Religions and philanthropy in Chinese societies since 1978

Modern Chinese Religion II 1850–2015 volume 2 Edited by Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely, and John Lagerwey LEIDEN | BOSTON For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Contents Acknowledgements ix List of Contributors x VOLUME 1 Introduction Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely, and John Lagerwey 1 Part 1 Foundational Transformations Section 1 Economics The Introduction of Economics in China, 1850–2010 65 David Faure Section 2 Science Scientism in the Twentieth Century 91 Grace Yen Shen 沈德容 Section 3 Medicine History of Chinese Medicine, 1890–2010 141 Volker Scheid and Eric I. Karchmer Section 4 Aesthetics Art, Aesthetics, and Religion in Modern China 197 Walter B. Davis For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV vi contents Part 2 State Policy/State Ideology Buddhism and the State in Modern and Contemporary China 261 Xue Yu 學愚 The Discourse of “Chinese Marxism” 302 Arif Dirlik Part 3 Histories of Religions Section 1 Rural Traditions Local Religion and Festivals 371 Thomas David DuBois Moral Discourse, Moral Practice, and the Rural Family in Modern China 401 Ellen Oxfeld Lineages and the Making of Contemporary China 433 Michael Szonyi Section 2 Social and Institutional Change and Religion Women and the Religious Question in Modern China 491 Xiaofei Kang 康笑菲 New Technologies and the Production of Religious Texts in China, 19th–21st Century 560 Philip Clart For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV contents vii VOLUME 2 Charity, Medicine, and Religion: The Quest for Modernity in Canton (ca. 1870–1937) 579 Angela Ki Che Leung 梁其姿 Religions and Philanthropy in Chinese Societies Since 1978 613 André Laliberté Section 3 Spirit Writing, Redemptive Societies Spirit Writing Groups in Modern China (1840–1937): Textual Production, Public Teachings, and Charity 651 Wang Chien-ch’uan 王見川 Redemptive Societies in the Twentieth Century 685 David Ownby Section 4 The Three Teachings: Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism Buddhist Institutional Innovations 731 Ji Zhe 汲喆 The Hidden Tradition: Confucianism and Its Metamorphoses in Modern and Contemporary China 767 Sébastien Billioud Daoism from the Late Qing to Early Republican Periods 806 Xun Liu 劉迅 Section 5 Christianity Anti-Modern Theology and Pre-Modern Practice: Catholic Indigenization from Below in Modern China 841 Richard Madsen For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV viii contents Protestantism and Modern China: Rejection, Success, Disaster, Survival, and Rebirth 867 Daniel H. Bays Miraculous Modernity: Charismatic Traditions and Trajectories within Chinese Protestant Christianity 884 Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye Section 6 Contemporary Trends The Revival and Development of Popular Religion in China, 1980–Present 923 Lizhu Fan 范麗珠 and Na Chen 陳納 The Commodiijication of Religion in Chinese Societies 949 Adam Yuet Chau 周越 Bibliography 977 Index 1077 For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy in Chinese Societies Since 1978 André Laliberté Introduction Since the beginning of the reform and opening policy launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, charity has re-emerged as an important component of Chinese contemporary society. This evolution has responded, in good part, to changes in the economic and social policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Charity was a mainly secular phenomenon while Deng ruled, but under his successors, the religious dimension of philanthropy has increased signiijicantly in importance. The greater participation of religious institutions in charity work, fund-raising, and philanthropy supported recently by government leaders reflects the complex nature of relations between religions and states observed in most contemporary societies.1 It also illustrates the challenges faced by the Chinese state, which has been poorly equipped to address the welfare needs of a population experiencing demographic changes on an unprecedented scale, and it further reveals the increasing importance of religion in contemporary China. Philanthropic institutions were important providers of social services at different times in imperial Chinese history, but they lost this capacity after 1949, when ofijicials repudiated the concept of charity as bourgeois.2 This approach had a direct impact on religious institutions, especially redemptive societies3 1 See Peter Beyer, Religions in global society (London, 2006). 2 For a detailed discussion of charity before 1949, including its origins and roots in the philosophies and religions of China, see chapters 3–5 of Karla Simon, Civil society in China: the legal framework from ancient times to the “new reform era” (New York, 2013), pp. 51–143. As Jan Kiely notes, 1949 itself was not such a precise marker: for instance, in the case of Buddhist organizations, their charity in Shanghai and some other Jiangnan cities continued into the early 1950s. See Angela Leung’s chapter in this volume. 3 Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer, The religious question in modern China (Chicago, 2011), pp. 91–108; see also David Palmer, “Chinese redemptive societies: historical phenomenon or sociological category?” in Wang Chien-ch’uan and David Palmer, eds, Redemptive societies and religious movements in Republican China, special issue, Journal of Chinese Rituals, Theatre and Folklore 172 (2010), 1–51, and David Ownby’s chapter in this volume. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004304642_015 For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 614 Laliberté and Christian churches,4 which had expanded their influence in Chinese society through their philanthropy. The explicit suppression of charity under Mao Zedong and Hua Guofeng’s rule between 1949 and 1978, and the consequent diminishing of religious authority, have obscured the fact that outside the People’s Republic of China (PRC) there is a long tradition of philanthropy and charity among Chinese people.5 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to elaborate on the nature of charity in China before 1949, or the reasons behind the suppression of philanthropy—secular or religious—between 1949 and 1978. The main goal will be to understand the policy changes of the CCP towards a greater acceptance of religious charity in the 1990s. To achieve this, it looks at the legacy left by Mao, the experiences of Chinese philanthropy outside the PRC, the gradual opening of secular charity, and ijinally the relaxation of state control over religious institutions that allowed the involvement of the latter in philanthropy. To illustrate the extent of the changes endorsed by the regime, the second part of the essay describes the diversity of approaches adopted by various religious traditions. Religion and Charity in China: A Long March Towards Acceptance As Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer have explained, from the end of the Qing dynasty until 1949 Chinese society experienced two types of projects responding to the marginalization of traditional culture incurred by the forces of modernization. The ijirst project was the growth of redemptive societies, which tried to revitalize tradition by creating new forms of religious and spiritual practices, and the second was an attempt to salvage from religions and “superstitions” elements of tradition, such as Chinese medicine, martial arts, and meditative practices, that could be marshaled to create an alternative form of modernity.6 By 1978, the CCP had largely succeeded in undermining the ijirst type of project through its eradication in China of redemptive societies.7 This policy contrasted with the supportive attitude it had adopted towards the development of aspects of traditional culture that could serve as 4 On Christian churches’ missions before 1949, see Daniel H. Bays, A new history of Christianity in China (Malden, 2012), pp. 92–120. 5 See Joanna Handlin Smith, The art of doing good: charity in late Ming China (Berkeley, 2009), and Liang Qizi (Angela Leung), Shishan yu jiaohua: Ming Qing de cishan zuzhi (Taipei, 1997). 6 Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, pp. 108–21. 7 Ownby suggests that we should think about the reform-era qigong movement as a continuation of the redemptive societies. See Ownby’s chapter in this volume. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 615 foundation for a Chinese science. Charity did not beneijit from the same leniency as traditional medicine, martial arts, and practices such as qigong in the Mao era. This position resulted from the CCP’s fears that the population could interpret all too easily its existence as a metonymy for state failure.8 The policy of reform and opening made possible the initial rehabilitation of charity, out of consideration for growing concerns over the collateral damage of economic growth, but the inclusion of religious institutions in charity came later. The Legacies of the Mao Era At the end of 1978, Deng Xiaoping assumed leadership of the CCP, setting China on a path to recovery from the disastrous decades that saw the Great Leap Forward famine and the Cultural Revolution ruin the economy, profoundly damage social cohesion, and almost annihilate the material foundations for religious life. Although Chinese authorities today portray the third plenum of the eleventh CCP Central Committee as a major milestone for the policy of reform and opening, political reform in fact proceeded in ijits and starts. This was especially true of the reform of social policies and the contribution of charity and religion to these policies. These reforms faced numerous obstacles, including resistance from a generation of cadres hostile to the rehabilitation of any proscribed practices once common prior to 1949, and the mandatory requirement for cadres to promote atheism. In other words, the institutional memory left by campaigns under Mao proved long lasting. The CCP under Mao Zedong had looked at philanthropy and charity as remnants of the old society and even avoided using the term cishan 慈善. Mao and like-minded radicals associated philanthropy with “bourgeois humanism”, and considered its practice unnecessary because the socialist regime claimed to assume responsibility for all social functions, which would be realized through participation in the labor force in state-owned enterprises for urban residents, and in people’s communes for rural residents.9 The new regime looked at private charities as a potential threat to its legitimacy because their continued existence could have suggested that the government was unsuccessful in its endeavour to provide social services to the whole population.10 Moreover, 8 9 10 For an analysis of Falungong as a metonymic critique of China’s shortcoming in health care, see Patricia Thornton, “Framing dissent in contemporary China: irony, ambiguity and metonymy,” China Quarterly 171 (September 2002), 661–81. David C. Schak, “Protestantism in China: a dilemma for the party-state,” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 40.2 (2011), 71–106, p. 80. Carolyn Hsu, “ ‘Rehabilitating charity’ in China: the case of Project Hope and the rise of non-proijit organizations,” Journal of Civil Society 4.2 (July 2008), 81–96, p. 87. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 616 Laliberté for the majority of the population, which was living in the countryside during Mao’s rule, the CCP believed that the people’s communes and the “ijive guarantees”11 had made redundant the traditional charity and delivery of social services offered by communal temples to people in rural areas.12 As a result of these views, the government had sought to absorb into government and mass organizations, or simply disband, all independent associations that had existed prior to the revolution, whether they were political, social, or religious groups.13 As early as 1950, during land reform, the CCP authorities attacked, and sought to de-institutionalize, the lineage associations that for centuries embodied in their view the Confucian patriarchal clan, dismissing them as “feudal” and “reactionary”.14 The CCP also targeted for extermination campaigns the redemptive societies, which were mutual aid societies as well as religious associations, such as Yiguandao 一貫道 and Yuanli Tiandao 原理 道. The CCP blamed them for collaboration with their Nationalist enemies during the civil war, and deijined them as “reactionary secret societies” (fandong huidaomen 反動會道門).15 Ofijicials tried to distinguish between them and superstitions (mixin 迷信), which they treated more leniently, but this distinction was not always clear, especially in the countryside; as a result, the implementation of religious policies varied across the country.16 The enormous resistance to this policy of clamping down on rural sectarian movements during the ijirst years of the new regime revealed the importance of those associations.17 Campaigns against “secret societies”, often associated with land reform, succeeded in eliminating them by the early 1950s, thereby undermining a major source of philanthropy.18 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 A government program that offers guarantees to elderly people without a source of income or without a guardian to support them wherein the state would help them with subsidies to take care of their food, clothing, housing, health care, and burial expenses. Schak, “Protestantism in China,” p. 80. Carolyn Hsu, “Beyond civil society: an organizational perspective on state-NGO relations in the People’s Republic of China,” Journal of Civil Society 6.3 (December 2010), 259–77, p. 261. Hsu, “Rehabilitating charity in China,” pp. 86–87. Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, pp. 148–49. Ibid. Elizabeth J. Perry, Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: social protest and state power in China (Armonk, NY, 2002), pp. 277–78. See also the chapter by Michael Szonyi in volume one of this book. Perry, Challenging the Mandate, pp. 285–86; David Ownby, “Imperial fantasies: the Chinese Communists and peasant rebellions,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43.1 (2001), 65–91. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 617 Other religious institutions had to register with one of the ijive authorised religious associations, or else they would have to cease their activities and disband, and their members would face the kind of sanctions the state inflicted on members of “reactionary secret societies”. The state attitude towards different religions varied. Identifying those among Protestant and Catholic Christians who were not collaborating with the ofijicial organizations as accomplices of the former regime and foreign powers, the CCP expelled foreign missionaries who had supported them.19 Many churches accepted the directives to join organizations under CCP control during the ijirst years of the new regime because they believed that the state would respect its pledge to let them continue their activities. For example, in 1953 most Protestant churches of all denominations joined the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM, or in short, the Three-Selves churches, Sanzijiaohui 三自教會), in the hope of serving Chinese Christians in accordance with the goals of socialism. The corporatist logic of the CCP narrowed signiijicantly the scope of permissible activities religious associations could perform besides state-approved religious rituals in venues authorized by the government such as serving mass in churches or giving dharma lectures in temples.20 Authorities denied religious associations the right to offer any social services, thereby ensuring that the population would look at them as parasites living at the expense of the wider society. Yang claimed that the new policies had less impact on Buddhist and Daoist institutions than on Christian ones, simply because the former’s organizational weaknesses and already precarious ijinancial situation during the Republican period had impeded their charity work in local communities.21 However, as the examples provided by Liu Xun in his contribution to this volume show, recent scholarship suggests that this was not always the case. This implies that the impact of the new policies on religious associations was much bigger than previously assumed, and was not limited to Christians. Religious institutions previously made wealthy thanks to donations lost an important source of legitimacy and support when the new directives precluded them 19 20 21 Bays, A new history of Christianity in China, pp. 159–60, p. 179. “Corporatist” refers to the usage of this term in political science by Philip Schmitter: “Corporatism can be deijined as system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, non-competitive, compulsory, hierarchically ordered, and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created), by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulation of demands and supports.” See Philip Schmitter, “Still the century of corporatism?” The Review of Politics 36.1 (January 1974), 93–94. Yang Ching-kun, Religion in Chinese society: a study of contemporary social functions of religion and some of their historical factors (Berkeley, 1961), pp. 335–37. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 618 Laliberté from returning to society some of their wealth through welfare services to the community. By 1954, all pre-existing charity organizations had disappeared, the CCP having put all hospitals and schools previously run by religious organizations under the aegis of the Chinese Red Cross or the Chinese Welfare Association.22 Religious institutions of all traditions became therefore extremely vulnerable to the consequences of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The Great Leap Forward famine affected the whole population, but the Cultural Revolution targeted speciijic categories of people, among them religious believers and clergy. During the Cultural Revolution, the radical factions of the CCP headed by Mao sought to eradicate all forms of religiosity in China. Red Guards and their supporters denounced Christians as accomplices of the “imperialists,” and Buddhists and Daoists as remnants of “feudal” forces no more worthy of respect than communal religions and “reactionary sects”. The authorities closed down the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) 國務院宗教事務局, the central organ serving as liaison between the CCP United Front Work Department and the state-approved religious associations. The RAB served no purpose as religious associations had to cease their activities. Red Guards destroyed many temples and churches, or converted them to other uses, and forced priests, monks, and nuns to recant and return to lay life, or worse. The Cultural Revolution represented an attempt to go further than what was envisioned by the CCP leaders in the previous decade. Stephen Feuchtwang has described the political turmoil of that time as one of the most important attempts in world history to build a nation-wide interpretive community of meaning whereby new political rituals tried to destroy traditional elements of public culture and its rituals associated with all stages of life, including ancestor worship and festivals.23 But Feuchtwang also adds that in its effort to create what he terms a “strict interpretive community” the Cultural Revolution generated instead a multitude of performative communities, divided in factions that often borrowed the images and symbols of popular religions, and sometimes even used the language of class to mask conflicts predating 1949. In the intensity of their campaigns, mass actions, and rituals, these performative communities consti22 23 Wang Junqiu, Zhongguo cishan yu jiuji (Beijing, 2008), pp. 198–201, quoted in Schak, “Protestantism in China,” p. 80. Feuchtwang owes the concept to Robert Weller. See Stephen Feuchtwang, “Religion as resistance,” in Chinese society: change, conflict, and resistance, Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden, eds, (New York, 2000), pp. 163–64, p. 175 n. 5; and Robert P. Weller, Resistance, chaos, and control in China: Taiping rebels, Taiwanese ghosts and Tiananmen (Seattle, 1994). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 619 tuted a religious resistance to the bureaucratic state.24 In the end, the Cultural Revolution failed on its own terms. It could not eliminate religion from Chinese society and produced unexpected results: by driving underground the most fervent religious believers, it ensured the resilience of their practices.25 The upheavals generated by these campaigns terminally depleted the social capital and human resources of religious institutions, already diminished by the century of turmoil that had followed the outbreak of the Taiping civil war in the mid-19th century. David Schak noted that the egalitarian policies implemented under Mao had made impossible the existence of charity organizations during that time: the new economic policies supported by the people’s communes generated very little surplus, and left no wealth to fund philanthropy.26 By 1978, a generation had come of age with the idea that religion was “the opiate of the masses” and that any form of altruistic activity was a deceptive scheme of “class enemies.” In such a context, the legal recognition of charities as acceptable forms of social organization faced opposition from doctrinaire cadres. For decades after Mao’s death, this legacy of resistance made less likely the possibility that religious institutions could be involved in managing charities or creating their own. When Deng Xiaoping put in place the policies that would gradually open up possibilities for the development of philanthropy and the revival of religious activities in that particular sphere, China had few resources from which to rebuild institutions destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. This was far from the case with other societies with a Chinese heritage, however. In particular, secular and religious philanthropy in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, during these periods of turmoil in China, had proven extremely effective in supporting, though not supplanting, governments in the delivery of social services and the running of institutions in health care and education. While Chinese religions experienced numerous restrictions under Mao, they thrived in Taiwan, the European colonies of Hong Kong and Macau, and in some of the overseas Chinese communities. Chinese Religious Philanthropy Outside the PRC The Chinese business, political, and intellectual elites in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, but also throughout the global Chinese diaspora, shared the modernist view that prevailed at the beginning of the 20th century in the Western world about the teleology of secularization. However, in 24 25 26 Feuchtwang, “Religion as resistance,” p. 164. Feuchtwang, “Religion as resistance,” pp. 164–66. Schak, “Protestantism in China,” p. 81. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 620 Laliberté contrast to the CCP’s radical policies of state control of ofijicial religions, persecution of non-recognized religions, and marginalization of popular beliefs as “superstitions”, they sought to use them as instruments in their projects of nation building. Political leaders in Taiwan and Singapore were in a strong position to use the resources of religious institutions, while ethnic Chinese leaders in colonial societies were in a different position vis-à-vis the state. Regional networks, and what Mayfair Yang has termed “transnational connectedness between ritual communities”,27 ensured that religious-based charity could transcend state borders. In Taiwan, the Kuomintang (KMT) put in place corporatist policies towards a limited number of institutionalized religions that it deemed compatible with its goals of modernization and its claim to represent all of China, namely Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam. It also recognized a limited number of redemptive societies whose leaders had been supportive of the regime; yet, it harassed others, such as Yiguandao, which it accused of sedition or practicing “obscene religion”.28 The surveillance imposed on these groups, however, did not translate into the mass executions inflicted on their coreligionists on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. The KMT also implemented restrictive regulations towards popular religions, which it criticized for being “wasteful practices” and “superstitions”; but it did not do so in any way comparable to the campaign against lineages in the mainland. After its defeat by the CCP in 1949 and relocation to Taiwan, the KMT dealt with an unprecedented migration from mainland China, including religious clerics, in particular Christian missionaries, and leaders of redemptive societies who feared persecution. Many of these refugees, including members of redemptive societies, became staunch supporters of the KMT.29 Since 1976, the Taiwan government has ordered temples to undertake philanthropy. In doing so, it followed a policy commonplace in other East Asian developmental states, where governments preferred to maintain low levels of expenditure on social welfare, letting the private sector take charge of relief to the poor, pensions, and health care. In the early stages of KMT development 27 28 29 Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: matrifocal ritual space, nationstate, and satellite television footprints,” in Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, ed., Chinese religiosities: afflictions of modernity and state formation (Berkeley, 2008), p. 346. Emily Martin Ahern, “The Thai Ti Kong Festival,” in Emily Martin Ahern and Hill Gates, eds. The anthropology of Taiwanese society, (Taipei, 1987), pp. 397–426. On the issue of the KMT’s relations with religions during the martial law period, see Paul R. Katz, “Religion and the state in post-war Taiwan,” The China Quarterly, 174 (2003), 395–412. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 621 in Taiwan, this meant reliance on the family. However, as rapid urbanization and social changes limited this option, the government sought the support of religious institutions for the delivery of social services. During the period of martial law to 1987, the government was in a position to command religious institutions and expect that they would follow its directives.30 Christian religious institutions were already important actors in the provision of social services in education and health care, but because their numbers were small the authorities sought to involve the leaders of Buddhist and Daoist associations, which had authority over a larger number of people. These demands from the government granted religious associations an important role in society. As a result, the KMT government and Buddhist institutions developed a mutually beneijicial relationship: the ruling party encouraged the growth of Buddhist charities to help it alleviate poverty, and many of these institutions, in return, supported the KMT—or at least refrained from supporting the opposition— when Taiwan entered the process of democratization.31 With the transition to democracy, the ijield of religion expanded, as the government recognized redemptive societies hitherto banned, along with small new religious movements such as the Hai Tze Tao 孩子道 and the Great Way of Maitreya 彌勒大道.32 This evolution occurred in a context where civil society expanded and the number of NGOs grew considerably, many of them acting as pressure groups pushing for political liberalization, then as stakeholders in the process of democratic consolidation.33 Taiwan’s status as a nonrecognized state, however, puts its charities in an unusual and uncomfortable position: although they contribute to the expansion of rights within Taiwan for their constituencies, their transnational impact, despite their efforts to attract support abroad,34 is limited because of Taiwan’s absence from international society. The Christian and Buddhist associations that had beneijited because of their good relations with the authoritarian regime until 1987 were not sanctioned when the opposition to the KMT took power in 2000. This was because 30 31 32 33 34 Richard Madsen, “Religious renaissance and Taiwan’s modern middle classes,” in Yang, ed., Chinese religiosities, p. 317; André Laliberté, “Tzu Chi and the buddhist revival in Taiwan: rise of a new conservatism?” China Perspectives 19 (September/October 1998), 44–50. Madsen, “Religious Renaissance,” p. 319. The concept of “new religious movements” is a contested one. Michael Hsiao Hsin-huang, “NGOs, the state, and democracy under globalization—the case of Taiwan,” in Robert P. Weller, ed., Civil life, globalization, and political change in Asia: organizing between family and state (London and New York, 2005), pp. 42–57. Chen Jie, “Burgeoning transnationalism of Taiwan’s social movement NGOs,” Journal of Contemporary China 10.29 (2001), 613–44. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 622 Laliberté of the nature of the transition itself, which did not result from a sudden revolution but from a gradual opening of the regime in response to pressures from a moderate opposition. For Richard Madsen, religious philanthropies, by promoting social cohesion, facilitated that process.35 Although British colonial authorities implemented in Hong Kong and Singapore an ostensibly laissez-faire policy towards religious affairs, some religions received preferential treatment, and the instrumentalization of religion for the application of social policy differed greatly from Taiwan. In Hong Kong, for instance, although only ten per cent of the population identiijied as Christians, the government outsourced to Catholic and Protestant churches the operation of half the primary and secondary schools, including the best ones.36 This skewed structure of relations between the authorities and religious institutions, which favored some at the expense of others, brought some risks. As Liu Tai-Lok and his colleagues pointed out in their study of NGOs in Hong Kong, this type of relationship may create a dichotomy between associations that are “friendly” to the state and others which may be more antagonistic because they feel excluded from the structure of power.37 In Macau, a similar bias existed vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, which shows greater involvement in the provision of social services relative to other religions, despite the fact that the number of Catholics is very small.38 Religiously based philanthropy also thrived in many other societies where Chinese are ethnic minorities. For example, the redemptive society known as the Virtuous Teaching (Dejiao 德教), founded in Chaozhou, has established its presence throughout Southeast Asia and from there—albeit very briefly— expanded in China, Japan, Taiwan, California, and Australia, after its spiritual leaders received a revelation enjoining them to expand abroad.39 An important element of the revelations received by earlier Dejiao leaders in China was to carry out charity and look after the sick. Over the years, the philanthropy conducted by Dejiao associations became one of the largest in Southeast Asia.40 In his study of charitable halls (shantang 善堂) run by Dejiao devotees 35 36 37 38 39 40 Richard Madsen, Democracy’s dharma: religious renaissance and political development in Taiwan (Berkeley, 2007), pp. 132–36. Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, p. 350. Lui Tai-Lok, Hsin-Chi Kuan, Kin-Man Chan, and Sunny Cheuk-Wah Chan, “Friends and critics of the state: the case of Hong Kong,” in Weller, ed., Civil life, pp. 58–75, p. 59. See Zheng Hongtai and Yin Baoshan, “Aomen jumin de zongjiao xinyang yu shenghuo,” Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu 17.4 (2010), 91–126. Bernard Formoso, “A wishful thinking claim to global expansion? The case of De Jiao (德教),” Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series 96 (Singapore, 2007). Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, pp. 208–9. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 623 in Southeast Asia and Guangdong province, Tan Chee-Beng demonstrated the extensive connections and linkages between Chinese overseas communities and the ancestral community where the religion originated, revealing some of the networks through which religious Chinese philanthropy has survived, and how it could help its revitalization in the PRC.41 However, the situation of ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia varies greatly. Their status as minorities and descendants of migrants dating from the colonial era made them vulnerable to populist and nationalist politics. Ethnic Chinese communities faced pogroms, as in Indonesia; cultural assimilation, as in the Philippines and Thailand; or economic and political subordination to the ethnic majority, as in Malaysia. Under such pressures, some members of Chinese ethnic communities overseas have chosen to adapt to the dominant culture and abandoned their heritage. A majority, however, have managed to compromise: they have adopted traits of the dominant culture but kept some of their own rituals. As Goossaert and Palmer have noted, when state bureaucracies required Chinese religious communities to register, they often did so as cultural or charitable associations, raising the question as to whether they are genuine philanthropic associations.42 These groups relate to different networks, but research done by Hong Liu about the globalization of Chinese voluntary associations suggests that most of the transnational networks and linkages of these charities have grown considerably in the last two decades.43 The importance of religious philanthropy in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore, as well as among overseas Chinese communities worldwide, suggests that the engagement of religious institutions with society through the conduct of charity has not diminished in intensity with modernization and the growing exposure to cosmopolitan values and access to higher education for an increased number of people. In fact, Chinese societies outside of the PRC have never stopped pursuing the objective of appropriating for their own culture the potential of global modernity.44 Recent evidence points now to similar trends in China, thanks in part to interactions with the global Chinese diaspora, and to increasing exchanges across the Taiwan Strait. These 41 42 43 44 Tan Chee-Beng, “Shantang: charitable temples in China, Singapore, and Malaysia,” Asian Ethnology 71.1 (2012), 75–107. Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, p. 219. Liu Hong, “Old linkages, new networks: the globalization of overseas Chinese voluntary associations and its implications,” The China Quarterly 155 (1998), 582–609. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “Introduction,” in Yang, ed., Chinese religiosities (Berkeley, 2008), p. 31. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 624 Laliberté interactions have made possible the transmission of corporate practices and know-how from secular and religious NGOs, but it has taken a long time before China could make decisive steps in that direction, because of its own internal dynamics. The Gradual Opening to Charity The dismantling of the people’s communes after 1979 did not mean a return of land to peasants and landlords, but simply the gradual abolition of the social services provided by the institutions set up during Mao’s period. The new policy widened disparities between the countryside and cities. For residents of the latter, access to the “iron rice bowl” of social services such as health care and education depended on employment in state-owned enterprises and legal status as urban dwellers.45 Rural residents, on the other hand, have faced a more difijicult situation. The family-based contract responsibilities system adopted across China in 1984 helped millions of peasants to improve their living conditions, but after ten years the positive effects of these reforms gradually diminished. Health care, education, pensions, child care, and other social services, which used to be provided by the people’s commune, became the responsibility of local governments, many of which had to increase taxes, levies, and other means of ijiscal extraction, to ensure they could meet their social obligations. In poor counties with few resources, governments had no means to fund, let alone deliver, social services.46 The central authorities, aware of these realities, concluded that they needed a greater participation from the population to assist governments in impoverished regions with the provision of social services, through new and old forms of solidarity and mutual help. These concerns led to an interest for foreign-based notions such as NGOs and civil society. The recognition that civil society matters has come in stages. As is the case with other aspects of Chinese government policies, the decisions made at the center resulted from institutional learning derived from a mixture of ad hoc experiments and expedient responses to local developments, as well as lessons gained from the study and observation of philanthropy in Taiwan and Hong Kong.47 In 1988, the central government adopted a set of regulations for foundations 基金會管理條例, and in 1989 regulations for social organizations 45 46 47 For a summary of these reforms’ effects on people’s welfare, see Neil C. Hughes, China’s economic challenge: smashing the iron rice bowl (Armonk, N.Y., 2002). On the challenges of poverty in post-Mao China, see Jonathan Unger, The transformation of rural China (Armonk, N.Y., 2002). Tao Feiya and Liu Yi, eds, Zongjiao cishan yu Zhongguo shehui gongyi (Shanghai, 2012). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 625 社會團體管理條例.48 Karla Simon wrote in her study of the legal framework for China’s civil society that the crackdown against the demonstration in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 led to a pause in the progress towards civil society.49 This was the case because the more conservative among the CCP leaders believed that the gradual opening of civil society was a root cause of the disturbances and political crises experienced during the 1980s. The reforms stopped for a short time, but the problems they were intended to solve were too important to ignore, and so continued reforms in the legal system were needed. With the growth of the Chinese economy after the reset of the economic reform policies in 1992, the beneijits of growth in the countryside became increasingly skewed towards a minority of cadres and well-connected entrepreneurs, leaving behind growing cohorts of vulnerable populations: laid-off workers from closed-down factory units without social security provisions, peasants forced off land expropriated by land developers without proper compensation, and elderly who could not receive pensions from bankrupt state companies. The lack of investment in impoverished regions and a decline in the offer of social services by their governments exacerbated these numerous individual tragedies. Acutely aware of these problems and their potential to increase unrest, central authorities revised their positions on philanthropy and encouraged legal reform to support private charities. It is in this context that the 1990s saw a surge of philanthropy, much of it funded by wealthy public entertainers and the nouveaux riches of the corporate sector. Analysis of Chinese newspapers during the ijirst ijive years of Jiang Zemin’s mandate revealed that despite two decades of reforms and the willingness of authorities to promote morality and civic spirit, the rehabilitated concept of charity continued to generate confusion.50 The debates on the status of Non-Government Organizations (NGO) and Civil Society Organizations (CSO) framed the practice on charities during the Jiang era and under his successor Hu Jintao, and so regained legitimacy as a practice compatible with the existing political economy. Proponents of charity’s growth, in the context of a political regime that remained authoritarian, proceeded carefully, and avoided confronting the state. Carolyn Hsu’s evidence on NGOs points to an emphasis on prudence. NGOs sought primarily to establish good relations with state agencies and ofijicials rather than 48 49 50 Simon, Civil society, pp. 198–206. Simon, Civil society, p. 235. Yin Mei-Chi, “Zhongguo dalu shichang shehui xia de cishan guan,” Shehui zhengce yu shehui gongzuo xuekan 2.2 (December 1998), 55–99. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 626 Laliberté autonomy from authorities.51 On the basis of her research on the evolution of the legal framework for NGOs and CSOs, Karla Simon argues that in this relatively favorable political climate, the period between 1990 and 2010 represented a period of relative liberalization for civil society, featuring the passing of important sets of regulations and laws. In 1998, the National People’s Congress adopted regulations on social organizations and noncommercial institutions 民辦非企業單位管理條例;52 enacted a law on donations for public welfare 公益事業捐贈法 in 1999, which encouraged donations to charities in response to national disasters;53 and adopted in 2004 a new round of regulations for the management of foundations 基金會管理條例.54 The legitimization of philanthropy during that period should not obscure the fact that it remains a negligible part of the Chinese economy, equivalent to 0.01 per cent of China’s GDP, according to numbers from the Charity and Donation Information Center 中民慈善捐助信息中心 of the Ministry of Civil Affairs 民政部.55 Furthermore, the authorities expect charities, like NGOs and CSOs, to serve the state, and do not allow them to engage in advocacy. As Anthony Spires argues, if they respect this limitation, government authorities allow unregistered grassroot NGOs to survive, in a situation he describes as “contingent symbiosis”, as long as they help the state achieve its welfare goals and do not make democratic demands on the state.56 Although the state has gradually accepted charity and philanthropy, its religious dimension remains largely ignored, or suppressed, as the absence of references to religious philanthropy in ofijicial publications on charity attests.57 Many members of the epistemic communities of experts in the ijields of history and social science do not agree with the reluctance of the authorities to allow the involvement of religious institutions in philanthropy. Reacting to the idea that charity is a strictly secular affair, scholars like Li Tiangang have reminded their 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 Hsu, “Beyond civil society,” p. 275. Simon, Civil society, pp. 239–41. Ibid. pp. 254–55. Ibid. pp. 249–53. In the United States, philanthropy is equivalent to 2.2 per cent of GDP. The data for Chinese philanthropy in 2010 is available in Liu Jing, Zhongguo cishan juanzeng fazhan lanpishu (Beijing, 2011). Anthony J. Spires, “Contingent symbiosis and civil society in an authoritarian state: understanding the survival of China’s grassroots NGOs,” American Journal of Sociology 117.1 (July 2011), 1–45, p. 36. See Liu, Lanpishu, but also Xu Lin, Zhongguo cishan shiye fazhan yanjiu (Beijing, 2005); Lu Hanlong, Cishan: guanai yu hexie (Shanghai, 2004); Chen Xiufeng and Zhang Huaqiao, Cishan huanxing Zhongguo (Beijing, 2011). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 627 readers that the modern term for charity in China, cishan 慈善, derives from the Buddhist concept of compassion (cibei 慈悲), and the Confucian notion of goodness (liangshan 良善).58 It was only in 2011 that the attitude of ofijicial authorities started to change, with new legislation opening the door for philanthropic activities by religious institutions. This change represents a belated legal recognition from the central authorities of processes underway for decades in some parts of China. It may also have resulted from a spate of scandals in many charities that have led to a dramatic decline of donations of about 90 per cent.59 Changing Regulations on Religious Affairs and the Emergence of RNGOs Since 1978, both China and Taiwan have experienced a dramatic revival of religious activities, with one key difference: while religious charity in Taiwan, as seen above, was an important component of the political economy of social policy, this was not the case in China. The CCP saw religion as a greater challenge to its authority than the existence of a capitalist economy and the growth of a wealthy and increasingly influential middle class. This attitude departs from the classical materialist Marxist interpretation long prominent in the West, which saw religion as a superstructure determined by social relations of production. However, it reflected the historical and social conditions of China, wherein religion has represented a central component of statecraft since ancient times.60 In the ijirst decade of the reform and opening period, the revival of religions in China did not meet much resistance from the government. The re-opening of the Religious Affairs Bureau in 1978, which became the State Administration for Religious Affairs 國家宗教事務局 (SARA) in 1998, signalled the reinstatement of a policy of freedom of religion. In 1982, the CCP Central Committee published a document entitled “The basic viewpoint and policy on the religious question during our country’s socialist period” also known as “Document 19”, which proclaimed “freedom of religion”, but maintained restrictions on the activities religious associations could pursue.61 58 59 60 61 Li Tiangang, “Zongjiao cishan de jiejian yu shijian: yi Yidali ‘Sheng Aizhide’ yu Shanghai ‘Pu’antang’ weili”, Huadong shifan daxue xuebao: zhixue yu shehui kexue ban 2 (2013), 33–40. Simon, Civil society, pp. 321–25. John Lagerwey, China: a religious state (Hong Kong, 2010). Pitman Potter, “Belief in control: regulation of religion in China,” The China Quarterly 174 (2003), 317–37. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 628 Laliberté The economic policies envisaged by the CCP under Deng Xiaoping and the enormous social changes of the period ensured that the situation of religions would not return to that which had prevailed in the ijirst years after liberation. As Elizabeth Perry explains in her observations about rural violence, the success of the CCP in creating new cadre elites in mutual aid teams, collectives, cooperatives, and people’s communes during the land reform of the 1950s and subsequent campaigns, precluded that possibility. Cadres had made sure that leaders of sectarian movements and other religious groups labelled “secret societies” by the CCP could never recover their previous influence in the countryside to mobilize the population against the state.62 CCP leaders entrusted the SARA and the ofijicial religious associations, each with their respective branches at lower tiers of government, to monitor the activities of religious believers, clerics, and religious personnel. For the decade between 1989 and 2000, the differences in approach between the PRC and Taiwan with respect to religious philanthropy widened. By March 2000, Taiwanese voters had elected the opposition candidate Chen Shuibian to the presidency. In China, the decade ended with the repression of Falungong from July 1999. While in Taiwan the state was reluctant to regulate religious affairs in the 1990s and lifted obstacles to the engagement of religious institutions in higher education,63 China went the other way. In 1991, the CCP issued “Document six”, which imposed more restrictions on religion than Document 19.64 Under Jiang and Hu, religious associations, despite their nongovernmental and non-proijit organizations, did not enjoy the legal status of social organizations and therefore could not engage in social work.65 Nonproijit organizations with a religious background such as the YMCA and the Amity Foundation, which registered as social organizations rather than religious associations, could perform some social services, but under strict limitations. Ma Qiusha, an expert on Chinese NGOs based in Oberlin College, for example, stresses that the YMCA cannot offer educational services to youth, even though education of youth represents its central mandate.66 Although Chinese religious institutions face obstacles in the organization of charity, natural disasters have often compelled the PRC authorities to accept 62 63 64 65 66 Perry, Challenging the Mandate, pp. 277–86. André Laliberté, “The regulation of religious affairs in Taiwan: from state control to laisser-faire?” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 38.2 (February 2009), 53–84. Simon, Civil society, pp. 303–4. Ma Qiusha, Non-governmental organizations in contemporary China: paving the way to civil society? (London, 2006), p. 70. Ibid., p. 71. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 629 relief from international religious charities, including charities from Taiwan, thereby offering them opportunities to learn from outsiders. Comparing the responses to the 21 September 1999 earthquake in Taiwan and the 2008 Wenchuan 汶川 earthquake in the PRC, Britton Roney sees three important differences between Chinese and Taiwanese NGOs.67 Looking at their relations with their respective governments, he noted that Taiwanese NGOs have the ability to organize autonomously and to cooperate voluntarily with government to advance their goals, while Chinese NGOs have to develop good relations with government ofijicials or departments and follow their directives.68 He then compared the ability of religious groups to get involved in humanitarian relief and reconstruction during and after the earthquake, and found no equivalent to the Taiwanese faith-based philanthropy in China.69 Finally, looking at the politicization of philanthropic associations, he highlighted the difference between the high degree of politicization in Taiwanese civil society and the limited political dialogue in China.70 Up until 2010, the worlds of religion and philanthropy were separate in the eyes of Chinese authorities. Wang Zuo’an 王 安, appointed director of SARA in 2009, did not have anything to say about the philanthropic activities of religious institutions in his treatise on religious policy written in 2002 and reprinted in 2010.71 And reports from the China Federation of Charity 中華慈 善總會 do not include the activities of religious associations in their records. This absence of ofijicial recognition is not universal, however. The widely distributed Blue Book of Religions published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which objectively described religious charities among Buddhists72 and Muslims73 in 2010, represented an exception to the lack of ofijicial acknowledgment for religious philanthropy. This remarkable report suggests that the reality on the ground differs considerably from the views that some ofijicials want to present. In fact, religious associations have been active in 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 Britton Roney, “Earthquakes and civil society: a comparative study of the response of China’s nongovernment organizations to the Wenchuan earthquake,” China Information 25.1 (2011), 83–104. Ibid., p. 95. Ibid. Ibid., p. 96. Wang Zuo’an, Zhongguo de zongjiao wenti he zongjiao zhengce (Beijing, 2010). Wang Zhiyuan, “Jiji wenjian 2010 Zhongguo Fojiao,” in Jin Ze and Qiu Yonghui, eds, Zongjiao lanpishu: Zhongguo zongjiao baogao (henceforth Blue book on religions) (Beijing, 2012), pp. 35–39. Ma Jing and Min Junqing, “2010 nian Zhongguo Yisilan jiao gaikuang ji dangdai Yisilan de zongjiao cishan shiye fenxi,” in Jin and Qiu, Blue book on religions, pp. 74–100. