chinese state in part based its ascendancy on its ability to destroy the local religious associations  and local geographies of power so as to reorganize them within a monolithic ideology of the modern nation state. Even be- fore the establishment  of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the mod- ernization of the Chinese state was achieved through a reorganization  of local power and social networks, chiefly by appropriating land owned by local temples. ‘Monks and priests who had depended on religious proper- ties were deprived of their sources of livelihood; local religious societies that fulfilled social as much as spiritual needs were dispossessed  and replaced by government offices that seemed mainly interested in extracting revenues and uncovering unregistered  property ’ (Duara 1991, 76). Duara viewed this reordering  of local religion as socio-economic  activity, with the state assuming control over the economic resources and social struc- tures previously under the control of the religious organizations. But per- haps this was not simply a reordering of the religious economy, but also a reordering of the sacred. Perhaps in crushing the social and economic power of the local temple networks, the modern Chinese state was also establishing itself as the only legitimate source of spiritual authority with- in the nation. In short, this transformation might not be about seculariza- tion, as Weberian  theory  understands  it, but, in Szerszynski’s  terms,  as one of these various moments in human histor y when an old sacred order gives way to a new one.

In  order  to  understand  how  this  forced  disenchantment  of  China’s countr yside could legitimately  be viewed as a transformation  within the sacred  in modern China, it is necessar y to understand  the relationship between  the  sacred,  nature  and geography  in traditional  China. In the histor y of China, power was not only constituted  ideologically and theo- logically, but geographically too. This was evident most clearly in the sa- cred cosmography that held China to be the ‘middle kingdom’. This term originated in the Warring States period, and was originally understood in the plural. It referred to the various ‘central states’ that shared the culture of writing  in characters.  These  ‘central  states’  were  thus  distinguished from outer regions who did not share the same literar y and cultural tradi- tions. After unification under the first Qin emperor, these ‘central states’ became the ‘middle kingdom’, that is, the single China that is familiar to us today. At the centre of this middle kingdom was the capital, and at the centre of the capital was the imperial palace, and at the centre of the im- perial palace was the court from which the emperor governed the distant corners  of the empire.  This cosmology  was replicated  ever ywhere.  The magistrate had his offices in a courtyard at the centre of the city. The city was surrounded by walls. Outside the walls was the countr yside that pro- vided the food to keep the city functioning and beyond the countr yside was the wilderness inhabited by bandits, beasts, and barbarians. This cosmology was replicated also in the heavens, which were viewed as a circular canopy rotating around a central ridge-pole known as the Great Ultimate  (taiji), an axis mundi  connecting  the pole star down through the earth into the under world. In some Daoist religious movements,  the most significant  deities  were thus the ones associated  with the stars  of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) who lit the way to the apex of heaven and around which the lesser constellations  revolved. Power, in earth and on heaven,  was  manifested in the  construction  of space.  It was  about  the disposition of things, structuring human relations in a certain way within their  surroundings  so as to promote  a cosmic  vision of order and har-mony (see Lewis 2006).

Central to this worldview was the network of sacred mountains that symbolized  the  centre  and the  four corners  of the  empire.  In addition, both Buddhists and Daoists claimed their own sacred mountains and es- tablished monasteries and retreat houses there. At certain times and in certain  locations  these  sacred  geographies  overlapped  with  each  other. Mt. Tai in Shandong province, the Eastern mountain of the imperial cult was also sacred to both Buddhists and Daoists. On this mountain, the Qin emperor who reunited the country following the dissolution of the War- ring States period instituted new sacrifices to the supreme cosmic rulers. Only the emperor  was permitted  to offer these  feng and shan sacrifices. Through this exclusive ritual the emperor asserted his own personal con- nection to the cosmic powers that governed heaven and earth. He es- tablished  himself  not only as the  chief  mediator  between  the  gods and the people but as an indispensable  element in the theological  geography that constituted the Chinese understanding of their place in the universe. The Wu emperor of the Han dynasty reinstated these sacrifices and built a temple  at the base of the mountain where the entire cosmic pantheon could assemble to witness the rituals over which the emperor personally presided  (see Bokenkamp  1996).  The  imperial  cult  thus  served  to rein- force the authority of the emperor over his people, an authority vested in the ritual construction of sacred space by means of which the nation could orient itself in relation to the heavens above and the peripheral spaces to the north, south, east and west.

