Religion in China on the Eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics

by Brian Grim, Senior Research Fellow in Religion and World Affairs, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
May 7, 2008

On Aug. 8, 2008 -- the eighth day of the eighth month of the year '08 -- at exactly 08:08:08 p.m., the Summer Olympics are scheduled to begin in Beijing. The day and hour for the start of the opening ceremony of the Olympics was chosen for its good fortune -- a widely held belief in Confucianism and Chinese folk religions. And, in fact, the Summer Olympics could be the first international forum where the growing presence and ambitions of religious groups in China are exposed to a watching world.

According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, 31% of the Chinese public considers religion to be very or somewhat important in their lives, compared with only 11% who say religion is not at all important. When asked a somewhat different question in a 2005 Pew poll, an even greater percentage of the Chinese public (56%) considered religion to be very or somewhat important in their lives.

Other survey data, as well as Chinese government reports, have also shown that relatively large numbers of the Chinese public consider religion to be important in their lives. This is somewhat surprising given that China has strictly adhered to a secular and even atheistic national philosophy for nearly six decades. As events unfold leading up to and following the Olympics, many people inside and outside China will be interested to see whether Chinese communism will adjust to religious market forces just as it has to economic market forces.

Religious Affiliation in China

While there are no nationally representative surveys of the religious affiliation of the Chinese public, three recent surveys provide some sense of the number of people who belong to China's five main recognized religions -- Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam and Taoism.

A Chinese public opinion polling firm, Horizon Research Consultancy Group, sponsored and carried out the surveys, which were reported in 2005 and 2006 by the Pew Global Attitudes Project,¹ and in 2007 by the Committee of 100 (C100),² a non-partisan organization composed of American citizens of Chinese descent. The surveys are disproportionately urban and representative of slightly more than half of China's adult population. Six cities and their surrounding areas were surveyed in 2005 and 2006 (of the six cities in each survey, three were the same), while seven cities and their surrounding areas were surveyed in 2007.

The surveys found that fewer than one-in-five Chinese adults (ranging from 14% to 18%) say they are religiously affiliated. This would make China one of the least religiously affiliated countries in the world. In the United States, by contrast, more than eight-in-ten adults (83%) say they are religiously affiliated, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey ³ conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2007.

Still, although the total percentage of religiously affiliated Chinese may not be high, the sheer number of people who say they belong to any particular religion is quite large. If the findings from these surveys were translated into actual numbers, they would nearly equal the estimated number of religiously affiliated adults in the U.S.

A recent survey reported by researchers at Shanghai's East China Normal University, which was cited in the state-approved China Daily, found that "31.4% of Chinese aged 16 and above, or about 300 million, are religious."⁴ While the actual survey data are not available, the fact that the number was reported by state-run media is perhaps an indication of the large number of people the government believes may be religious (independent of whether these individuals actually consider themselves affiliated with a particular religion).

Buddhism and Taoism

In the three Horizon surveys reported here, Buddhists represent the largest religious group in China, making up between 11% and 16% of the adult population. This seems a reasonable number given that Xinhua, a state-approved news agency, recently put the total number of Chinese Buddhists at "approximately 100 million."

Ethnic Tibetans, who are predominantly Buddhist, make up only a small portion of China's overall population and thus only a small proportion of the overall number of Buddhists. The number of ethnic Tibetans, however, is growing. Between the 1990 and 2000 censuses, for instance, their numbers increased by nearly 18% to approximately 5.4 million, compared with China's overall population growth of almost 12% during those same years. One reason for the more rapid growth among the ethnic Tibetan population may be that, as one of 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities in China, they receive an exception from the government's strict one-child-per-family policy. Fewer than half of ethnic Tibetans live in the Tibet Autonomous Region, which helps explain why the recent unrest was spread over several provinces.

All three Horizon surveys also indicate that adherents of Taoism, an indigenous Chinese religion, make up less than 1% of the Chinese adult population. No government estimates either corroborate or question this estimate.

The 2005 Pew poll did find, however, that approximately three-in-five Chinese express a personal belief in the possible existence of one or more supernatural phenomena, religious figures or supernatural beings that are often associated with Confucianism and popular forms of Chinese folk religion. These beliefs range from fortune and fate, to the Jade Emperor (associated with Taoism) and Tathagata (a manifestation of Buddha), to immortal souls and ghosts. While this is not necessarily a measure of the extent to which Chinese self-consciously identify with folk or popular religion, it does suggest that popular religious beliefs may be more widespread than is suggested by religious affiliation alone.

Christianity

Christianity is China's second-largest officially recognized religion. The Horizon surveys indicate that less than 4% of the adult population identifies as Christian, but there is indirect evidence that suggests this number could be low. In the three Horizon surveys, Protestants outnumber Catholics, which is generally in line with government figures for the ratio of Christians associated with state-approved Protestant and Catholic Church associations. These associations represent only the churches registered as government-approved places of worship.

