Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan

"People often want to know, does China’s religious revival have any political implications? How is it going to change China? Richard Madsen is one of the pioneers of Chinese religious study in the West. He has looked at many different practices, and written a lot about Catholicism, but in this book he looks at Taiwan’s political democratisation in the 80s. “Richard Madsen is one of the pioneers of Chinese religious study in the West” He shows that Buddhist groups like Fo Guang Shan , Tzu Chi and Dharma Drum Mountain were all part of a rise of civil society – somewhat similar to the Catholic Church in Poland during the Cold War, helping to undermine authoritarian control, but indirectly. There wasn’t a figurehead like Pope John Paul II, but they did help to pluralise society, and to spread ideas of equality. When I was in Taiwan in the 80s and 90s, people were starting to complain that the government shouldn’t be able to park their cars illegally, or to embezzle money. Some people in China think that, but they don’t speak out as openly about it as people in Taiwan did. Corruption was out of control, and is only being brought under control through Xi Jinping’s top-down administrative measures. But this will only last as long as he keeps on the pressure – then corruption will come back. Obviously, in Taiwan there were many other factors that led to democratisation, but religion was part of the pluralisation of society, in a classic modernisation paradigm, and spread important ideas that are fundamental to democratic processes. Samuel Huntington’s classic book Political Order in Changing Societies argues that authoritarian governments can work when society is simple, and you just have a few actors like peasants, workers and the military. But when you have many competing interest groups, then they begin making demands and become harder to control. Religion can be one such force. It is hard to control because it is so close to people’s hearts. So it does have the potential to do for China what it did for Taiwan, in making society becoming more pluralistic — just not to the same degree, because Taiwan is a much smaller country and was more influenced by American pressure. But in China today there are calls for social action and for changing society, and Chinese religions support this because they offer value systems that are higher than any political ideals. They want it to be like that, but churches and mosques are still open despite the crackdowns. Most recently, the government removed the crosses off 1500 churches in Zhejiang province. But even there, we have to keep it in perspective. Only one church was demolished, but all the others are still functioning. So the faith and the ideas are still there. We have to be careful when we’re looking at any country, especially China, not to get caught up too much in the headlines, but to see past the crackdowns to how the pendulum has swung over the decades predating Xi Jinping. After the Olympics they thought things were getting out of control and they tried to crack down, but it will always be there. Religion is a double-edged sword for the government. They think they can just embrace a few religions, or certain aspects of it, like the part of Confucianism that is hierarchical, while conveniently overlooking the idea of the mandate of heaven or the right to rebel, which are also key parts of Confucianism. But they can’t really ignore these parts of these faiths; they will always be there and always influence people. Religion will be part of pluralisation of society in China, but it’s not going to lead to democratisation overnight. Probably not in our lifetime. You never know. It’s easy to think that things will continue forever. What I worry most about religion in China is that because the government is picking winners and losers, and because there is so little inter-faith dialogue and many prejudices, if for whatever reason there is less authoritarian control there could be religious violence in China. When we think of a billion-plus country with communal violence, we probably think of India. But it could be in China’s future too."