Liu Yanwu and Yang Hua: An Analytical Logic of Empirical Research on Rural Religion
At the United Front Work Conference of the CPC Central Committee held on May 18, 2015, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Currently, the number of religious venues and believers is increasing rapidly. We must treat this issue with caution. Our country's Constitution and laws guarantee the right of citizens to religious belief, but we must be vigilant against the danger of religious infiltration and religious demands with political intentions." During the National Conference on Religious Work on April 22, 2016, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized again: "The religious issue has always been a major issue that our Party must handle well in governing the country and conducting state affairs. Religious work holds a special importance in the overall work of the Party and the state. It concerns the development of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the flesh-and-blood ties between the Party and the masses, social harmony, ethnic unity, national security, and the reunification of the motherland." In his speech at the National Conference on Religious Work from December 3 to 4, 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping re-emphasized: "We must fully implement the Party's theory on religious work in the New Era, fully implement the Party's basic policy on religious work, fully implement the Party's policy of freedom of religious belief, persist in the direction of the Sinicization of religions in our country, and actively guide religions to adapt to socialist society." Following serious study and implementation of the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important speeches on religious work, this article provides a response and discussion on how to conduct empirical research on rural religion, based on relevant academic literature and reality.
I. Defining the Problem
Based on an emphasis on non-traditional security [1] in our country’s countryside and vigilance toward the potential risk of Western religious infiltration, the Xiuyuan Foundation released "The Current Status of the Spread of Western Religions in Rural China—A Research Report of the Xiuyuan Foundation" (hereafter referred to as the Xiuyuan Report) in 2014, drawing on data collected through field investigations. This report focused on two main issues: first, the current status of the spread of Western religions in rural China; and second, the mechanisms through which this spread occurs. Analyzing field investigation data from the team’s work in 2009 and earlier across national rural areas, the report found: on one hand, after nearly 30 years of development, Western religions (primarily Christianity) had already replaced traditional rural religions and various forms of folk belief to become the dominant religion in China’s countryside, and this process was still accelerating at the "time" of the team’s investigation and research; on the other hand, the spread of Western religions in rural China was not uniform but showed clear regional differences.
In the third issue of Open Times (《开放时代》) in 2020, three scholars from Peking University—Wu Yue, Zhang Chunni, and Lu Yunfeng—jointly published "Reflecting on the 'Western Religion Fever in the Countryside': Myth or Fact? — An Analysis Based on the China Family Panel Studies" (hereafter referred to as the Lu Article). Using data from the 2012, 2014, and 2016 China Family Panel Studies (hereafter "CFPS data"), the article criticized the Xiuyuan Report, arguing that the "Western religion fever in the countryside" mentioned in the report was "a myth rather than a fact." The "fact" discovered by the Lu Article was that Western religion was not only "not hot" in the countryside but was actually weaker than traditional religion.
The problem this article intends to discuss is whether the truth of Western religion's development in rural China is indeed as presented in the Lu Article. We will first clarify this disputed fact and then discuss how to better conduct empirical research on rural religion.
The Lu Article primarily raised three issues: First, whether the "Western religion fever" in rural China is a fact. This was mainly to refute the first finding of the Xiuyuan Report regarding the status of the spread of Western religions. Second, whether the countryside is more conducive to the spread of Western religions than cities. This was a question extended by the Lu Article based on the Xiuyuan Report: although the Xiuyuan Report did not discuss the spread of Western religions in cities, the Lu Article believed that if a "fever" appeared in the rural spread, it implied that rural society was inherently more conducive to it. If findings contrary to the rural situation could be found in the urban spread of Western religion, it could disprove that rural society was uniquely conducive to it. Third, whether the characteristics of typical regions can be extrapolated to the whole country. The Lu Article also discussed regional differences in the distribution of Western religions. Using survey data from Guangdong Province and Henan Province in the CFPS data as examples, it found that rural Henan, representing the North, indeed displayed a pattern dominated by Western religions, while rural Guangdong, representing the South, showed a pattern dominated by traditional religions. The Lu Article considered this finding consistent with the Xiuyuan Report but criticized it, saying "one cannot use the situation in rural Henan to infer a national phenomenon of 'Western religion fever in the countryside.'"