This network of sacred spaces, however, should not solely be interpret- ed in ideological and epistemological terms about what Chinese people believed about the nature of the cosmos. Rather we should interpret this construction  of sacred  space  as the  way in which  power  and authority were actually constituted in terms of the geography of the nation. The significance  of the feng and shan sacrifices  did not lie solely in the sym- bolic nature of the liturgy and the ritual, but in the fact that they were performed at the base of a vast and imposing mountain reaching vertigi- nously up into the sky. Through the ritual the emperor was appropriating power vested in the physical geography of that particular space.

The technological  limits of the pre-modern  era, however,  meant that the official state orthodoxy was not imposed uniformly throughout  Chi- na. China was thus a land of religious diversity in which local religions constructed  their own interpretations  of sacred space and competed with each  other  for the allegiance  of the people.  Dynasties  were  established on the  back  of religious  fer vour  and  were  destroyed  in the  same  way. As much as the Imperial court sought to impose its vision of unity and harmony on the empire, such an imposition was inevitably imperfect, fracturing  at its  various  intersections  with  the  authority  of local  cults and popular religions. In order for this vision to become a reality, it was necessary for the modern state to dismantle the networks of theological power and religious authority traditionally associated with the sacred mountains and local cults. This was made possible part by rapid developments in communications technology that, for the first time, enabled the central authorities to impose their vision of the world upon the various regions of China. Although from the perspective of traditional Chinese religious history this could be viewed as the secularization  of these natural and local spaces, the campaigns against popular religion could equally be interpreted  as the reordering of the sacred into a single, overarching , transcendent  monotheism constructed  around the abstract notion of the state.

It  would  come  as  no  surprise,  therefore,  that  religion  and  the  state would come into conflict  where  the function of religion was not clearly allied with that of the state. In such cases religion had to be controlled by the state because it was, in effect, a theological competitor.  Duara traced the modern history of conflict between  religion and the state to an offi- cial document published in 1928, called the ‘Standards for Preser ving and Abandoning Gods and Shrines’ (Duara 1991, 79). This document marked a milestone in the process of legitimating certain forms of religion and delegitimizing others. Some gods such as Confucius, Guandi, Laozi, and Buddha were  permitted  to be worshipped.  Other  gods, such as the city god and the god of wealth  were proscribed.  The  main distinction  to be drawn between these two lists of gods is that the former could be identi- fied in terms of their function with the overarching goals of a nation state, whereas the latter list contains gods who chiefly serve the interests of in- dividuals or localities. In short, some gods had a place within the temple of nationalism  and other  gods were seen as subversive  of the overarch- ing agenda of the state. Just as the rise of the nation state in Europe has been  seen  as  a theological  consequence  of the  Protestant  Reformation (Loy 2002,  94), so also the invention of the modern Chinese nation state could be seen a type of theological activity that demanded the restraint of religious competitors.

The debate  about the place of religion in the modern Chinese  state  was not, however, understood simply within the framework of the overarching theology of the nation state. It was also an ideological conflict predicated on competing visions of nature. This conflict was made possible by the invention  of the  category  of ‘superstition’  (mixin).  Duara demonstrates in the same article that although popular cults and local religions had previously been regarded with disdain by elite religious leaders and cat- egorized as ‘heterodox’ (xie) they were now increasingly placed under the new category of superstition  (mixin).  The categor y of ‘superstition’  thus functioned  as an ideological  tool by means  of which  the state  was able to make normative judgments about religious institutions so as to assert power over them. It did so by framing the ideology of local and popular re- ligious movements as ‘superstition’, that is to say, ‘deluded beliefs’. A devi- ant or unorthodox institution might have the possibility of being aligned, reformed or normalized in some way. An organization founded on super- stition, or deluded belief, would face a far harder task of surviving in the modern state. Just as the birth of the nation state in Western  Europe and North America was accompanied by the proscription of witchcraft and magic, so also the birth of the modern Chinese state witnessed  a violent struggle over the ideologically correct way to view and engage the natural world. In both cases, magic and superstition  were seen as the direct en- emies of technology and science.

