“Daoists, as much as devotees of all other religions in China, are severely affected by the Sinicization policies,” writes Karine Martin in the newsletter Bitter Winter (December 19–20). In an adaptation from her forthcoming book, Martin reports that the increasing restrictions against religions, started in 2018, have widened to target religious schooling and the times, locations and number of attendees at religious celebrations. Unlike before, any major event or festival now not only has to be registered for approval, but all participants have to provide identification to government officials. Along other lines, clergy are required to attend indoctrination courses on a regular basis, severely limiting the time they can spend on the upkeep of their institutions and/or their personal cultivation practice. Also, in 2023, the Chinese government released a draft regulation that, if passed, would penalize those who wear clothes in public that “hurt the Chinese people’s feelings,” including vestments or religious robes. Along similar lines, contact with foreigners is actively discouraged and can lead to repercussions, and religious media and communications are strictly censored. To comply with the regulations, religious organizations tend to hold workshops and training courses to set the agenda for their adaptation.
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In late 2023, regulations were also changed at the communist-approved Council of the Chinese Daoist Association (CDA) to state that all Daoist clergy must “love the motherland, support the leadership of the CCP, support the socialist system, abide by the constitution, laws, regulations, and rules, practice core socialist values, adhere to the directions of sinicization, and preserve national unity, ethnic unity, religious harmony, and social stability.” Martin adds that, more specifically, the rules require that Daoists wear appropriate dress and exhibit correct behavior, “study and implement Xi Jinping Thought and the communist party’s policy on religious work.” All activities, publications, and teachings must be in strict adherence to government policies and are tightly censored, “essentially making Daoism—as much as all other religions—into an organ of state doctrine.” As for the everyday impact of Sinicization on Daoism, Martin visited more than one hundred Daoist temples and found many of them in a “state of decline and disarray. There were no devotees, much fewer clergy, and minimal activities. Buildings were in disrepair, and there was very little renovation or construction. The overall atmosphere was one of desolation and despair.”
She adds that the government has made the permit process for any kind of religious building activity so difficult that neither new temples are developed nor existing ones expanded. She gives the example of one Daoist temple that was ready to hold an opening ceremony but again had to file a whole series of complicated forms with different departments that also involved providing the names of everyone attending. The ceremony was held but was radically censored and neither pictures nor descriptions appeared online. This complements the official policy that only allows four Daoist temples in Shaanxi province to have an online presence. Even for them, every single post must obtain approval through a formal authorization process. As a result, temple websites—so strongly developed just a decade ago—now only speak about Xi Jinping’s thought and ways of complying with government guidelines. Not only temples but also tombs are subject to suppression. When the driving force behind the local Daoist revival, Master Feng Xingzhao, passed away at one of the temples he had reconstructed, there was no official announcement, but thousands of people came to attend his funeral, “lining the roads three deep and causing the main highway to be closed to regular traffic.”
(Bitter Winter, https://bitterwinter.org/daoism-under-sinicization-3-the-fate-of-monastic-daoism/)