Of the three aspects of the Lu Article’s criticism of the Xiuyuan Report, only the first point was directed at the original meaning of the Xiuyuan Report; the second and third points belonged to what they called an "extended" interpretation. Their purpose was, of course, to use the latter two points to further corroborate the correctness of the first point—namely, that Western religion fever does not exist in rural China. Given the focus of the two documents, I only need to discuss the first point of the Lu Article. However, since the Lu Article touched upon urban-rural and North-South differences in the spread of Western religion at the level of phenomena, I will also discuss whether the "facts" derived by the Lu Article on these two points are indeed facts, and what further work should be done as academic research.
II. The Current Status of the Spread of Western Religions in the Countryside
To grasp the current status of the spread of Western religions in the countryside, the first step is to clarify the basic definition of Western religion. The dispute between the Lu Article and the Xiuyuan Report began here.
First, there is the controversy over whether the connotation of "Western religion" includes the underground church and heterodox organizations such as cults. The Lu Article defined Western religion as Protestant Christianity and Catholicism, and traditional religion as Buddhism and Taoism. Conversely, the Xiuyuan Report’s definition of Western religion referred to religions based on the Bible, including Catholicism, Protestantism, and heterodox organizations (such as the Church of Almighty God [2], the Mentuhui [3], and other cult organizations). It also encompassed all underground Western religions that were not registered with the government or did not recognize government leadership, including various Christian house churches, the underground Catholic Church, and underground Western religious organizations like Christian cults. The Lu Article did not include underground churches or heterodox cults; it primarily referred to Protestant and Catholic believers who adhered to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (hereafter "Three-Self Church") and were proactively identified as such by respondents. Based on calculations from CFPS survey data, they estimated that there are approximately 39.97 million Christians in China, of whom about 12 million are "hidden Christians." In another article, they pointed out that in 2016, there were about 39.97 million Christians in China, including 28.29 million "open Christians" and 11.67 million "hidden Christians"—defined as those who "claim to believe in God but do not admit to being Christians." When criticizing the Xiuyuan Report for "exaggerating" the number of Christians in China, the Lu Article stated that these nearly 12 million "hidden Christians" could be removed without affecting their overall judgment or their criticism of the Xiuyuan Report. The problem here is that the 12 million people they removed accounted for nearly 30% of their total sample. Their reasoning was: "Because existing survey data did not include practitioners of folk beliefs, and folk believers are likely to be much larger in scale than so-called underground Christians. Therefore, ignoring folk believers will not only not weaken our argument—namely, refuting the claim that 'Western religion is the sole dominant religion in rural areas'—but will even strengthen our point: if folk beliefs could be included, it would be even more impossible for Western religion to be the sole dominant religion in the countryside." Even more logically contradictory is that the Lu Article at one moment claimed there were 39.97 million Christians including "hidden Christians," but then, to prove the Xiuyuan Report "exaggerated" the problem, claimed their article did not include "hidden Christians."
Logically speaking, this argument is debatable. Since the premise of the Lu Article was that the Xiuyuan Report exaggerated the spread of Western religion, they should have demonstrated how the report exaggerated it. Instead, to argue that the report exaggerated, they removed nearly 30% of their own derived actual data and then used a speculative expression regarding a "likely" different variable that was not directly related, thereby blurring the facts into a "myth." After removing the nearly 30% of underground Christians, they did not calculate the number of Catholics or the situation of cult organizations like the Mentuhui and the Church of Almighty God. If heterodox groups like the Mentuhui and Almighty God are difficult to estimate due to their cult status, the number of Catholics should not have been ignored. According to the white paper "China's Policies and Practices on Protecting Freedom of Religious Belief" released by the State Council Information Office on April 3, 2018, the number of Catholics in China is about 6 million. This means that by adding the 12 million hidden Christians ignored by the Lu Article, they actually excluded 45% of Western religious believers from the total sample. To use a simple mathematical equation: the number of "Western religious" believers according to the Lu Article = the number of Protestant Christians (open + hidden) + the number of Catholics; while the number of "Western religious" believers according to the Xiuyuan Report = the number of Protestant believers (Three-Self + house churches) + the number of Catholic believers + the number of heterodox cult believers (Mentuhui + Almighty God + others). In these two equations, the only overlapping part is the Lu Article’s "open Christians" and the Xiuyuan Report’s "Three-Self Church believers," both of which mainly refer to registered believers complying with national Three-Self policies in a general sense. Taking this small subset to refute the larger whole that contains it is logically unsound.