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 630 Laliberté philanthropic activities in many provinces for more than two decades, despite unfavorable legal circumstances, as the evidence discussed below will detail. An important document issued in 2012 has changed the situation of religious charities. The SARA, along with the United Front Work Department 統 戰部 of the CCP, the National Commission for Development and Reform, the Ministries for Civil Affairs and Finance, and the Central Taxation Bureau, promulgated an opinion on encouraging and setting up standards for the religious sector for the pursuit of charitable and public interest activities.74 One condition is that they must be an emanation of one of the ijive state-approved religious associations or other state organisations.75 In an early assessment of the religious NGOs (RNGO), Magda Hornemann notes that they primarily devote their energies and resources to help the most vulnerable segments of the population, in particular migrant workers and their relatives, orphans, and victims of natural disasters.76 A Diversity of Approaches Although central government authorities have tried to impose norms throughout the country for RNGOs, practice on the ground shows a wide variety of approaches. This diversity reflects the wide variance in the social and economic conditions in the country, between cities and rural areas and between regions that have beneijited from economic growth and those left behind. Moreover, it echoes the approach to policy-making endorsed by the Chinese authorities, which gives some latitude to local governments in experimenting with policy innovation. Finally, it reveals the paradox that although the central government considers religion important enough to warrant the existence of the ministerial-level SARA and a chain of bureaus for ethnic and religious affairs 民族宗教事務局 at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels, local religious activities often develop with little ofijicial oversight from above. Hence there exists enormous disparity between the central government’s ofijicial assessment of religious life in China and the reality overseen by local authorities. For example, in 2004 the National Bureau for Statistics counted about 77,000 temples, churches, and other religious sites all over China. Yet, 74 75 76 “Guanyu guli he guifan zongjiaojie congshi gongyi cishan huodong de yijian” 關於鼓勵 和規範宗教界從事公益慈善活動的意見, SARA (2012), Document 6. Magda Hornemann, “Changing climate for religious NGOs?” Forum 18 News Service (12 July 2012), p. 1. Ibid. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 631 in the mid-1990s, a survey done by Fan Guangchun in Yunlin county, cited by Adam Chau in his more recent investigation of the region, reported that the local government agency reported over 10,000 temples in that county alone.77 We can also relate the disparity in religious institutions’ philanthropy to local political histories. Relations between local CCP ofijicials and religious associations can make a major difference. In the case of Buddhism, for example, Wei Dedong and Yang Fenggang have attributed the remarkable expansion of the Bailin 柏林 temple in Hebei, among others, to the excellent relations between the abbot and local party ofijicials.78 The temple, which is run by a young and energetic monk, Minghai 明海, since the passing of Jinghui 净慧 in 2013, works closely with an important philanthropy, the Hebei Province Buddhist Merit Society 河北省 教慈善功德會. In his study of the Nanputuo Temple Philanthropy Association in Xiamen 厦們南普陀寺慈善會 in Fujian, David Wank notes that Buddhist groups can move out of the strict constraints imposed by the state when they register as charities rather than religious institutions. In this particular case, by registering as a philanthropic society, the association fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for Civil Affairs, rather than the SARA.79 Finally, the variance observed in the practice of philanthropy by religious associations is the result of diversity in the religious ijield itself. To account for this diversity, we have to look at the charity performed by some of the ofijicially recognized religions in the PRC, but also the redemptive societies in the global Chinese diaspora, as well as Confucianism. Although the latter’s status as a religion is contested in the PRC, it matters as intangible heritage, a reflection of the institutional legitimation of religion gained in part through the UNESCO drive for the recognition of such heritage, and as a result of numerous grassroots initiatives in primary education and academic research.80 77 78 79 80 Adam Chau, “The politics of legitimation and the revival of popular religion in Shaanbei, north-central China,” Modern China 31.2 (April 2005), 236–78, p. 238; Fan Guangchun, “Dangdai Shaanbei miaohui kaocha yu toushi,” Yan’an daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 19.1 (1997), 97–100, p. 98. Yang Fenggang and Wei Dedong, “The Bailin Temple in China: thriving under communism,” in Yang Fenggang and Joseph B. Tamney, eds, State, market, and religions in Chinese societies (Leiden, 2005), pp. 83–85. David L. Wank, “Institutionalizing modern ‘religion’ in China’s Buddhism: political phases of a local revival,” in Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank, eds, Making the state, Making religion: the politics of religion in modern China (Stanford, 2009), p. 146. Goossaert and Palmer, The religious question, pp. 342–46. See the chapter by Sébastien Billioud in volume one of this book. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 632 Laliberté Buddhism As an institutional religion, Buddhism has had more success than Daoism in establishing, independently from state supervision, an identity distinct from communal religions in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and in the overseas communities. This does not mean that the boundaries between Buddhism as a religion and Buddhism as a philosophy or a social practice such as philanthropy are clear cut.81 In the eyes of Chinese authorities, Buddhism ranks as the most important religion in the country in numbers of believers, temples, and associations.82 In Taiwan, Buddhism comes fourth behind Daoism,83 Protestantism and Catholicism in the number of educational and charity institutions, and third in the number of places of worship.84 However, this quantitative assessment does not do justice to the visibility and reach of the large Buddhist charities, whose importance in Taiwan and Chinese communities worldwide surpass that of Daoist institutions in terms of both visibility and numbers. Buddhist institutions were important providers of social services during the Tang dynasty, which set the pattern for subsequent Chinese history.85 The reform movement headed by Taixu 虛 (1890–1947) at the beginning of the 20th century attempted to revitalize this ancient aspect of Buddhism.86 Others did as well, and Jan Kiely notes that Buddhist philanthropy was already signiijicant from the late 1910s into the early 1950s on the mainland, much of it having little to do with Taixu and his followers.87 Most Buddhist temples were too poor, however, and as C.K. Yang had noted in his survey of religion in China during that period, they were at the receiving end of charity more than providers of welfare to others.88 When the CCP took control, it had no interest in encouraging Buddhist institutions to continue delivering social services. The 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 Sun Yanfei, “The Chinese Buddhist ecology in post-Mao China: contours, types and dynamics,” Social Compass 58.4 (2012), 498–510. This refers to the statements from ofijicial media, and the numbers of believers according to the Buddhist and Daoist national associations. This applies only if one assumes that communal temples are a part of Daoism, which is contested by scholars with expertise on both Daoism and communal temples. See the data from the Republic of China (ROC) Ministry of Interior (MOI), in Excel tables, available by clicking the link to “General Conditions of religion”, available at http://sowf .moi.gov.tw/stat/year/elist.htm. Jacques Gernet, Buddhism in Chinese society: an economic history from the ijifth to the tenth century, Franciscus Verellen, tr. (New York 1995), pp. 217–226. Don Alvin Pittman, Towards a modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s reforms (Honolulu, 2001). Personal communication. Yang, Religion in Chinese society, pp. 335–37. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 633 reform era brought changed policies, and Buddhist institutions did not remain passive during this period of sweeping change. As Ji Zhe has documented in his survey of Buddhist monastic orders, the clergy sought to become self-sufijicient and avoid dependency on society.89 While the Chinese Buddhist Association and its local branches struggled to survive in the 1970s and 1980s, Buddhists in Taiwan laid the foundations for turning Taixu’s reform into a reality, and made their institutions very influential through philanthropy.90 In 1966, the nun Cheng Yen 證嚴 founded the Tzu Chi Merit Society 慈濟功德會 in the impoverished city of Hualien.91 In the same year, an entrepreneurial monk, Hsing Yun 星雲, established the Foguangshan 光山 monastic order in Southern Taiwan.92 After three decades, Tzu Chi and its foundation have emerged as the largest philanthropy in Taiwan, according to the Himalaya Foundation in 2002.93 In 2013, the organization ran ijive general hospitals, its own university accredited by the Ministry of Education, and its own television network.94 Tzu Chi was especially noteworthy for its delivery of humanitarian relief ahead of the arrival of government relief aid during the 21 September 1999 earthquake.95 The Foguangshan monastic order, albeit less present than Tzu Chi in the health care sector, and less active in disaster relief than Tzu Chi, contributed to the development of higher education by opening the Foguang University in 2000. In addition to their activities in Taiwan, both institutions have expanded overseas among Chinese and non-Chinese communities and, in the case of Tzu Chi, in China since 1992.96 Both have 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 Ji Zhe, “La nouvelle relation Etat-bouddhisme,” Perspectives chinoises 84 (2004), 2–10. Charles Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: religion and the state, 1660–1990 (Honolulu, 1999), pp. 178–218. On the history of Tzu Chi, see Julia Huang, Charisma and compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi movement (Cambridge, MA, 2009); and Yao Yu-Shuang, Taiwan’s Tzu Chi as engaged Buddhism: origins, organizations, appeal and social impact, 1st ed. (Leiden and Boston, 2012). On Foguangshan and its international lay afijiliate, see Stuart Chandler, Establishing a pure land on earth: the Foguang Buddhist perspective on modernization and globalization (Honolulu, 2004). This is the last date for which information is available. For data on its activities in charity, health care, and education, see He Risheng, ed., Ciji nianjian 2011 (Taipei, 2012), pp. 542–91. An Derui (André Laliberté), “Zongjiao cishan yu zaihai chongjian: yi jiu’er yi zhenzai wei li,” Minsu Quyi 163.1 (2009), 193–220. On the presence of Tzu Chi in China, see André Laliberté, “The growth of a Taiwanese Buddhist association in China: soft power and institutional learning,” China Information, 27.1 (March 2013), 81–105. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 634 Laliberté beneijitted from the status of NGOs recognized by the United Nations, and as such they represent the most visible face of Chinese philanthropy in the world. Tzu Chi and Foguangshan have established branches in the global Chinese diaspora, and have contributed signiijicantly to cross-straits exchanges between China and Taiwan. Tzu Chi’s philanthropic activity abroad represents a religious response to the forces of capitalism,97 and its international presence reveals the irony of the island’s ambiguous status as a non-recognized state on the territorialized global stage.98 This situation mirrors the institutional choices of Tzu Chi within Taiwan, as it has registered as a charity from the beginning, despite its religious origins.99 Adding to the ambiguity is the fact that Tzu Chi has the capacity of an NGO and many commentators refer to it as such, but many observers of NGO development in Taiwan do not include it in their analyses.100 This equivocal situation, to which is added an explicit and public apolitical stance, helped Tzu Chi develop within Taiwan when the island was under martial law and, most importantly, it has facilitated its presence in China since 1992, despite tensions in cross-strait relations during the administrations of presidents Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian. As a result of its contribution to disaster relief in the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Tzu Chi could register as an NGO in China. It has influenced the development of Buddhist charities in China indirectly, as many lay Buddhists and clerics have acknowledged over the years,101 and its approach has inspired entrepreneurial monks to launch their own philanthropies within the institutional limitations imposed by the Chinese central government and local conditions. In recent years, many other Buddhist charities have emerged without help from outside and have followed their own way and experienced remarkable success. Among them, the Nanputuo Temple Charity Foundation 南普陀寺慈 97 98 99 100 101 Robert P. Weller, “Living at the edge: religion, capitalism, and the end of the nation-state in Taiwan,” Public Culture 12 (2000), 477–98. Julia C. Huang, “Genealogies of NGO-ness: the cultural politics of a global Buddhist movement in contemporary Taiwan,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17.2 (2009), 347–74, p. 368. Tzu Chi is not registered as a religious association in Taiwan’s registries of religious associations, and its volunteers interviewed over the years have consistently re-iterated the point that Tzu Chi is an NGO or a charity, even though the nature of their devotion to Cheng Yan leaves no doubt about its nature. Chen Jie, “Burgeoning transnationalism.” A study undertaken in China suggested it is the most important charity among Chinese. Zhong Xin, “Dangdai fojiao cishan gongyi zuzhi jiqi huodong yanjiu,” PhD thesis (Nanjing University 2011). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 635 善基金會, established in 1994,102 and the Jade Buddha Temple 玉 寺 charity in Shanghai, run their own publications describing their philanthropy. In both cases, they deliver relief outside of their respective province or municipality, responding to requests from central authorities at times of national emergency. Other Buddhist charities of importance exist, supported indirectly by famous temples wealthy from tourism and ofijicial patronage. Such cases include the Hebei Province Charity Association 河北 教慈善功德會103 supported by the Bailin Chan monastery 柏林禅寺, and the Tianjin Buddhist Charity Merit Society Foundation 津市 教慈善功德基金會, and the Donglin Charity 東林功德會, set up in 2008 in Jiangxi province. Buddhist charities have also developed on an ad hoc basis, with, for example, the program promoted by Shaolin 少林 temple in Henan to help AIDS victims. In Guangdong, the provincial Buddhist Association has assisted the creation of a network of eleven clinics offering traditional medicine, and in the city of Suzhou, a network of homes for the elderly is run by local Buddhist temples. Buddhist charities are also very active in Hong Kong, Macau, and Singapore where they beneijit from the presence of local Buddhist organizations, support from the Taiwanese Buddhist associations, and the involvement of wealthy lay Buddhists. In Hong Kong, the local Buddhist Association 香港 教聯合會, independent of the Buddhist Association of China 中國 教協會 (BAC), manages its own network of schools at the kindergarten, elementary, and secondary levels, along with homes for the elderly, clinics, and youth centers. Wealthy lay Buddhists have also donated signiijicant sums to the welfare of people in Hong Kong and beyond. For instance, Robert H.N. Ho, a native of Hong Kong, has used his wealth as a businessmen and philanthropist to promote worldwide the study of Buddhist culture and the academic study of Chinese Buddhism, and has made major donations to health care institutions in Hong Kong and in Canada. Individual philanthropy, however, lacks the capacity of organizations, and sometimes proves ephemeral. Notably, the Gracious Glory Buddhist Foundation 慈輝 教基金會, set up by the Buddhist philanthropist Yang Hong 楊洪, has funded schools in China and other projects between 2006 and 2009, but has left no record of more recent activities. In Singapore, the Buddhist Welfare Services registered with the National Council of Social Services (NCSS) in 1981 and works with the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and Singapore Corporation of Rehabilitative Enterprises (SCORE). It runs a wide range of social services, including medical and nursing 102 103 See Wank, Making religion, p. 139. Created in 1995, it established a foundation 基金會 in 2012. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 636 Laliberté care, a youth and child care center, a safe house, and a program of daily meals for the elderly. Among communities of the Chinese global diaspora, afijiliates of Taiwanese Buddhist charities stand out for their numbers: the Tzu Chi Foundation, for example, counts over a hundred branch ofijices, Still Thought Cafés 靜思書軒, and other venues, where volunteers meet and launch charity projects within their community. These branch ofijices in North America, Australia, or Europe, often serve as departure point for volunteers in countries affected by natural disasters, including China, when the headquarters in Hualien asks them. Daoism Kenneth Dean has noted that, as Daoism and local communal religions are often inextricably linked104 and difijicult to distinguish from each other, it is impossible to assess precisely the numbers of believers, temples, and charity associations related with each in China. It is useful, nonetheless, to note the difference between the temples afijiliated with the ofijicial Daoist Association of China (DAC), which attempts to distinguish Daoist from communal temples, which serve rural villages and urban neighborhood communities.105 Ofijicial Daoism counts far fewer temples than Buddhism, according to ofijicial statistics, but this reflects at least in part the fact that the authorities have encouraged for decades the institutionalization of a Daoist religion apart from the practices of communal religions that they and academics label as popular beliefs 民間 信仰 (discussed in the next section).106 The number of philanthropic activities for the public interest advertised by the DAC on its website is very limited, which documents only six speciijic philanthropic activities, all undated. Two relate to earlier operations to help rebuild Daoist temples damaged by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, two others refer to the sale of Daoist art objects for fund-raising in support of public health in Hebei and in Shanghai, and one mentions the use of the City God temple 城隍廟 in Shanghai for fund-raising activities supporting a variety of charities. If we rely on this information, Daoist philanthropy seems limited in contrast to the activities of the other four 104 105 106 Kenneth Dean, “Further partings of the Way: the Chinese state and Daoist ritual traditions in contemporary China,” in Ashiwa and Wank, eds, Making the state, pp. 179–210, p. 181. For this distinction, see Vincent Goossaert and Fang Ling, “Temples et taoïstes en Chine urbaine depuis 1980,” Perspectives chinoises 109.4 (2009), 34–43. On this issue, see Li Xiangping, Xinyang dan bu renting: dangdai Zhongguo xinyang de shehuixue quanshi (Beijing, 2010), pp. 46–52, 381–84. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 637 ofijicially-approved religions.107 It is hard to tell whether this is a reflection of the limited institutional resources of Daoist institutions in China, the result of the CCP preference for Buddhist philanthropy, or simply the choice of Daoist leaders, who either choose not to advertise such activities or deliberately opt not to engage into them. Evidence from a variety of sources looking at different religious institutions’ contributions to social services and philanthropy, however, conijirms that Daoists have done less than Buddhists or Christians, when indicators such as ijinancial contributions are taken as a benchmark for their activities. When China has faced major humanitarian crises, such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, the DAC has responded to the demands posed by the CCP United Front Work Department, along with the other four national religious associations. The authorities play up these responses to demonstrate the harmonious nature of inter-religious cooperation, the material prosperity of religious associations under CCP guidance, and the constitutional protection of religious freedom; this serves aims important to the regime’s relations with the outside world. Beyond these exceptional displays of volunteerism, ofijicial publications on charity and philanthropy do not yield much information on the charity conducted by Daoist associations on a dayto-day basis, or on a more modest scale. An analysis written by the DAC director proposes to draw lessons from philanthropic activities by Daoists since 2007, which include disaster relief, reforestation, environmental awareness, donations to medical facilities and schools, and support to vulnerable populations. This suggests that there is a great interest in philanthropic activities. Yang Der-ruey’s ethnography of Daoist temples in Shanghai reaches similar conclusions: he found that many young clerics would like to change this situation from within for the sake of their own religion’s future. The Daoist leaders he has interviewed wish that their temple would serve as a public good and deepen its relationship with the community through the delivery of “charitable welfare and religious merit to needy individuals.”108 In Taiwan, Daoists do not face regulatory obstacles, and can develop philanthropic institutions. Despite the absence of institutional constraints, however, the expansion of Daoist philanthropy in Taiwan does not match that of Buddhists with respect to the scope of their interventions. Still, there is 107 108 For 2014, the DAC advertises six philanthropic activities on its opening page, while the BAC advertises more than 250. Yang Der-ruey, “The changing economy of temple Daoism in Shanghai,” in Yang and Tamney, eds, States, markets, and religions, pp. 145–46. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 638 Laliberté documented evidence that Daoist groups are interested in charity and philanthropy, according to their own statements to the Ministry of Interior (MOI). Hence, among the dozen Daoist associations that were registered with the MOI in 1994, seven had indicated in a summary of their activities that they were engaged in some form of philanthropy or charity among their activities in serving the public interest.109 One of the better-known recent examples of such activities is the Enacting Heaven Temple 行 宫 in downtown Taipei, described by Richard Madsen. Although not embedded in local community life, it provides social services through its own foundation, which manages a hospital, social service organizations, and libraries with the revenue generated by the temple.110 In Hong Kong, Daoists are also involved in the provision of social services and philanthropy. This is in good part a legacy of the laisser-faire attitude of the former British authorities, which did not object to the development of religious charities, regardless of the religions involved. The Ching Chung Taoist Association of Hong Kong 道教香港青松觀 is a good example of Daoist charity that operates a wide array of social services: it runs kindergartens, government-accredited primary and secondary schools, colleges, and clinics and homes for the aged. Daoist philanthropic associations are not only helping the population of Hong Kong, but some are also providing social services to the population of China. Like Hong Kong Buddhists, who have undertaken charitable activities in China, Hong Kong Daoists have done considerable work to support the Project Hope schools, and rebuild Daoist temples on the mainland.111 Although Daoist charity and social services are not as developed as those of Christians, who beneijited from ofijicial support during colonial rule, this situation may change as Protestants and Catholics have lost their privileged status. Communal Religion In mainland China, communal temples may maintain relations with temples afijiliated to DAC, but the latter does not control them. The SARA does not recognize communal religion, and therefore does not register its temples. Instead, lineages or neighborhood associations manage their affairs.112 As mentioned above, the legal limbo in which communal temples ijind themselves may explain 109 110 111 112 See Wu Boxiong, ed., Quanguoxing zongjiao tuanti minglu (Taipei, 1994). Madsen, Democracy’s dharma, pp. 107–15. See also Wang Shunmin, Zongjiao fuli (Taipei, 1999). Wang relies on ofijicial sources that count Xingtiangong as a Daoist institution but he counts it as a popular religion, pp. 252–83. I am grateful to John Lagerwey for this information. Goossaert and Fang, “Temples et taoïstes,” p. 38. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 639 the absence of comprehensive information on their philanthropic activities. The ethnographic evidence provided by Adam Chau in northern China,113 Kenneth Dean in southern China,114 Kang Xiaofei in Sichuan,115 and the survey of Lily Lee Tsai in four provinces116 suggests, however, that it is important and underestimated. Looking at the politics of legitimation in which temples and their leaders have engaged, Chau describes the role played by the charity activities of communal temples advertised by the local Bureau for Religious Affairs.117 Although most of the temples he studied could barely generate an income from donations sufijicient to cover their maintenance expenses, they could harness resources from the local community to improve roads, irrigation, and schools in neighboring villages.118 Chau, however, also notes that the centrality of communal temples in rural life and their potential as providers of social service as a consequence of their wealth should not obscure the fact that they have had to contend with a variety of agendas of state agents, many of which reveal predatory interests.119 In other words, the conditions under which communal religions can deliver social services is not protected by a legal framework, in contrast to those of ofijicially-approved Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, and Islamic associations. They may be tolerated by local authorities, but not always, and they are not yet openly endorsed by the central authorities. In Taiwan, followers of communal—or popular—religions did not experience the kind of restrictions their co-religionists in the PRC went through, but they suffered the consequences of elite biases towards them during the period of martial law. For example, the provincial police assumed that the expression of local Taiwanese identity at the heart of communal religions was “anti-Chinese” and therefore potentially seditious during the ijirst decades of KMT rule in the island.120 Under these conditions, philanthropy was not encouraged. This attitude explains, in part, why despite ofijicial encouragement by the Ministry 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 Adam Yuet Chau, Miraculous response: doing popular religion in contemporary China (Stanford, 2006). Kenneth Dean, “Local communal religion in contemporary south-east China,” The China Quarterly 174 (2003), 338–58. Kang Xiaofei, “Femmes en milieu rural, vieillesse et activités dans les temples: un cas d’étude dans le nord-ouest du Sichuan,” Perspectives chinoises 109.4 (2009), 44–55. Lily Lee Tsai, Accountability without democracy: solidary groups and public goods provisions in rural China (New York, 2007). Chau, “The politics of legitimation,” p. 264. Ibid., p. 238. Chau, Miraculous response, p. 218. Paul Katz, “Religion and the state in post-war Taiwan,” The China Quarterly 174 (2003), 395–412. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 640 Laliberté of Interior for involvement in charity, there is little documentation published by authorities in Taiwan on charities or welfare institutions set up by communal religions that compare to those created by Buddhists or Christians. Yet, ethnographic evidence in the 1990s already suggested that communal religions performed a considerable amount of charity on a local scale throughout the island. In his introduction to religious welfare in Taiwan, the sociologist Wang Shunmin used data from the Ministry of Interior’s Bureau of Statistics and found that if communal religions and Daoists are counted together, these two groups had more adherents, places of worship, and revenue, and disbursed greater sums for charity than those of all Christians and Buddhists taken together.121 In his study of the Zhenlan temple 鎮瀾宫 in Dajia 大甲, he found that, between 1981 and 1995, the committee responsible for that temple has offered a wide range of services in four areas of intervention: relief, health care, education, and culture.122 Studies of voluntary organizations in the Chinese diaspora have emphasized the importance of communal religions in maintaining the resilience of Chinese communities in environments that at times have been hostile. One type of organization, the huiguan 會館, has played an important role in this respect. Acting as a mutual aid organization in China, this type of organization expanded overseas during the colonial era, following the native place associations 同鄉會.123 Satohira Serizawa demonstrates in his study of voluntary associations in Vietnam that these organizations act simultaneously as religious sites, cultural sites for the community, and centers for charity, with managers of temples supporting schools and granting scholarships.124 Christianity and Islam Christian churches have continuously played a major role in the world of philanthropy in greater China. As mentioned with reference to Taiwan and Hong Kong after 1949, Christians have never ceased to provide services in these two polities. Yet, from the land reform campaign until the end of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP prevented Christians from doing this in China. Many Chinese Christians fled to Taiwan with the KMT government, which 121 122 123 124 See Wang, Zongjiao fuli, p. 214. Ibid., pp. 232–37. Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce and Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “Introduction: the Chinese diaspora and voluntary associations,” in Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce and Evelyn Hu-Dehart, eds, Voluntary organizations in the Chinese diaspora (Hong Kong, 2006), p. 7. Satohira Serizawa, “Chinese charity organizations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: the past and the present,” in Kuah-Pearce and Hu-Dehart, eds, Voluntary organizations, pp. 107–16. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 641 itself included quite a few Christians. Many of these “mainlander Christians” were strong supporters of the KMT regime because they shared its anti-CCP position. Certain Taiwanese Christians long associated with the Presbyterian Church, while also opposed to the CCP, supported Taiwan’s right to selfdetermination, a position that the KMT considered seditious. The KMT persecuted the most vocal members of that church, but refrained from closing it down because many of its followers were very active in the provisions of social services, and thereby acted as a force for social stability.125 Presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Lee Teng-hui professed Christian beliefs, though the development of Christian philanthropy in Taiwan predates the period when the island was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1945. In the ijirst decade of the Japanese colonial era, Presbyterian Church missionaries established the Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei. At the time, the Christian community was small, but it increased signiijicantly in importance with the influx of Catholic and Protestant missionaries from China after 1945, many of whom contributed signiijicantly to the expansion of their churches’ charity activism. The impact of the important cleavage within Taiwanese society between native 本地人 and mainlander 外省人 does not affect Christian charity institutions, which are united by their desire for Taiwan to maintain its de facto independence vis-à-vis China.126 Many of the Christian missionary institutions of higher education in China that the CCP closed down after 1949 re-opened or were reconstituted on Taiwan: examples include Soochow 蘇 University founded by American Methodists near Shanghai in 1900 and re-established near Taipei in 1951, and the Catholic Fu-jen University 輔仁大學 active in Beijing between 1925 and 1952,127 and revived near Taipei in 1961. The small Christian community in Taiwan runs a proportion of the island’s hospitals network that far exceeds their actual social presence with only 4.5 per cent of the population. Indeed, in 2008, they operated ten percent of the total hospital bed capacity, and one sixth of the private hospitals, according to the Health Department. Christian 125 126 127 On the Protestant churches in Taiwan, see Murray Rubinstein, The Protestant community on modern Taiwan: mission, seminary, and church (Armonk, 1991). On the ethnic cleavages in Taiwan and their effect on church life, see Murray Rubinstein, “Christianity and democratization in Taiwan: the Presbyterian Church and the struggle for Minnan/Hakka selfhood in the Republic of China,” in Philip Clart and Charles Jones, eds, Religion and modern Taiwan: tradition and innovation in modern society (Honolulu, 2003), pp. 204–56. The university, originally founded by American Benedictines in response to a demand by the Holy See, was built upon the existing Furen Academy 輔仁社 created by two Chinese Catholics, Ma Xiangbo 马相伯 (1840–1939) and Ying Lianzhi 英敛之 (1867–1926) in 1905. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 642 Laliberté philanthropy has also been active in poverty alleviation among aboriginal people and other vulnerable populations. Following on their successes in this area, Christian organizations have turned to overseas charity. For example, the evangelical Christian organization World Vision Taiwan, founded in 1964 to help people in remote areas, has become the largest Christian charity on the island; and, with the general improvement in social and economic conditions on Taiwan in the 1980s, it has joined other World Vision associations worldwide to provide international aid. The situation in Hong Kong differs from that in Taiwan in important ways, in part because of the modalities of colonial rule before 1997. This meant, on the one hand, a laissez-faire policy on the recognition of beliefs and freedom of conscience, but, on the other hand, a strong colonial state inclination towards, if not outright favoritism of, Christian religious associations, most notable in their disproportionate outsourcing of social services to Christian organizations. One of the consequences of this policy was the predominance of Christian schools and hospitals out of proportion to the relatively small number of Christians in Hong Kong. In the negotiations leading to the handover of Hong Kong to China, the CCP made clear that it wanted religious institutions to remain contractors for civil services and education, thereby hoping they would be more pliant.128 Many of the Christian NGOs established in Hong Kong have taken advantage of their privileged status to develop their activities, unaffected by the different campaigns experienced by their coreligionists in China. In the 1980s, under CCP General Secretaries Hu Yaobang 胡耀邦 (1915–89) and Zhao Ziyang 趙紫陽 (1919–2005), PRC authorities invited a few international Christian NGOs to assist in development matters.129 Some religious charities founded in Hong Kong, such as CEDAR (Christian Education, Development and Relief fund), were speciijically created for this purpose and deployed in China. CEDAR found like-minded partners, if not coreligionists, such as the Holy Love Foundation 聖愛基金會, active in Sichuan. Caritas, founded by the Hong Kong Catholic diocese in Hong Kong at the end of the second world war, was a major provider of social services in the colony, and has been present in mainland China since 1980. In 1983 the Hans Seidel Foundation, a German charity associated with the Christian Democratic Union, implemented projects in China in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. 128 129 Beatrice Leung and Shun-hing Chan, Changing church and state relations in Hong Kong, 1950–2000 (Hong Kong, 2003), p. 78. The data for the following paragraph is from Shawn Hsieh and Amanda Brown-Inz, A CDB special report: mapping China’s public interest NGOs (Beijing, 2014). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 643 The Adventist Church established its Development and Relief Agency in 1987, responding to an invitation from the Chinese Foreign Trade Ministry’s International Centre for Economic and Technical Cooperation. In partnership with the Amity Foundation, the Christian Blind Mission International and the German Evangelical Church Development Service responded to an invitation by the Chinese government in the same year. In the years following Tiananmen, international cooperation slowed down, but it resumed in the late 1990s. Thus Christian Action, originally known as Christian Aid to Refugees at its founding in the 1950s, responded to an invitation by Chinese authorities in 1996 and has operated in China since then for rural and urban projects.130 Christian charities in China have always faced difijiculties, in part because of their perceived connections with foreign powers and the suspicion that, in the eyes of the CCP, they are complicit in foreign plots to subvert the socialist system through “peaceful evolution”. And yet the Christian community in China is too important to ignore. Government estimates of their numbers vary considerably, ranging from 14 to 65 million people or one to ijive percent of the population.131 Christians well connected with the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association 中國 主教愛國會, or the National Committee of the ThreeSelf Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China, and the China Christian Council for Protestant Christianity 中國基督教協會 (CCC), are active in charity organized by the state.132 Chinese Christians have been active in philanthropy thanks in part to support from co-religionists abroad, often facilitated through ofijicial institutions.133 In his history of the revival of Christianity after the Cultural Revolution, Jason Kindopp noted that most of the mainstream Christian churches from Europe and the United States have opted to work through ofijicial channels to support the activities of Chinese Churches. They have thus cooperated with the Amity Foundation, an institution set up by the CCC in 1985 to serve as a conduit for exchanges with the outside world. The Amity is China’s largest publisher of 130 131 132 133 See Hornemann, “China: changing climate for religious NGOs?”, pp. 1–6. Carsten Vala propose a “ballpark ijigure” of between 40 and 60 million. See Carsten Vala, “Pathways to the pulpit: leadership training in ‘patriotic’ and unregistered Chinese Protestant churches,” in Ashiwa and Wank, eds, Making the state, p. 120 n. 1. On the negotiations between the state and Chinese Christians, see Ryan Dunch, “Christianity and ‘adaptation to socialism’,” in Yang, ed., Chinese religiosities (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 155–78. The Three Selves page does not advertise charity like its Buddhists and Daoist counterparts, but rather social services 社會服務 such as support to the elderly, training for nurses, medical services, distribution of clothes, etc. See http://ss.ccctspm.org/ (only available in English). For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 644 Laliberté bibles and Christian religious material, and in addition to offering English language teaching service, it serves as a non-governmental agency that works on development and provides relief. In other words, it offers services similar to those that the other religious philanthropies provide. However, it beneijits from an additional advantage vis-à-vis Buddhist and Daoist philanthropic associations: the material and technical