The  attempt  to  define  superstition  in China  began  in 1930  with  the ‘Procedure for the Abolition of Occupations of Divination, Astrology, Physiognomy  and  Palmistry,  Sorcery  and  Geomancy,’  the  ‘Procedures for Banning  and Managing  Superstitious  Objects  and Professions,’  and the ‘Prohibition of Divinatory Medicines’ (Duara 1991, 80). The so-called superstitions  of divination, astrology,  physiognomy,  palmistr y, and geo- mancy were all key elements of popular religion in China, frequently con- ducted in local temples,  and were not generally associated  with the for- eign religions of Buddhism or Christianity.  In effect  the proscription  of these activities was designed to promote the demise of traditional Chinese popular religion. But there was also a significant ideological component at stake here that revolved around the philosophy of nature. Although astrology and physiognomy are generally dismissed in modern society as ‘fortune-telling’, in traditional Chinese religion they were part and parcel of the fabric of religious meaning that enabled people to make sense out of their lives, and also part of the local temple  economy. What binds all these forms of ‘fortune-telling’  together, however, is a shared philosophy of nature, one that is diametrically opposed to the ideology of science and rationality on which the modern Chinese state was building its authority. All the proscribed activities described  as ‘superstitious’ held in common the view that physical nature, whether  in the form of human bodies, the stars or geography, had the capacity to reveal truths that are of value for human beings. As such they were sources of religious meaning and moral capacity  that  originated  beyond  the  control  and authority  of the  state, or, indeed, any formal religious institution. The development  of science, on the other hand, was accompanied by an instrumental rationality that viewed nature not as the revealer of spiritual truths but as neutral, value- free space capable of being shaped by human will through technology and so forth. In the former case, nature revealed truths to humans through religious  processes;  in the  latter  case,  humans  imposed  their  values  on nature through technological and economic processes. In the modern na- tion state the imposition of values on nature is directed by the organs of the state  through  its various science  and technology  research  institutes and the modern university system.

The attack on superstition persisted in modern China through to the Communist period. At the Eleventh Party Congress in 1979, freedom of religion was restored in China only for the five state-sanctioned  religions of China. All other forms of traditional religious culture were deemed su- perstition. The policy on the regulation of religions adopted in 1979 states that:

By superstition  we generally  mean activities  conducted  by shamans, and sorcerers,  such as magic medicine,  magic water,  divination, for- tune telling, avoiding disasters, praying for rain, praying for pregnancy, exorcising  demons,  telling  fortunes  by physiognomy,  locating  house or tomb sites by geomancy and so forth. They are all absurd and ri- diculous. Anyone possessing rudimentary knowledge will not believe in them. (Document 3 from Selected Documents of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Party Congress, 1979; MacInnis 1989, 33-4)

From this excerpt we can see that the principal question about the rela- tionship between religion and the state has been formulated around the capacity of nature to shape and direct people’s religious experiences.  The so-called  superstitious  activities  mediate  the  relationship  between  hu- mans and nature in a way that lies outside of the bureaucratic  processes of the state, or the established religions with solid institutional structures that could more easily be brought into line with the goals of the modern Chinese state.

Thus  the conflict  between  religion,  science  and superstition  was not just about  epistemology,  or the rational  procedures  for verif ying belief. They were also about the capacity of nature to be a source of sacred power and even moral authority outside of the structures of the state and the ra- tional procedures of science. The campaigns against superstition and local religions that were begun in the Republican  period and carried through most forcefully in the Communist period were not only contesting  ideo- logical  and epistemological  space  within  the  Chinese  psyche;  nor were they solely struggles to assert central power over local areas; rather they were also struggles over the value of nature, and the capacity of nature to function in some way as sacred space, as a source of divine revelation, or as a theological reality.

It would be a mistake to underestimate the serious nature of this conflict between science and ‘fortune-telling’. The various activities proscribed under the rubric of ‘superstition’ were by no means fringe activities re- stricted to a few uneducated people. Rather, they expressed a fundamen- tal aspect of the traditional Chinese worldview, namely the view of nature as a source  of sacred  power. This  view is neatly summed  up in a third- centur y poem by Cao Zhi. The subject is Mt. Tai, the sacred mountain of the east, mentioned above as the location of the feng and shan sacrifices.