Second, there is the controversy over traditional religion. To refute the facts of the Xiuyuan Report, the Lu Article continued to provide criticism and supporting arguments from the perspective of traditional religion. The reason given was that if traditional religion were still highly developed or even more numerous than Western religion in the countryside, it would further disprove the "myth" of "Western religion fever." The Lu Article defined traditional religion as Buddhism and Taoism. In other words, to disprove the "myth" of Western religion fever, one only needed to demonstrate that the number of Buddhists and Taoists was greater than the number of Western religious believers. Weighted data for 2016 provided by the Lu Article showed that among all 2,275 rural residents claiming to have a religious belief, traditional religion accounted for 76%, while Western religion accounted for only 19%, Islam 3%, and other religions 2%. Thus, they concluded: "Western religion is not as rampant as some scholars imagine." The Lu Article had a certain misunderstanding of the word "heat/fever" used by the Xiuyuan Report. The Xiuyuan Report primarily emphasized the "process of heating up," i.e., "becoming hot," whereas the Lu Article understood "heat" in the sense of a result or state, i.e., "boiling."
Third, regarding the dispute over whether to proceed from figures or from facts. Facts do not necessarily manifest as precise figures at the research level, especially within rigorous written texts. On the contrary, so-called aggregated figures derived from facts may be even less capable of substituting for the facts themselves. Although the Lu Article [4] discovered, through the factual dimension of religious practice, that Western religions possess higher visibility due to their strict management systems, organizational methods, and customary characteristics—which in turn made it possible for the "rural Western religion fever" identified by the Xiuyuan Report [5] to emerge—the article's handling of these facts is problematic. For example, they found that 2016 CFPS [6] data indicated the proportion of organized believers in Western religions in rural areas was 56%, while the proportion for traditional religions was only 8.9%. Consequently, the former exhibits a higher level of organization, while the latter is loosely organized. Proceeding from this fact, the Xiuyuan Report attempted to understand the convenience that the powerful organizational mechanisms of Western religions brought to their transmission. Conversely, the Lu Article blurred this issue through figures, citing the reason that "a large number of traditional religious practitioners who cultivate at home (lay Buddhists/laymen [7]), even if devout, do not consider themselves to have joined a religious organization." This blurring is logically erroneous. The fact that the degree of organization in Western religions is so high serves as better proof of the rural Western religion fever; that traditional religious organization is so loose further serves to set in relief how "hot" Western religion has become. This is precisely one of the issues the Xiuyuan Report emphasized.
Based on this, the Lu Article actually failed to effectively refute the facts of the Xiuyuan Report they intended to address; instead, it happened to further prove the facts presented by the report. Of course, even for facts that favor the Xiuyuan Report, one must maintain a cautious attitude toward the Lu Article’s data, an issue that will be discussed further below.
III. The Issue of Urban-Rural Differences in the Spread of Western Religions
From a theoretical perspective, the spread of Western religion in cities versus the countryside merely represents a difference in the specific physical space of transmission; it cannot serve as evidence to negate one or the other. One cannot say that whether Western religion spreads quickly or slowly in cities can be used to disprove the status of its transmission speed in rural areas. However, the Lu Article spent a great deal of space arguing that the spread of Western religion in cities is not necessarily slow, thereby extending this to deny the rapid spread of Western religion in the countryside. Setting aside this logical deficiency for the moment, let us turn to a discussion based on the comparison of urban and rural data they argued.
