Country

China

Also Known As Chinese

Asia

Chinese religious life braids Confucian ethics, Daoist cosmology and Mahayana Buddhism, a mixture often called the three teachings, alongside folk temple worship of local and ancestral deities that predates all three. Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and the Islam practiced by Uyghur and Hui communities give the country's western regions a religious character distinct from the Han majority east, and independent reporting describes state restrictions on both Tibetan Buddhist institutions and Uyghur Muslim religious practice in Xinjiang, a contested matter the atlas notes rather than resolves. Chan Buddhism, which later shaped Japanese Zen, developed on Chinese soil, and Daoist divinatory traditions including the I Ching originated here and spread across East Asia. The officially atheist state permits worship only within a small number of sanctioned religious associations, a structure that shapes how every tradition inside China is organized.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

No Establishment 3

No established church; religious practice is permitted only through five state-sanctioned associations under the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs, and unregistered churches and Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation recognition are tightly restricted.

State Funding Mechanism

China has no state funding channel to religious bodies comparable to a concordat or an endowment system. What it has instead is control: seven state-sanctioned religious associations, supervised by the State Administration for Religious Affairs and the Communist Party's United Front Work Department, that a religious organization must register under to operate, with the 2022 Measures for the Administration of Financial Affairs of Religious Premises imposing state financial oversight on registered venues rather than funding them. 4

Registration or Recognition Regime

Religious practice is permitted only through five state-sanctioned associations under the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs; Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation recognition is tightly restricted outside state channels. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

Criminal law criminalizes organizing or using what it terms a xie jiao, rendered cult organization, sect or superstition, to undermine implementation of the law, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment; the law publishes no criteria for the designation and no procedure to challenge it once made. Groups the government has named as banned xie jiao or illegal organizations include Falun Gong, the Guanyin Method (Guanyin Famen, also called the Way of the Goddess of Mercy), the qigong movement Zhong Gong, the Church of Almighty God and the Shouters, with enforcement against the Christian groups among them varying by region. 3

Concordat Basis

China has no concordat with the Holy See. Relations instead run through a Provisional Agreement on the appointment of bishops, first signed in September 2018 and kept confidential in its exact terms, under which Chinese authorities propose candidates and the pope holds a veto before ordination. Renewed for two years each in 2020 and 2022, it was extended for a full four years in October 2024, and 2024 alone saw more joint episcopal appointments than every previous year of the agreement combined, though the Holy See has also protested unilateral Chinese transfers of bishops outside the process it was meant to govern. 5

Identity

Also Known As

People's Republic of China 1

Classification

State Funding of Religion

State Restriction or Control of Religion 6

Disputed

Legal Status

Religious practice permitted only through five state-sanctioned associations under the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs; unregistered churches and Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation recognition are tightly restricted; designated a Country of Particular Concern. 3

China's 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs permit religious practice only through five state-sanctioned associations, one each for Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism, outside which unregistered churches and unrecognised Tibetan Buddhist reincarnation determinations are tightly restricted by the state. The specific dispute the State Department's report highlights concerns Xinjiang, where the Chinese government describes large-scale detention facilities holding Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims as vocational training centres addressing extremism, while international human rights bodies, the United Nations, and Uyghur advocacy groups describe the same facilities as sites of mass internment. The United States designates China a Country of Particular Concern under its own religious freedom law specifically over this and related restrictions. The disagreement is over how to characterise the same documented facilities, extremism prevention against internment, a dispute over intent and legal characterisation that independent international access, which China has restricted, would be needed to help settle.

Demographics

Religious Composition

Roughly half religiously unaffiliated by strict self-identification, alongside widespread folk practice blending Buddhism, Taoism and ancestor veneration; five state-recognized religions (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1

Government

Capital

Beijing 2

Government Type

communist party-led state 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1949 2

1 October 1949 (People's Republic of China established); notable earlier dates: 221 B.C. (unification under the Qin Dynasty); 1 January 1912 (Qing Dynasty replaced by the Republic of China)

Geography

Latitude

35.9 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

104.2 degrees east 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Government type (class)

Communist state 2

Location

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Religion and History in China

China's religious landscape is shaped by an officially atheist state that recognizes five religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, through state-sanctioned associations, while a large share of the population identifies with no organized religion or practices folk traditions blending ancestor veneration, Buddhism and Taoism without exclusive affiliation. Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 places roughly half the population in the religiously unaffiliated category by strict self-identification, though folk religious practice remains widespread outside formal identification.

