RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ASIA Kuo (ed.) Kuo Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies Edited by Cheng-tian Kuo Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies Religion and Society in Asia The Religion and Society in Asia series presents state-of-the-art cross-disciplinary academic research on colonial, postcolonial and contemporary entanglements between the socio-political and the religious, including the politics of religion, throughout Asian societies. It thus explores how tenets of faith, ritual practices and religious authorities directly and indirectly impact on local moral geographies, identity politics, political parties, civil society organizations, economic interests, and the law. It brings into view how tenets of faith, ritual practices and religious authorities are in turn configured according to socio-political, economic as well as security interests. The series provides brand new comparative material on how notions of self and other as well as justice and the commonweal have been predicated upon ‘the religious’ in Asia since the colonial/imperialist period until today. Series Editors Martin Ramstedt, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle Stefania Travagnin, University of Groningen Religion and Nationalism in Chinese Societies Edited by Cheng-tian Kuo Amsterdam University Press This book is sponsored by the 2017 Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Taiwan; SP002-D-16) and co-sponsored by the International Institute of Asian Studies (the Netherlands). Cover illustration: Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Beijing © Cheng-tian Kuo Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 94 6298 439 4 e-isbn 978 90 4853 505 7 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789462984394 nur 718 © Cheng-tian Kuo / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Table of Contents Notes on Chinese Names, Terms, and Transliteration 7 Preface 9 1 Introduction 13 Religion, State, and Religious Nationalism in Chinese Societies Cheng-tian Kuo Part I Chinese Religion and Nationalism before 1949 2 The Idea of Chineseness and Ethnic Thought of Wang Fuzhi 55 Chi-shen Chang 3 Missionizing, Civilizing, and Nationizing 89 Linked Concepts of Compelled Change Julia C. Schneider 4 The Nation in Religion and Religion in the Nation 117 Adam Yuet Chau 5 History and Legitimacy in Contemporary China 143 Towards Competing Nationalisms Robert D. Weatherley and Qiang Zhang 6 Pilgrimage and Hui Muslim Identity in the Republican Era 179 Yuan-lin Tsai Part II Religion and Nationalism in Contemporary China 7 Religion and the Nation 199 Confucian and New Confucian Religious Nationalism Bart Dessein 8 Yiguandao under the Shadow of Nationalism 233 Traitors, Conspirators, Traditionalists, or Loyalists? Ching-chih Lin 9 Daoism and Nationalism in Modern and Contemporary China 253 Shu-wei Hsieh 10 Nationalism Matters 279 Among Mystics and Martyrs of Tibet Antonio Terrone 11 ‘We Are Good Citizens’ 309 Tension between Protestants and the State in Contemporary China Yen-zen Tsai Part III Religion and Nationalism in Taiwan and Hong Kong 12 Religion and National Identity in Taiwan 339 State Formation and Moral Sensibilities Edmund Frettingham and Yih-Jye Hwang 13 Multiple Religious and National Identities 373 Mazu Pilgrimages across the Taiwan Strait after 1987 Hsun Chang 14 Salvation and Rights in Hong Kong 397 Mariske Westendorp Index 423 Notes on Chinese Names, Terms, and Transliteration This book adopts Chinese pin-yin transliteration. In most of the text, an English translation is provided first, followed by either Chinese pin-yin transliteration or (traditional) Chinese characters, or by both, when the Chinese characters first occur. Some well-known Chinese names and places or those related to Taiwan and Hong Kong may use other spelling systems to accommodate local dialects; for instance, Sun Yatsen, Taipei, and Taiwanese authors of this book. In most cases, Chinese characters are provided after the transliteration. All Chinese names retain the Chinese order of family name first, followed by the given name. Chinese names and places use normal font; Chinese terms are italicized. Standard academic transliteration is used for religious jargon of Islam and Tibetan Buddhism. Preface ‘(Jesus) got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”’ Matthew 8:26-27; New American Standard Bible Dense smog and cloud constantly hovered over Beijing all year long. But on 3 September 2015, the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Liberation Army, a ‘military-parade blue sky’ (yuebinglan 閱兵藍) was all over Beijing. Even though it lasted for only one day, the whole world was amazed: What kind of a State is this, that even the winds and the smog obey Her? Cheng-tian Kuo The above comparison illustrates a new pattern of religion-state relations called religious nationalism in China and its impact on those in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. It is no longer the state versus religion, but hybrid mixtures of religion and nationalism in these three Chinese societies. On a hot summer day in June 2015, I received a mysterious long-distance phone call from the Chinese government in Beijing. The official asked me whether I would be available to attend a conference in early September. I thought the conference would be the long-overdue National Religious Conference which had been held once every ten years. So I immediately said OK. Then, the officials whispered a sentence to conclude our short communication: ‘There will be a military parade!’ I cheerfully replied: ‘That’s great! I have never been invited to a military parade before.’ But why would the Chinese government hold a military parade in September, not on 1 October – National Independence Day – like they had always done? I wondered. It must be because of the National Religious Conference for which I have been invited, I naively thought. In the following two months, I did not receive any concrete confirmation about this secretive invitation until one week before my scheduled flight. One official solemnly gave me very detailed instructions about the security measures I should follow once I arrived in Beijing, because ‘the entire city will be under martial rule.’ I arrived in Beijing three days earlier so that I could do some interviews with my academic friends and give a talk at the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA). On the day of my arrival, the sky was packed with dense smog as usual, but the street traffic was unusually light due to the 10 RELIGION AND NATIONALISM IN CHINESe SOCIETIES martial rule. All the shops were closed, including the beverage vending machines in the massive subway system. Governmental officials received last-minute orders to strictly limit their use of official cars during the week and to promptly leave town in the early afternoon of 2 September; otherwise, they would have to stay one long night in their office. My talk at the SARA was first postponed, then, canceled at the last minute. The entire central government in Beijing was almost shut down and ordered to do nothing else except to accommodate the military parade. At five o’clock in the morning on 3 September, some other guests and I went through the waterproof security checks at the secluded hotel, boarded the designated buses to the parade platform, and waited for other distin- guished guests to arrive. The sky began to reveal a golden light and crystal blue with only a few traces of white cloud. Everyone in the audience started to praise the blue sky as if they had the luck to see the aurora of the North Pole. Not for long, though. The next morning when I opened the curtains at my hotel, the sky was packed with dense smog and acid drizzle again; so was the next day and the next. On my airplane back to Taipei, I jotted down the verses from Matthew above and applied them to the ‘miracle’ of the military-parade blue. After all, the military parade was not just a secular ceremony but also a sacred religious ritual for the Chinese Communist Party-State in search of political-religious legitimacy. It is a religious ritual of the state religion, which I call ‘Chinese Patriotism’. This book discusses the origin, development, content, and implications of religion-state relations in contemporary Chinese societies, i.e. mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. On the one hand, state policies toward religions in these societies are deciphered and their implications for religious freedom are evaluated. On the other hand, Chinese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, Islam, and folk religions are respectively analyzed in terms of their theological, organizational, and political responses to the nationalist modernity projects of these states. What is new in this book on religion and nationalism in Chinese societies is that the Chinese state has strengthened its control over religion to an unprecedented level. In particular, the Chinese state has almost completed its construction of a state religion called Chinese Patriotism. But at the same time, what is also new is the emergence of democratic civil religions in these Chinese societies, which directly challenge the Chinese state religion and may significantly transform their religion-state relations for better or for worse. This book could not have been published without the compassionate support of the following persons and institutions, to whom I express my PFARE CE 11 most sincere appreciation.