First, regarding the number of believers, the Lu Article argued that it is impossible to demonstrate that the spread of Western religious believers in rural areas is "hotter" than in cities. From the presentation of the data, the Lu Article found that in the 2012 CFPS data, the proportion of the rural population believing in Western religions was 0.5% higher than in urban areas, while 2016 data showed the rural areas were only 0.2% higher than urban areas—differences in urban-rural percentages that are not significant. The Lu Article points out: "In the 20th century, the majority of our country's population lived in rural areas, but with the development of urbanization, the urban and rural populations became basically equal around 2010, and now the urban population has exceeded the rural population. Therefore, if the proportion of Western religious believers in urban and rural populations is equal, it means the absolute number of Western religious believers living in towns and cities is higher than in rural areas." The Lu Article did not provide the absolute number of Western religious believers for urban and rural areas respectively as it did for the overall projection. Instead, it used the so-called "equal proportion" claim to blur the matter, stating "the absolute number of urban Western religious believers is higher than rural." Regarding this, there are at least two points we need to clarify: first, according to the Lu Article’s calculations, exactly what are the absolute numbers of urban and rural Western religious believers? Second, when involving religious belief—this very specific subjective variable—what exactly is the difference between the city and the countryside?
To clarify these two questions, the author examined the publicly available raw CFPS data used by the Lu Article. Among them, the 2016 data indicates that in the results collected from the adult questionnaire’s "Religious Belief Module," cases were distinguished by item A301, "Current Household Registration (Hukou) Status." They distinguished four options: "1. Agricultural Hukou; 3. Non-agricultural Hukou; 5. No Hukou; 79. Not applicable." Specifically, "No Hukou" refers to "not registered in China and having no other nationality," while "Not applicable" refers to "non-Chinese respondents." The data results show that the sample for Agricultural Hukou totaled 24,393 cases, while the Non-agricultural Hukou sample totaled 8,801 cases, with the total sample equaling 33,244 cases. That is to say, the sample size for Agricultural Hukou accounted for 73.38%, while the Non-agricultural Hukou sample accounted for 26.47%. Thus, for such a proportional match, one cannot call them "basically equal." Or rather, even if some other public data shows that urban and rural populations are already basically equal, the sample sizes here in the CFPS are not equal. Looking at the proportions again: according to the CFPS data, in the 2016 survey sample, there were 510 Protestants [8] with Agricultural Hukou, accounting for 2.09%, and 110 Catholics, accounting for 0.45%. Western religion, as defined by the Lu Article (composed of Protestants and Catholics together), accounted for 2.54% of the total Agricultural Hukou sample. Among those with Non-agricultural Hukou, the proportion of Protestants was 1.94% and Catholics 0.40%; following the Lu Article’s definition, these two combined accounted for 2.35% of the total Non-agricultural Hukou sample. The calculated difference is that the rural proportion is 0.2% higher than the urban, not the reverse, and this is not the same concept as the absolute number. On the contrary, if the ratios truly reflect the actual facts, then the number of Western religious believers in rural areas is not only not equal to the city in absolute terms, but much higher.
In view of this, according to the statistical criteria actually distinguished by the Lu Article’s data calculations—using Agricultural Hukou to represent rural areas and Non-agricultural Hukou to represent urban areas—according to the National Bureau of Statistics, by the end of 2016, the total population of mainland China was 1.38271 billion. Among this, the urbanization rate of the registered (Hukou) population was 41.2%. Based on this, it can be calculated that the Non-agricultural Hukou urban population was 569,676,520, while the Agricultural Hukou population was 813,033,480. That year, the population aged 16 and over accounted for 82.3%. From this, we can calculate the total population aged 16 and over (the target for inference in the CFPS adult questionnaire): 468,843,776 for Non-agricultural Hukou and 669,126,554 for Agricultural Hukou. Further calculating based on the CFPS 2016 data cited by the Lu Article, the number of Western religious believers (by the Lu Article's statistical criteria) among the population over 16 reached 16,995,815 in rural areas, while the urban areas had 11,017,829. The difference shows that in absolute numbers, the rural areas have 5,977,986 more than urban areas. Similarly, if we follow another paper they published in Open Times (《开放时代》) which stated, "if we assume the distribution of beliefs among minors in our country is the same as that of adults," then the full-scope number of rural Western religious believers reaches 20,651,050, while the urban area has only 13,387,398. Comparing the two, the absolute number of rural Western religious believers is 7,263,112 higher than in the cities. However, in practice, one cannot simply make such an "assumption." In the 0–15 age group, especially when measuring religious belief, how can one "assume" they are the same as "adults"? Clearly, infants and children in the 0–6 age group do not know their religious beliefs. Such an "assumption" has no practical significance other than artificially expanding the denominator when processing data to support the researcher’s own "hypothesis." In the second paragraph on page 161 of the Lu Article, the authors state: "Numerically, the proportion of Western religious believers in the rural population in 2012 was 0.5% higher than in urban areas, while in 2016 the proportion in the urban population was 0.2% higher than rural" (the actual situation is that in the 2016 data, the rural was 0.2% higher than urban; the Lu Article deliberately reversed this). Yet in the second and third paragraphs on page 162 of the same article, it is stated that "the proportion of the population believing in Western religions in rural areas is not higher than in towns, and there is no larger number of Western religious believers," and "in terms of both the proportion and scale of believers, the development of Western religion in rural areas has not been higher than in urban areas." When the Lu Article speaks of scale, it does not provide specific figures but adopts a method of blurring the proportions. A further problem is that the proportions themselves cannot actually support their argument.
