Religious Issues in China's Rural Development: The Importance of Ethnic Minorities

Abstract

This paper considers Chinese religion in relation to the changing nature of rural society and modernisation. Rural/urban distinctions are questioned, while the realities of religious differences between them are affirmed. Development is related to modernisation and multiple sources of Chinese modernity are considered. Religion is examined in terms of its tendencies towards diversification and capacity to embody visions of an alternative moral order. Some aspects of ethnic minority religion and its renewal are introduced, with reference to the ethnography of the Hmong, to show that minority religious issues can reflect broader religious issues in China. Geomancy and ancestral worship are shared by Hmong and Han Chinese. In conclusion it is argued that religion is increasingly presented as cultural in China through a process of ‘folklorisation’, which in the larger sense may not be problematic, yet important aspects of spirituality are lost which may find expression in mass Christian conversions.

Keywords:

• Religion
• Modernity
• Rural China
• Ethnic Minorities
• Folklorisation

Funding

This research on ethnic minority migrants in Shanghai has been undertaken under the Ministry of Education's Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Fund project (jiaoyubu renwen shehuikexue yanjiu guihua jijin xiangmu) [project number 71196001]. It is directed by myself, in collaboration with Professor Zhang Jianghua of Shanghai University and with the support of six research assistants.

Notes

[1] See e.g. Sassen 2001 and Sennett 1996.

[2] See e.g. Nyiri 2010, Sun 2009, Solinger 1999, Murphy 2002, Li 2001, Davis 2000 and Roberts 2007.

[3] The expression literally means ‘work for a boss’, but is commonly used to describe migrant labour.

[4] The expression is an oxymoron, since in normal discourse, nong-min (farmers) are opposed to gong-ren (workers). These are farmers who have become urban workers.

[5] These figures are taken, by permission, from a talk given by Guldin entitled ‘Serving the City: Practicing Anthropology in an Urban World’, at the Changing Urban Life Conference, ECNU, 11–12 October 2011.

[6] According to the National Bureau of Statistics in February 2013, ‘By the end of 2012, the total number of Chinese population at the mainland reached 1,354.04 million, an increase of 6.69 million over that at the end of 2011. Of this total, urban population numbered 711.82 million, accounting for 52.6%’ (PRC 2013).

[7] The official figures don't tell us how many of those in rural areas have non-agricultural occupations, nor what outlying ‘urban’ areas are in fact still rural, and by relying on hukou (household registration) they also ignore large numbers of the liudong renkou, or ‘floating population’.

[8] Taken from the third section, ‘My Future is Not a Dream’, of Cao Fei's 2006 video film, ‘Whose Utopia?’.

[9] Kipnis's argument that traditional Chinese arts of statecraft are commonly drawn on today was further validated by the extraordinary suggestions apparently made by President Xi Jingping at a Politbiro meeting on 19 April that China could learn how to tackle modern corruption by following the examples of how corrupt officials were dealt with in ancient history. See Wang Xiangwei (2013), who cites the upright and incorruptible Song Dynasty official Bao Zheng, a famous character in Chinese opera, as the sort of exemplary ‘model’ which is being appealed to.

[10] For this paragraph I draw on the argument of an earlier paper (Tapp 2010).

[11] That is what Steiner calls the ‘counter-factual conditional’ (Steiner 1975, 216: ‘If Napoleon were here today, the war in Iraq would go differently’). ‘Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is’ says Steiner (1975, 217–18); the incidence of directly informative content in ordinary discourse is low, and what is important is the capacity of language to posit ‘otherness’ or ‘alterity’. We may ‘have got hold of the wrong end of the stick altogether’ (1975, 229) in assigning to speech development a primarily informative, or communicative function; it is the creative aspects of language which are vital to our evolution, survival and growth, the discovery that ‘statements can be free of fact and utility’ (1975, 230).

[12] Yang (1961) provides a good overview; also see essays in Johnson, Nathan, and Rawski (1985) and Eberhard (1977, 360). As Rawski (1985, 409) says, ‘Religion was always potentially subversive, even when sponsored by the state’.

[13] On Falun Gong, see Penny (2012). On the De Jiao, see Formoso (2010).

[14] On these ‘secret societies’, or brotherhood associations, see Fei-ling Davis (1977), but also: Wakeman (1966); Morgan (1960); Chesneaux (1972a, 1972b); Naquin (1976); Ownby (1996); ter Haar (1998); I thank Paul Katz for pointing me in the direction of ter Haar.

[15] For some details of these, see Faure (1986, 72) on ‘private deities’ and Liu (2003). For an account of the strength and richness of such local associations, which often adopted a patron deity, see also Feuchtwang (2001).

[16] On these Protestant Christian sects, see Xi (2010); also Anderson and Tang (2006).

[17] As current fieldwork by Mr Hu Haosen, as part of our Ministry of Education-funded research project on ethnic minority migrants in Shanghai, has shown.

[18] With thanks to Roger Casas, ANU, for this information.

[19] There are, however, those who would prefer a more practice-oriented approach to this ‘idealist’ one, based as it is largely on the linguistic analogy. See Tanabe's (2006) comments on Tapp (2006). Inter alia, he referred to works by Bourdieu, Austin, Gell (on map-making) and Eric Hirsch.

[20] See Tapp (2001).

[21] So many examples of this kind of cultural revival with overseas funding could be given, not just among the Buddhist temples of Guangdong and Fujan but also concerning the minorities. Even in Shanghai at the moment, one of our project researchers, Ms Wu Ting, is working on a Manchu cultural centre which has received Taiwanese funding.

[22] I have dealt with the ‘mental agony’ of some such figures in Tapp (2001, 197–200), arguing that such individuals may find it impossible to match up to the ‘double burden’ of cultural expectations placed on them, and fail at both. The case of one Miao who cremated rather than buried his daughter in accordance with government guidelines but was then strongly criticised by other Miao gives one some idea of the dilemmas often faced.

[23] Changes in the presentation of the bimo ritual specialist in Chinese academic discourse have been very well charted by a paper which as yet remains unpublished (Kraef 2014, cited by permission of the author); see also Liu Xiaoxing (2001) for some details of the Yi sunyi, or sanyi. See also Oakes (2010), on how the ritual New Year leaping dances performed by the ‘Tunpu’ people of Guizhou, known as tiaoshen, have become transformed into dixi, a kind of local operatic masked drama on a stage. For the Naxi sanyi, sani, sanba or llubhu, there is not much available recent literature, but see Bai Gengsheng (2004) for some historical account.

[24] And of course not just ritual specialists but also the rituals themselves, and the ritual texts associated with them.

[25] Leach's (1954, 16) more British sense of culture as the ‘form, the “dress” of a social situation’; both the larger American and smaller British senses now, as Parkin (1996) suggested with regard to the evolution of the notion of ‘social drama’, absorbed—however uncomfortably—in the new ‘politics of cultural performance’.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This research on ethnic minority migrants in Shanghai has been undertaken under the Ministry of Education's Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Fund project (jiaoyubu renwen shehuikexue yanjiu guihua jijin xiangmu) [project number 71196001]. It is directed by myself, in collaboration with Professor Zhang Jianghua of Shanghai University and with the support of six research assistants.