Suppressed Almost to Extinction, Then Revived Under State Oversight

Organised Daoist religious life, including the ordination and training of daoshi, was suppressed almost to the point of extinction on mainland China during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, when temples were closed, damaged or repurposed, ritual texts and images destroyed, and priests forced to abandon religious practice, marry, or take secular work, a rupture severe enough that a great deal of transmitted ritual knowledge and training that had continued for centuries came close to being lost entirely within a single generation.

Daoism has revived substantially on the mainland since the 1980s under a policy of managed toleration, with reopened and reconstructed temples, new ordinations of daoshi, and a state-recognised China Daoist Association that trains clergy and administers officially sanctioned temples, though the relationship between the tradition and the state remains one of oversight rather than full independence, since religious organisations operating openly in China do so within limits set by the government. Daoist communities in Taiwan and among the overseas Chinese diaspora, by contrast, maintained unbroken and unsupervised transmission of the Zhengyi and other lineages throughout this period, and have since become an important resource for mainland temples seeking to recover ritual practices interrupted by the Cultural Revolution.