Second, from the measurement of religious practice activities and the degree of religious importance, the Lu Article argued that the data not only failed to support the "rural Western religion fever" but conversely showed more prominent performance in cities than in rural areas. To argue that Western religion is more likely to be "hot" in cities than in rural areas, thus negating the thesis of "rural Western religion fever," the Lu Article—in addition to arguing on the indicator of the number or scale of believers—performed further measurements and arguments on the two indicators of "religious practice activity" and "importance of religious belief." Regarding religious practice activity, the Lu Article did not specifically define in the text what constitutes "active," "inactive," or "completely inactive." Its expression was: "On the 'inactive' end, the proportion of inactive believers in towns (12.9%) is significantly lower than in rural areas (23.8%); on the 'active' end, the proportion of active Western religious believers who attend services more than once a week is also significantly higher in towns (63%) than in rural areas (51.8%)." Following the logic of the Lu Article, the author checked the original questionnaire items and the raw data. The corresponding measurement item is question "M602B" in the 2016 CFPS adult questionnaire: "How often do you attend religious services?" It provides eight response options: "1. Never; 2. Once a year; 3. Several times a year; 4. Once a month; 5. Two or three times a month; 6. Once a week; 7. Several times a week; 8. Almost every day." The Lu Article did not explain how the intermediate options were distinguished in terms of activity level. However, the author believes that defining "Option 1: Never" as "inactive" and "Option 7: Several times a week" and "Option 8: Almost every day" as "active" should be uncontroversial.
On the inactive end, the raw data results show that the number of people choosing Option 1 (never attending services) was 20,584 in the Agricultural Hukou sample, accounting for 84.39% of the 24,393 total, while the number of Non-agricultural Hukou choosing Option 1 was 7,743, accounting for 87.98% of the 8,801 total residents. On the active end, the distribution for Option 7 (several times a week) was 111 cases for Agricultural Hukou (0.46%) and 25 cases for Non-agricultural Hukou (0.28%). The distribution for Option 8 (almost every day) was 165 cases for Agricultural Hukou (0.68%) and 17 cases for Non-agricultural Hukou (0.19%). Therefore, whether at the inactive or active end, looking solely at the data, it can only prove that rural Western religious practices are more active than in towns, rather than proving urban Western religious believers are more active. Furthermore, it is inappropriate to use a sample of 17 people to infer the religious practices of Western religious believers in all Chinese cities; the vastness of China is sufficient to dilute the validity of a 17-case sample.