support obtained by decades of good relations with North American and Western European churches.134 Other Chinese Christian associations active in philanthropy have used their experience in Hong Kong before moving to China, as we have seen above.135 The issue of Islamic charity in the Chinese community is somewhat more complex than charity among Chinese Christians. As Dru Gladney has argued, the identity of Chinese Muslims is primarily ethno-religious, and determined by the CCP national minorities policy.136 The distinction between the Hui 回族, also known as ethnic Chinese Muslims, and nine other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, is arbitrary because it is not based on rigorous criteria. It ignores the fact that the Hui speak different languages and that an unknown number of individuals among the minorities that are counted as Muslims do not practice the religion nor believe in its tenets. This complexity also masks the fact that, other than the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, other Muslims have fared relatively well and beneijited from their connections with the outside world. In her ethnography, Susan McCarthy described the extent of philanthropy and charity in a Hui community of Yunnan, ranging from the renovation and reconstruction of mosques to the reestablishment of religious education in mosquebased schools, thanks to support from local governments, wealthy individuals, and private donations from Muslim benefactors, some of whom live abroad.137 This suggests that local governments did not see religious philanthropy, active since the 1980s in that community, as an issue of concern. Confucianism, Redemptive Societies, and New Religions The inclusion of Confucianism in a discussion on philanthropy and religion may appear to secular scholars promoting a new Confucianism somewhat 134 135 136 137 Jason Kindopp, “Protestant resilience under CCP rule,” in Carol Lee Hamrin and Jason Kindopp, ed., God and Ceasar in China: policy implications of church-state tensions (Washington, 2004), p. 137. See Hornemann, “China: changing climate for religious NGOs?”, pp. 1–6. Dru Gladney, “Islam and modernity in China: secularization or nationalism?” in Yang, ed., Chinese religiosities (Berkeley, 2008), pp. 179–206, p. 181. Susan McCarthy, “If Allah wills it: integration, isolation and Muslim authenticity in Yunnan province in China,” Religion, State and Society, 33.2 (November 2005), 121–36. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 645 iconoclastic: for them, Confucianism is a discourse useful in projecting China’s soft power, and a source of progressive and humane ethics.138 Recent scholarship by Anna Sun, however, has shed light on the contested condition of Confucianism as a world religion;139 and, the contemporary intellectual Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光, among others, is an example of a personality actively engaged in promoting the idea of a Confucian religion.140 Joseph Chan, a political philosopher at the University of Hong Kong known for his work promoting the compatibility between liberal democratic throught and Confucianism,141 has gone further than Kang and proposed to discuss the ways in which modern welfare states could beneijit from incorporating concerns central to Confucianism.142 Besides this recognition of Confucianism as a major source of public morality by public intellectuals, however, the appreciation of Confucianism as an ethical system has yet to translate into a social practice in China. No Confucian institution of importance can compare to contemporary Buddhist, Christian, or even Islamic philanthropic societies.143 The primary factor contributing to this absence of Confucian institutionalized philanthropy is the elimination of the two key components of the Confucian religion that favored the development of charity, namely, the lineage with its ancestor sacriijices and the state-sponsored worship of gods recognized in accord with the Confucian classics. In China, the inconclusive nature of the intellectual debate on the religious nature of Confucianism is such that the SARA does not see the necessity to recognize as a religion something that does not exist as one in the view of its researchers. The situation is different outside of China, however, where Confucianism receives some form of state support. In Taiwan, the government has proclaimed the birthday of Confucius as “Teachers’ Day”, and on that date, the Confucius Temple in Taipei organizes an elaborate ceremony in the presence of ofijicials. However, besides this ofijicial sponsorship of Confucian ethics, Taiwan represents somewhat 138 139 140 141 142 143 Daniel A. Bell, China’s new Confucianism: politics and everyday life in a changing society (Princeton, 2008). Anna Sun, Confucianism as a world religion: contested histories and contemporary realities (Princeton, 2013). See David Ownby, “Kang Xiaoguang et le projet d’une religion confucéenne : itinéraire d’un intellectuel engagé,” Perspectives chinoises 109.4 (2009), 109–20. See Joseph Chan, Confucian perfectionism: a political philosophy for modern times (Princeton, 2013). Joseph Chan, “Giving priority to the worst off: a Confucian perspective on social welfare,” in Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, eds, Confucianism for the modern world (New York, 2003), pp. 236–53. See the chapter by Sebastien Billioud in volume 1. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 646 Laliberté of an exception. The Ministry of the Interior in Taiwan also registers a small Confucian religion 儒教, but governments in other societies with an ethnic Chinese majority do not recognize Confucianism. The situation of Hong Kong and Macau differs from China and Singapore because the authorities in both Special Administrative Regions do not formally recognize religions but count religious believers, including adherents to Confucianism. But, as in Taiwan, numbers are small and there are no organizations of importance undertaking charity. In China, many Confucian intellectuals do not seek such recognition, and there is no recognized Confucian clergy. In countries with a large Chinese diaspora, only Indonesia recognizes Confucianism as a national religion. A CCP ofijicial website published online an article from the Guangming ribao on Confucianism and charity, suggesting its support for such an idea.144 Although written by a local ofijicial, its prominence suggested that many ofijicials are debating that possibility.145 Authorities in mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore are keen to evoke Confucianism as a shared value system to justify approaches to social policy that stress low state expenditures and advocate the participation of caregivers within the family, as well as inter-generational solidarity. The Confucian concept of ijilial piety could make a convenient ijit with a family-centric approach to dimensions of social policy such as elderly care and childcare, but authorities have not taken steps in that direction. In the absence of a distinct social form, as Christian Joachim noted in a reflection about Confucianism in Taiwanese society that is relevant to most Chinese communities, the Confucian tradition cannot engage in philanthropy. It may inspire social welfare and charity within the family and through the action of the state, but it lacks the doctrinal, institutional, and organizational bases found in other world religions that encourage care for perfect strangers.146 If Confucianism is going to exercise an impact on charity outside of the family unit, it is as an important component in the broader moral systems of redemptive religions, for which charity often represents a central component of practice and mode of transmission. Redemptive societies such as the Way of Pervading Unity (Yiguandao),147 the Doctrine of Order, or Lijiao 理教, and the Religion of the Heavenly Virtue, 144 145 146 147 Xu Jianshe, “Rujia cishan wenhua de dangdai qishi,” Zhongguo gongchandang xinwenwang (September 2013), available at http://theory.people.com.cn/n/2013/0902/c49165 -22770762.html. Originally published in Guangming ribao 光明日報. The author is director of the Civil Affairs Bureau of Jining municipality, Shandong. Christian Joachim, “Carrying Confucianism in the modern world,” in Clart and Jones, eds. Religion and modern Taiwan, pp. 48–83. See Sébastien Billioud, “Le rôle de l’éducation dans le projet salvateur du Yiguandao,” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident (October 2011), 211–34. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV Religions and Philanthropy 647 or Tiandejiao 德教, are active in Taiwan, and in overseas Chinese communities. Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior notes that both the Lijiao and the Tiandejiao run their own networks of kindergarten and clinics in Taiwan. A central tenet of Yiguandao moral philosophy is the idea of a life of service, and adherents see social work as an important part of their practice. The data collected by the Ministry of Interior in Taiwan documents the extent of this commitment: in 2000, Yiguandao ran over 20 hospitals and eight clinics, as well as 30 kindergartens, retirement homes, one orphanage, and a nursery, and had established its charity foundation 一貫道慈善功德會. Conclusion The ambition of the corporatist logic adopted by the CCP is to shape the religious ijield so that it can mobilize pliant religious actors to help it face demographic issues such as the aging of the population, the skewed sex ratio, and urbanization. At the same time, however, many aspects of the neoliberal economic policy embraced by the CCP have encouraged the ever increasing engagement in philanthropy of religious institutions and believers. A key contextual development has been the government’s mixed signals, between expansion and retrenchment, from many aspects of social welfare, public education, and services provisions, and the encouragement of the private sector to provide services in education and health care. This, in effect, has provided incentives for religious groups and individuals to get involved. Directly related to this is the central government delegation of responsibility to local authorities, and the latter’s mandate to deliver these services, even when they have a narrow ijiscal basis. This predicament leads lower tiers of government to seek outside sources of support in the private and voluntary sectors. In addition, other indirect consequences of the retrenchment in social service provision have encouraged more speciijic government reliance on religious institutions. Increasing social inequalities, environmental degradation, government corruption, and the growing social unrest these problems have generated since 1978 have inspired the CCP to launch successive campaigns to strengthen public morality, as well as to reinforce political control within and outside party ranks. These campaigns range from the “struggle against spiritual pollution” to “building a harmonious society”. With their barely concealed reference to religiosity, these campaigns have, in a sense, laid the groundwork for the return of ofijicially-sanctioned religion as an instrument of governance. The emphasis on the “spiritual” instead of the “ideological” in political campaigns against “Western values” opened the way for the afijirmation of “Chinese values” that For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV 648 Laliberté incorporate cultural heritage, and now include the religious dimension of that cultural heritage. The rehabilitation of religion found its most concrete expression in the ofijicial line of the compatibility of “religions” with the “socialism” adopted by the CCP, which implicitly recognized the positive role of religious philanthropy. The issuance in 2012 by state and CCP authorities of the “opinion” that religions should serve the public interest represented the ofijicial recognition and approval of a trend that had been underway for years. It embodied a major departure from the Maoist period view that religion belonged to the “feudal period” and had no public role to play in a socialist society. Philanthropy represents an important component of Chinese religious life, but different forms of religiosity have produced a variety of ways to perform it. The experience of Taiwan and Hong Kong, where Chinese and world religions have never ceased to remain involved in social welfare and public life, have provided sources of inspiration and support for the development of RNGOs in China. Charity and philanthropy, suggests Robert P. Weller, represents one of three ways in which religions respond to economic and political change, the other two being religious transformation and the ability of religious values to shape behavior and identity. The neo-Confucianists reason in much the same way when they attribute the economic growth of East Asia to Asian values. Religions, Weller argues, present themselves as an alternative to amoral markets where “values”, they claim, are in limited supply, and charity can represent a supplement if not an alternative to markets.148 148 Robert P. Weller, “Religions and philanthropies in Chinese societies,” Society 44.1 (2006), 42–49. For use by the Author only | © 2016 Koninklijke Brill NV