I roamed the mountain in the dawn
Secluded in its misty depths
When suddenly I met two boys
With faces that were fair and fresh.
They gave me herbs of the immortals
The Numinous Supreme had made,
Medicaments that when absorbed
Revive the seminal essence and brain,
So life, like a rock’s or metal ore’s,
Passes through eons, but does not age.

(Trans. Elvin 2004, xxii-xxiii)

Here nature, in the form of Mt. Tai, is the space in which the poet encoun- ters two boys. They are described as having ‘fair and fresh’ faces, which is the clue that they are not ordinary mortals but immortal beings. This view is confirmed when they give the author ‘herbs of the immortals’ to ‘revive the seminal essence and brain’. Here, nature is not simply the location for an encounter with divine beings, but is also the source of cosmic power which has the capacity of conferring immortality on the one who ingests the herbs. Finally, nature in the form of unchanging  rock is a metaphor for  the  sacred  ideal  of immortality.  In these  three  cases,  nature  is not valued in terms of some rational economic calculus but as the medium through  which  the  adept  can  transcend  the  mundane  world.  Nature  is sacred inasmuch as it is the Way to attain a transfigured and more perfect reality. When the state proscribed ‘divination’ and ‘magic medicine’ it was in effect proscribing this view of nature, which formed the bedrock of traditional religious culture.

Remarkably,  however,  this  view of nature  was never  extirpated  from the Chinese mentality; instead it continued, albeit in a transformed  way, into the modern period. Despite the ideological rhetoric of the modern Chinese state, the view that nature is a source of sacred power and moral authority continues into the present day. Take for instance, the following song from the Great Leap Forward in the 1950s:

Let’s attack here!
Drive away the mountain gods,
Break down the stone walls
To bring out those 200 million tons of coal.

(Zhang Zhimin, Personalities in the Commune; quoted in Shapiro 2001, vii)

At first glance it would seem that this song supports the Weberian hypothesis that modernization involves the disenchantment of sacred space. Here modernization, in the form of coal mining, demands the secularization  of the  mountain  space  where  the  mining takes  place,  described as ‘driving away the mountain gods’. From the perspective of traditional Chinese religion this indeed is tantamount to the secularization  of sacred space, but from a larger perspective it is more accurate to interpret this as the reordering of the sacred. Driving away the mountain gods does not re- veal the mountain to be an inert place devoid of any sacred power. Rather it reveals the mountain to be harbouring a new form of sacred power, that of coal. Coal is not here simple ‘stuff ’, but during the Great Leap Forward was the means by which China would achieve its Great Leap Forward into the future. It was, in effect, the numinous substance that was essential in the concoction of a new elixir of immortality: steel. The view of nature as harbouring secret powers, whether conceived as 200 million tons of coal, or herbs  with  numinous  powers  remains  constant.  The  only thing  that changed from the time of Cao Zhi to the time of Mao was the understand- ing of the role of the traditional  gods as guardians  or mediators  of the sacred power of nature. These  were dispensed  with and replaced  by the gods of the human will. As Jasper Becker writes in China’s Hungry Ghosts (1996, 308; quoted by Shapiro 2001, 68):

Mao wanted to modernize China but could not grasp the basis of modern thought, the scientific method: that the way in which the natural universe behaves can be proved or disproved by objective tests, inde- pendent of ideology or individual will.

Becker’s critique of Mao, and also Shapiro’s, was that Mao did not in fact secularize nature in the ‘correct’ way. Rather he simply replaced one form of ideology with another, asserting the supremacy of the human spirit, not the celestial gods, over nature.

Reading Chinese modernization not as ‘secularization’ but as an endur- ing theological  contest  over the location  and power of the sacred might also help explain contemporary Chinese leaders’ fascination with grand works of environmental  engineering.  Projects such as the Three  Gorges Dam can be understood as modern equivalents of the acts of mythological heroes who brought order out of the watery chaos. Such projects continue to reveal the enduring power of sacred mythology in modern China. Thus the destruction of the natural environment continues not through the rationalization and disenchantment of nature, as conservative religious critics  of modernity  might  suggest,  but because  of the  enduring  power of ‘secular theologies’ to subordinate human interests  to irrational ideals (see Gray 2004).