Regarding the measurement of the degree of importance people attach to religious belief, the corresponding original question in the 2016 CFPS questionnaire is "Question M603": "Regardless of whether you participate in religious activities/affairs, is religion important to you?" There are three corresponding response options: "1. Very important; 2. Somewhat important; 3. Not important." Lu's article [9] does not specify whether "religious belief" here refers only to Western religionists [10] or to the entire respondent population. Logically speaking, if it referred only to Western religionists, it is hard to imagine such a high proportion of respondents answering that religion is not important, given that they had already chosen to believe in Christianity or Catholicism. The results presented in "Figure 7" of Lu's article show that 12.1% of urban believers (not explicitly stated as "urban Western religionists") chose to believe religion is not important, while for rural believers (also not stated as "rural Western religionists"), the figure was 19.4%. Even so, the proportion of urban believers who consider religion unimportant is lower than that of rural believers. Similarly, the data in Figure 7 of Lu’s article indicates that the proportion of urban believers who consider religion very important is 63.9%, while the proportion for rural believers is 62.4%. Such close percentages can hardly support the conclusion that "rural Western religionists do not value their faith more than urban believers; rather, urban believers manifest a higher degree of importance attached to religion." If one looks at the distribution of the population alone, the results shown by the 2016 CFPS raw data are inconsistent with the argument Lu's article seeks to establish. That is to say, according to the raw data, without distinguishing whether they are Western religionists or not, the results for this question show that 1,833 people with agricultural household registration (hukou) chose "religion is very important," accounting for 7.51%, while 511 people with non-agricultural household registration chose it, accounting for 5.81%. Among the agricultural population, 4,176 people (17.12%) chose "religion is somewhat important," compared to 1,744 people (19.82%) in the non-agricultural population. 18,338 people in the agricultural population (75.18%) chose "religion is not important," compared to 6,537 people (74.28%) in the non-agricultural population. It should be said that this data likewise finds it difficult to overwhelmingly demonstrate that urban believers attach a higher importance to religion.
Third, regarding the explanation of the degree of organization of Western religions. The data obtained by Lu's article is: "The level of organization of Western religions in rural areas (56.0%) is slightly higher than in urban areas (51.9%)." Although the data here in Lu’s article shows that the difference between rural and urban Western religious organization levels is not particularly large, it is nonetheless more favorable for arguing that Western religion in rural areas is "hotter" than in urban areas. Regarding such data that is unfavorable to their argument, Lu’s article merely employs a vague treatment, stating that "this difference between urban and rural areas in terms of proportion is not statistically significant."
In summary, Lu's article not only fails to refute the research findings of the Xiuyuan Report [11], but looking at the actual results of the data provided, it can only further support the correctness of the Xiuyuan Report.
IV. North-South Differences in the Spread of Western Religions and the Methods and Facts of Empirical Religious Research
Regarding the North-South differences in the spread of Western religions, the situation in Guangdong Province (representing the South) and Henan Province (representing the North) in the 2016 CFPS survey data utilized by Lu's article is basically consistent with the judgments derived from the field investigations of the Xiuyuan Report. Lu's article found that rural religion in the South is characterized by a predominance of traditional religions, while rural religion in the North exhibits a flourishing of Western religions. However, the focus of Lu's article is not on the differences in religious spread between Northern and Southern rural areas or the underlying formative mechanisms. Their focus remains on attempting to use the differences between Guangdong and Henan—specifically the fact that Western religionists account for 8.1% of the rural population in Henan, far higher than the 0.5% in rural Guangdong—to argue that "if one takes rural Henan as the sole example to generalize the conclusion of 'rural Western religion fever' to the entire national countryside, it is incorrect both methodologically and factually." Consequently, they reach a general critical conclusion: that the facts found by the Xiuyuan Report are not facts but "myths," and the view that there is a "Western religion fever" in the countryside is a case of overgeneralization (taking a part for the whole).
First, concerning the relationship between the "part" and the "whole" in Lu's article. In terms of argumentative logic, if Lu's article argues that the Xiuyuan Report overgeneralizes from a "part" to a "whole," then they should demonstrate from the perspective of the "whole" how the Xiuyuan Report is "partial." This is because, judging from Lu’s article and another work by the same author, they possess confidence and mastery over the "whole" represented by the cited CFPS data. They state: "The CFPS used in this article is a social survey project implemented by the Institute of Social Science Survey at Peking University. This survey possesses the advantages of scientific sampling, national representativeness, comprehensive content, and a large sample size, making it suitable for analyzing the situation of Chinese rural religion in recent years." "The subjects of the CFPS are the households and all family members within sample households in 25 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) of China, excluding Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Hainan, as well as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. Since the population of these 25 provincial-level administrative units accounts for approximately 95% of the total national population (excluding Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan), the CFPS sample can be seen as an approximately nationally representative sample." It is precisely on this basis that they calculated that there were approximately 39.97 million Christians in China in 2016, of whom 28.29 million were open Christians and 11.67 million were hidden Christians.