Buddhism entered China from India via Central Asia in the first centuries CE and developed into Chan and Pure Land schools; Taoism arose indigenously from the Warring States period and was formalized as an organized religion under Zhang Daoling in the second century CE; Confucianism, more a social and ethical system than a religion in the Western sense, structured state ritual for two millennia until the fall of the imperial system in 1912. Islam arrived via Silk Road traders from the seventh century, and Catholic and Protestant missions expanded from the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, before the 1949 revolution nationalized religious institutions and the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 suppressed religious practice outright.

State Regulation of Religion in Contemporary China

Since the 1980s reform era, China has permitted regulated religious practice through five state-sanctioned bodies, the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement for Protestants, registered under the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs and its later revisions.

Unregistered house-church Protestant congregations and underground Catholic communities loyal to Rome rather than the state-approved church operate outside this framework and face periodic restriction; a 2018 Sino-Vatican agreement on bishop appointments sought to bridge this divide, though its practical effect remains contested.

The government's treatment of Islam in Xinjiang, including mass internment of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in what officials call vocational training centers, has drawn sustained international criticism and United Nations scrutiny since 2017. Tibetan Buddhism faces distinct restriction, including state control over the recognition of reincarnate lamas following the disputed 1995 selection of the Panchen Lama. The US State Department's International Religious Freedom Report has for successive years designated China a Country of Particular Concern.

China

1 entry

Spread Status

Era

Manichaeism Goes Extinct in China

China

Connections

Ancient and Historical Regions

China

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

East Asia

Source United Nations Statistics Division: UN M49 Standard country or area codes for statistical use: geographic regions

Guizhou

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search for Guizhou

Himalayas

Source WorldAtlas: Where Are the Himalayas

Sichuan

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search for Sichuan

Tibet

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for Tibet

Yunnan

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search for Yunnan

Associated With

Wikipedia, "Yongle Gong"

This source names China directly: "Lu Dongbin, cross checked here against China Daily's account of the same relocation (which gives 1959 to 1964, a minor date range difference between the two sources rather than a substantive dispute)."

Source Wikipedia, "Yongle Gong"Wikipedia contributors

Wikipedia: Manichaeism

This source names China directly: "century, the 1370 CE ban under Ming China, its subsumption into Buddhism and Taoism before the end of the fourteenth century, and the surviving Cao'an temple site in Jinjiang, Fujian."

Source Wikipedia: ManichaeismWikipedia contributors

Wooden Statue in Beijing's Lama Temple

This source names China directly: "in Beijing's Lama Temple, published by China Tibet Online in 2015, is news reporting from a Chinese state-affiliated outlet covering Tibetan Buddhist culture from within China, describing a wooden..."

Source Wooden Statue in Beijing's Lama TempleChina Tibet Online

Wudang Mountains (Wikipedia)

This source names China directly: "the Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism in China, centered on devotion to Xuantian Shangdi and functioning as the Taoist counterpart to the Buddhist Shaolin Monastery; for its association with the..."

Source Wudang Mountains (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Xuanzang Temple, Nanjing (Wikipedia)

This source names China directly: "subsequent division among temples in China, Japan, Taiwan and India."

Source Xuanzang Temple, Nanjing (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Yangtze River

The river is the axis of southern China, and the Three Gorges Dam is the largest structure ever built on it.

Source Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist RuleFenggang Yang

Yellow River

Control of the river has been a central project of every modern Chinese government, from the republic to the People's Republic.

Source The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern ChinaDavid A. Pietz

This source names China directly: "Sichuan and Guizhou in southwestern China, together with the ancestral spirits their ritual texts address."

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Yongle Emperor

He moved the capital to Beijing and laid out the altars of Heaven and Earth on which the imperial ritual calendar was performed until 1911.

Source Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 1Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom (eds)

Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: Japan

This source names China directly: "on Zen Buddhism's history across both China and Japan, with this second volume tracing the Japanese Soto and Rinzai schools specifically through their documented historical development rather than..."

Source Zen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2: JapanHeinrich Dumoulin

Zinc

This source names China directly: "from around the twelfth century and in China thereafter; Andreas Sigismund Marggraf gave the first clear European account in 1746."

Source Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the ElementsJohn Emsley

Showing 101 to 111 of 111 in Associated With, page 3 of 3.

Conducted

The 1999 Ban and Crackdown on Falun Gong

Source Falun Gong and the Future of ChinaDavid Ownby

The Cultural Revolution

Source Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist RuleFenggang Yang

The Huichang Persecution of Buddhism

Source Ennin's Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the LawEnnin, translated and annotated by Edwin O. Reischauer

The Uyghur Internment in Xinjiang

Source OHCHR Assessment of Human Rights Concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, ChinaUnited Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Contains

Anyang

Beijing

Chang'an

Chang'an stood on the site of the modern city of Xi'an.

Famen Temple (Famensi)