Religion and Nature in Contemporary China: Three Cases

The debate over the place of religion and nature in modernity was not, therefore,  decisively  settled  in the  twentieth  century  and has  begun  to take on new forms in an era of relative religious freedom in China. The following three brief case studies display something of the complex situa- tion of religion, nature and modernity in contemporary China.

The first case concerns that of religious sites located in areas of out- standing  natural  beauty,  which  have  been  developed  and  reorganized chiefly as tourist attractions in China, and function under the authority of local tourism offices. Although the reopening of temples might lead one to think that religion is somehow  resurgent  in China, the fact that reli- gious spaces are often contained firmly within tourist economic develop- ment zones makes clear that the sacred is secondary to the economic. The recent  flourishing  of religious  activities  in China  thus  leads,  paradoxi- cally, to serious problems faced by wealthy monasteries located in tourist development zones. Referring to Buddhism, Jing Yin (2006, 90) writes:

Problems associated  with the impact of the market economy on Bud- dhism  can  be divided  into two  categories.  The first  can  broadly  be termed external problems that arise when government officials, par- ticularly low ranking local ones, infringe upon the rights and interests of the monasteries.  The more wealthy monasteries  become  the more frequently this occurs, and this constitutes a rather serious problem in some areas. The second category of problems are internal disputes that arise when the state returns property to the monasteries following the implementation of the policy of religious freedom in 1979.

The  recent  freedoms  bestowed  on religious  institutions  in China  have thus come at a price, that of keeping sacred space contained within the bureaucratic  control  of the  state  as a means  to achieving  rational  eco-nomic ends. Jing Yin (2006, 91-92) goes on:

 From a Buddhist perspective, one can say that the one-sided economic development  in many monasteries  has made them lose their distinctively Buddhist characteristics.  I have accompanied many overseas Buddhist delegates on visits to monasteries in China. In my experience, visitors often feel that despite  the proliferation  of monasteries,  there is a lack of character  here. Monasteries  commonly operate vegetarian restaurants, guest houses, souvenir shops, and food and drink booths. Some even go to the extreme of running factories and operating companies. The long-term effect is that the market economy is seriously hurting the religious nature of the monasteries. Once monasteries be- come large-scale  enterprises,  it is difficult for them to back out. And when monasteries become principally tourist attractions, the danger is that the energy of the monks becomes devoted chiefly to receiving tourists, leaving no time for the sangha or to engage in Buddhist practice.

In other words, even in an era of religious freedom, it seems that religious activities  continue  to  be  subordinated  to  rational,  economic  functions and are increasingly unable to stand as moral or ethical challenges  to the dominant  values  of the  state.  Such  a view is borne  out  by the  Chinese state regulations on religion issued in 2004, which paint a clear picture of the place of religion within the secular space of the Chinese state. These new regulations do not deal with the thorny theoretical questions such as the definition of religion, or the relationship  between  religion, superstition and scientific belief. Rather they tend to focus on more bureaucratic questions  such as which government  agency is the competent  authority for dealing with various types of religious issues, and economic questions such as the relationship  between  religious  pilgrimage  and secular  tour- ism. Article 18 of the new regulations, for example, governs the manage- ment of religious sites and typifies well the new direction in Communist policy towards religion:

A site  for religious  activities  shall  strengthen  internal  management, and, in accordance with the provisions of the relevant laws, regulations and rules, establish and improve the management systems for person- nel, finance, accounting,  security,  fire control,  cultural  relics protec- tion, sanitation and epidemic prevention, etc., and accept the guidance, supervision and inspection by the relevant departments of the local people’s government. (State Council 2004)

As this regulation indicates, the overall goal now is to promote the smooth management  of religious  spaces  in such a way that  they do not disrupt social  harmony  or pose  a threat  to the  authority  of the  government.  It seems that party officials are no longer concerned with understanding the nature of religion in terms of political theor y, but only with managing its social and economic functioning. In contrast to the divisive ideological debates of the May Fourth and early Communist era over secularization, tradition,  and modernity, the contemporary  framework  for understand- ing the relationship between religion and society emphasizes  economics, management and social harmony. The CCP no longer seems intent on attempting  to control the religious beliefs of Chinese citizens, but rather on ensuring that religious organizations, whatever they believe, work to support the nation and its economy.