Judging from the expressions in Lu’s article and their other work, they seem to possess the conditions for a "whole" analysis to disprove the "partiality" of the literature they criticize. However, in the process of narration, they state: "In the CFPS, Guangdong and Henan are two sub-populations with independent provincial representativeness; we use these two provinces as representatives of the South and North to analyze regional differences in rural religious development." If they were using qualitative data from field investigations starting from the "part" to unfold their argument, it would, of course, be beyond reproach in terms of research methodology. The problem is that the "part" attacked by Lu’s article is precisely because they claim to have mastered the "whole." Yet here, they do not start from the "whole" but begin with the "part" to criticize the "partiality" of other scholars; this becomes "attacking the partial with the partial." Thus, it is difficult to render a judgment that other scholars' research is "overgeneralizing from the part to the whole." They state that the status of Guangdong and Henan in the CFPS is "two sub-populations with independent provincial representativeness"; since they do not say these are the only sub-populations, are there not other sub-populations? Why are only these two representative? If there are other sub-populations that are also representative, why not use them together in the argument to demonstrate the inherent strength of the "whole"? If there are no other sub-populations, or if other sub-populations are not representative, then the claim that the CFPS can represent the entire country requires caution.
Second, the methodological and factual issues in Lu's article. The regional distribution of religion in our country shows quite obvious differences and extreme heterogeneity, with North-South differences being particularly prominent, leading to different transmission mechanisms for different religions in different regions. This point is exactly the theoretical problem the Xiuyuan Report attempted to explain when analyzing North-South differences. The author [12] has also frequently found in rural field investigations that in some rural areas, the spread of Christianity is quite rapid; in others, heterodox organizations [13] such as cults (xie jiao) are more widely spread; while in still other places, because traditional beliefs centered on ancestor worship are well-preserved, it is difficult for Western religions to spread. Because of this complex situation, relying solely on statistical sampling to grasp the scale of Western religionists might be correct at the mathematical level but may be wrong at the factual level. Under current circumstances, as long as there is no detailed national-level census on religious conditions, it is difficult to ascertain the number of believers in religious faiths, which are inherently highly subjective. Therefore, any scholar engaged in questionnaire-based research on religious issues must be especially cautious in drawing conclusions. Taking the data from the religious module survey of the CFPS used in Lu's article as an example, the aforementioned problems are clearly prominent. The author is not suggesting here that CFPS survey data has these problems in other research topics, but is only speaking in terms of religious surveys. At a rough glance, this data has at least two fundamental problems that need improvement.
On the one hand, although from a population perspective, the CFPS claims that the provincial administrative units it samples cover 95% of the Chinese population, this is not equivalent to covering 95% of the Chinese religious population. For example, Xinjiang and Ningxia are excluded, which poses a problem for mastering the distribution of Islamic believers. Similarly, by excluding Tibet and Qinghai, one cannot confidently claim an accurate judgment on the distribution of Buddhist believers. Even for those cases that were not excluded at the beginning of sampling but were included in the overall sample, it is impossible to ensure that the "sampling" is evenly distributed across the believer populations in each provincial administrative region. Taking Shandong Province as an example, the 2016 CFPS survey data indicates that only one person in Shandong believes in Islam; even setting aside whether one can use the proportion represented by this one person to extrapolate for the entire province of Shandong, any such calculation would be found to be seriously inconsistent with the facts. Calculating with the 2016 total population of Shandong Province at approximately 94.46 million, an extrapolation based on CFPS data would mean only 64,126 people in the entire province of Shandong could believe in Islam. Yet the actual situation in Shandong is that the Hui ethnic population alone at the time of the Sixth National Population Census was 535,679, and this does not include other ethnic minority populations that believe in Islam. Furthermore, in Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Hainan—which the 2016 CFPS was not supposed to have surveyed—samples actually appeared where "no religious belief" was selected. In the output data for Question M601 of the 2016 CFPS questionnaire ("What religion do you belong to?"), there were 41, 5, 7, 13, 21, and 11 people in these provincial administrative regions, respectively, who selected option "6. No religious belief." If even these provincial administrative regions that were not surveyed have these numbers, and we assume these numbers are small enough to be harmless, then how are we to understand the extremely small number of Christians in some of the sampled provinces? For example, the number of Christians in Sichuan was zero (whereas the actual situation is that in 2018 alone, there were 57 members of the 10th Committee of the Provincial Christian 'Two Organizations' [14] in Sichuan Province; according to statistics, as of the end of 2009, there were 480,000 Christian believers in that province). The sampled data for Christians in Tianjin, Chongqing, Jiangxi, Guangxi, and Guizhou was only two people each; Beijing had five, Hunan eight, Huhei ten, Shaanxi eleven, Fujian twelve, Yunnan thirteen, and Shandong fourteen. The Christian samples from these thirteen provincial-level administrative regions totaled only 81 people, accounting for only 11.89% of the total Christian sample in the 2016 CFPS (681 cases). However, when ranking the number of Christians from highest to lowest in the 2016 CFPS data, Henan—in first place—had 242 people; Liaoning, in second, had 66; Shanghai, in third, had 51; and Hebei and Heilongjiang, tied for fourth, each had 41. The sample size of these five provincial administrative regions reached 441 people, accounting for 64.76% of all 681 Christian cases collected by the 2016 CFPS.
