China was an overwhelmingly religious society at the time the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949. The talk looks less at the institutionalized religions that the CCP notionally recognized – Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism – and focuses on the religion of the vast majority of the population, which the regime dismissed as ‘feudal superstition’, i.e. not a proper religion at all. Mao Zedong’s vision of Communism put much greater stress than the Soviet model on transforming the heart/minds of the masses, and a key dimension of this transformation entailed eradicating popular conceptions of the world as governed by supernatural entities and cosmic forces. The talk dissects the elements that went into this policy of eradication, including mass propaganda, education, science, the utilization of folk culture, informal networks and, increasingly, coercion. It also looks at popular resistance to the regime through the lens of folk religion. By looking at the Maoist party-state from the unusual angle of folk religion, it seeks to illuminate its workings and effectiveness.

Image credit: Zhao Xiaohua, taken at Jiacun Village, China