The second case study concerns the revival of interest, at least in a theoretical sense, of the value of traditional religions in contributing to the emergence  of environmentalism  in contemporary  China.  Most  notable in this regard has been the work of Pan Yue, Vice-Minister of the State Environmental Protection Administration  (SEPA). In a notable speech in 2003, he called for the creation of an ‘environmental culture and national renaissance’  that forged traditional  views of nature with the demands of the modern Chinese state into a nationalistic vision of Chinese develop- ment, and one that would avoid the ecologically destructive excesses of Western  modernization.  He quoted chapter 16 of the Daoist classic, The Way and Its Power (Daode jing), ‘The myriad creatures  all rise together / And I watch their return / The teeming creatures / All return to their sep- arate roots’ to argue for a ‘circular economy,’ his vision of an ecologically sustainable society (Pan 2007, 11). Such a society would be at once at the forefront  of ecological  economics  and sustainable  development  theory, and at the same time indigenously and authentically Chinese:

The pursuit of harmonious  relations  between  man and nature is the mainstream of traditional cultures in the past thousands of years. The Confucian school advocated ‘the unity of nature and man’, which em- phasizes  that all human behaviours  must conform  to the law of na- ture.

…

The Daoist school proposed the theory of ‘Tao following nature’, which elevates the concept of ‘nature’ to a metaphysical height. … According to Laozi, natural laws shall not be violated, and human principles must conform to the natural laws. (Pan 2007, 6-7)

In Pan’s view, therefore,  China’s religious traditions are sources of moral capacity and intellectual  authority which could be reconfigured  to fit in with China’s new goals of sustainable development. China’s economic de- velopment, its accompanying environmental and social pressures, and its state-sponsored  nationalism are thus ushering in new transformations  of the sacred.

Finally, the contemporar y Chinese  scene reveals a popular interest  in understanding  the  relationships  between  religion,  science  and  nature. Such an interest has most recently been evident in the 2005 debate about whether environmental protection in China was best served by an attitude of reverence  (jingwei) towards nature. He Zuoxiu, a prominent scientist, argued that reverence for nature was the product of anti-scientific  think- ing and was not helpful in fighting diseases or natural disasters (He 2005). Liang Congjie, the founder of the Chinese NGO Friends of Nature, on the other hand, argued that nature cannot be viewed simply as a tool, and that having a sense of reverence for the natural world was itself natural and rational (Liang 2006). Although Liang was careful to define his use of the word ‘reverence’ in a humanistic way, the very use of the term ‘reverence’ or ‘awe’ (jingwei) in the first place,  clearly  struck  a negative  chord with some  members  of the  scientific  establishment.  The  very debate  reveals that issues of the environment are not simply a matter of science and tech- nology in China, but also ethics and values.

These three examples from the contemporary Chinese scene reveal that in China’s  quest  for modernization,  religion  and nature  continue  to be sites of ideological conflict. Religious organizations continue to be active- ly managed by the state’s religious affairs administration.  This oversight is especially  strong  where  religious  sites  are located  in areas  of natural beauty and there is thus a large potential for making money by developing the local tourist economy. On the other hand, there seems to be a willing- ness among some of the elite to consider the value of traditional ideas in helping to solve China’s dire environmental problems. Their views are regarded as controversial because they seem to contradict the official ide- ology of modernization  and scientific  development  (kexue fazhan)  and yet figures like Pan Yue hold senior positions within the government. At the same time the question of respect for nature remains highly contested among scientists and environmentalists. All this seems to suggest that despite the rhetoric of science and modernity, there has not been an ir- reversible process of disenchantment in China. Some traditional values persist, whereas others have been transmuted into nationalism and sci- entism. The relationship  between science, nature, and religion continues to be contested both theoretically  and practically.

References

AsiaNews.  2005.  Sixty  Thousand  People  Protest  Against  Chinese  Pol- lution. AsiaNews.it 14 April 2005. Internet: http://www.asianews.it/ view_p.php?l=en&art=3036

Bokenkamp, Stephen. 1996. Record of the Feng and Shan Sacrifices. In Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 251-60. Duara, Prasenjit. 1991. Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Centur y China. Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1), 67-83.

Elvin, Mark . 2004. The Retreat of the Elephants. New Haven: Yale Univer- sity Press.

Gellner, Ernest. 1987. Culture, Identity and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.