Chinese government figures indicate dramatic growth among Protestants and Catholics, as is seen by comparing the numbers reported in the government's 1997 White Paper⁵ on religion with an updated 2006 "Background Brief" provided to the Pew Forum by the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. The officially reported number of Christians increased from 14 million to 21 million, or 50%, in less than 10 years. During this time, Protestants increased from 10 million to 16 million -- a 60% increase -- and Catholics from 4 million to 5 million -- a 25% increase. While some of this growth may be due to independent Christians registering with the official Protestant and Catholic associations, the new background brief goes so far as to say that Protestantism, in particular, has increased "by more than 20 times" since it "was first brought to China in the early 19th century."

The number of independent Christians, who on principle have not affiliated with state-approved associations, is more difficult to determine. Religious demographers and researchers generally agree that at least as many Chinese are associated with independent Christian groups, widely known as "house churches," as with the officially recognized bodies. Although the new background brief provided by the Chinese Embassy reports only a small number of these groups, the document does state that "There are no [government] data available on the number of 'house meetings' that exist."

The best available data on the number of independent or unaffiliated Christians -- including independent Christians in house churches and Catholic Christians loyal to the Vatican -- come from religious demographers and researchers who have direct connections with these networks. The World Christian Database, for instance, estimates that among the Han majority there are approximately 70 million Chinese associated with more than 300 house church networks. A separate review of house church estimates by a senior researcher at the Global China Center, an academic and research institution based in the U.S. and devoted to the study of China, puts the number at more than 50 million. The Holy Spirit Study Centre in Hong Kong, which monitors Catholics worshipping in congregations that do not affiliate with the state-approved Catholic association, estimates that there are at least 12 million Catholics in China, 7 million more than acknowledged by the government.

There is some indirect survey evidence that suggests the existence of a potentially large number of unaffiliated, independent Christians. For example, the 2005 Pew survey found that 6% of the Chinese public expresses belief in the possible existence of "God/Jesus" (in Chinese Shangdi/Yesu), a rough equivalent of saying the "Christian God." This is more than 50% higher than the number of people who self-identify as a Christian in the same poll. The 6% estimate is closer to the estimates of China's total Christian population made by religious demographers and researchers.

Islam

There is also a large number of Muslims in China. The Horizon surveys found that some 1% of the adult population says they are Muslim. This falls short of the number suggested by government statistics. According to the 2000 census, for example, ethnic groups closely associated with Islam numbered 20.3 million, or approximately 1.5% of the total population.

The lower survey estimates likely are due in large part to the fact that the Horizon surveys were not conducted in autonomous regions with predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, such as the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which has a large Hui Muslim population, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where most Uygur Muslims live. According to the 2000 census, Hui, who live in many of China's provinces, number nearly 10 million, followed by the Uygurs, who number more than 8 million.

The presence of more than 20 million Muslims places China among the top 20 countries in Muslim population size -- almost equal to that of Saudi Arabia, for instance, and nearly double that of all 27 European Union countries combined.

Government Officials Interested in Hearing about Religion

Possibly the most intriguing finding regarding religion in China today comes from an analysis by the Pew Forum of a 2005 survey⁶ conducted by InterMedia, an international research and consulting organization specializing in media and communications. The Forum's analysis of this unprecedented survey, which included more than 10,000 adults across 21 of China's 31 mainland provinces, municipal districts and autonomous regions, finds that 33% of Communist Party officials and government employees are very or somewhat interested in having media access to information on the topic of religion. This makes them the most interested occupational group among the dozen or so groups reported.

There are other signs that the Communist Party is taking note of the growing interest in religion in the country. For instance, Hu Jintao, President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, broke with former practice and included a formal discussion of religion at last October's National Congress. In January 2008, Hu stated to the Chinese Politburo, "We must strive to closely unite religious figures and believers ... to build an all-around ... prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism."

The relatively high level of interest in the topic of religion by Communist Party and government employees, in particular, may indicate that the government is seeking to come to terms with the interest in religion on the part of many people in China. So, although religion will not be competing in the Olympic Games, it seems to be a more competitive force in China than people imagine.

Read the full report at pewforum.org

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¹ "China's Optimism: Prosperity Brings Satisfaction - and Hope," Nov. 16, 2005 and "Publics of Asian Powers Hold Negative Views of One Another: China's Neighbors Worry About Its Growing Military Strength," September 21, 2006.

² "Hope and Fear," Full Report of C-100's Survey on American and Chinese Attitudes Toward Each Other, Dec. 10, 2007.

³ U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, 2008.

⁴ "Religious believers thrice the estimate," China Daily, Feb. 7, 2007.

⁵ "Freedom of Religious Belief in China," Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, June 1996, Beijing.

⁶ The Pew Forum purchased selected data from InterMedia's "Survey on the Lifestyle of Chinese Residents," which was conducted April-May 2005 (N=10,451). Of the 31 provinces (including regions and municipalities) that constitute mainland China, the InterMedia survey covered 21, making it one of the most extensive surveys of China reported to date. Respondents were asked a battery of questions in the 2005 InterMedia survey, with the stem: "Please tell me how interested you would be in hearing the topic of ___ in reports/features/programs on radio, TV, the press, and the internet? The fourteenth item in that series is reported here: "Are you interested in the topic of religion?" Respondents qualified for the question if they have access to media and have an interest in national and international affairs. 7,744 qualified. Contact: http://www.intermedia.org/ for more information on the survey.