A Nation of Agnostics

“So generally speaking, what would you say Chinese people believe in?”

“Umm, well Chinese people don’t really believe in anything.”

“Really? Nothing? What about Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism? I’ve heard those belief systems are quite influential over here.”

“Well first of all, those aren’t really belief systems in the sense that they are religions. The ideas contained in those three perspectives still do influence Chinese thought, but any real religious establishment was wiped out during the sixties and seventies—“

“—during the Cultural Revolution?”

“That’s right. During that time, we could only believe in the Party. That’s it. Today, some older people hang on to religious beliefs; for example, I’ve been to a Buddhist temple with my aunt before. But most young people don’t believe in anything.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t know if it’s good. I think it is good to have something to believe in.”

This is a rough representation/summary (translated from Chinglish) of the several conversations that followed me posing that first question to different Chinese college students. As a result of these discussions, the overall impression I flew back home with is that China is indeed a nation of agnostics, if not atheists. Maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me—after all, atheism was the law of the land from 1949 onwards, and only recently has the central government allowed more freedom of religion.

But this impression does fly directly in the face of polls that I had heard about before going, and even those that I looked up just now. For example, a few years ago a statistician by the name of Phil Zuckerman reported that only 14 percent of the Chinese population was “irreligious.” Around the same time though, another study by Shanghai university professors found that just over thirty percent of the 16+ population considered themselves “religious.” Now I recognize that those results are not necessarily contradictory (on what side of the fence does a “seeker" fall?), but I think it may be fair to say that the most important insight they represent is simply the difficulty of measuring religious demographics.

It very much does seem like the Chinese people, especially the younger generations, are generally without a faith in any kind of higher power. It does look like this may be changing rapidly, however. I’ll try and find time to write another post pretty soon about why that may be …