On the other hand, if there have always been doubts and difficulties in grasping the number of Christians within Western religions, then the distribution of Catholics within Western religions should serve as a credible indicator to test the validity of obtained data. Data on Catholics obtained from the 2016 CFPS [15] religion module survey showed zero practitioners in Chongqing, Beijing, Jilin, and Shanxi; Tianjin, Yunnan, and Heilongjiang each had only one recorded; while Jiangxi, Hunan, and Jiangsu each had only two. These ten provincial-level administrative regions combined for a total sample of only nine Catholics, accounting for 6.21% of the total Catholic sample (145 cases). Yet the reality is that by December 2018, Chongqing had at least 220,000 Catholics. As early as 2009, the Ninth Beijing Catholic Representatives Conference was attended by 230 representatives alone. The Sixth Jilin Provincial Catholic Representatives Conference in 2019 had 86 provincial representatives, and the Seventh Shanxi Provincial Catholic Representatives Conference in 2019 had 130 representatives. That is to say, regardless of how "scientific" the sampling might be, the distribution of Catholics in these provinces and municipalities cannot and should not result in a count of zero. The fundamental reason why the CFPS data cited in the Lu article [16] exhibits these issues is that the geographic distribution of Western religious adherents in our country is extremely uneven and possesses high heterogeneity. Traditional religions—especially those outside of Buddhism and Taoism like ancestor worship—might be likened to "grains of sand," possessing higher homogeneity across space. In contrast, religions like Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism resemble "clumps" or "boulders," characterized by higher heterogeneity. However, the Lu article and the CFPS religion module survey it employs treat these highly heterogeneous distributions as a homogeneous and uniform relationship, akin to "saltwater." Using this as a basis to draw inferences and judgments regarding the national distribution of religion and religious practices naturally leads to the series of problems mentioned previously.
Of course, other issues may exist in the Lu article, such as the positioning of the "temporal coordinate." The Xiuyuan Report [17] was formally drafted in 2009, and its field survey data reflects the situation in 2009 and earlier. Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012, many positive changes have occurred because the Party and the state have attached great importance to non-traditional security issues in the religious sphere.
V. Conclusion
Qualified academic dialogue must use facts as the criterion. This is especially true for quantitative data research that emphasizes standardization; it should speak through scientific data, and researchers especially ought to possess a basic sensitivity toward and respect for data. From the perspective of the social science orientation of religious studies, the problems appearing in the Lu article and the CFPS data regarding the use of questionnaires to measure the distribution of believers are by no means isolated cases. Some have previously found, when citing national sampling data from the Horizon Research Consultancy Group (Beijing) regarding the "Spiritual Life of Chinese People," that if one were to extrapolate the national total based on the number of Catholics collected by Horizon at that time, there would be only 3.5 million Catholics—whereas official statistical channels reported approximately 6 million.
In fact, relying solely on questionnaires is insufficient for measuring the scale of religious believers, attitudes toward religious faith, or religious practices. Therefore, looking strictly at the four simply designed questions in the CFPS, there remain points open to debate regarding their authenticity in measuring the state of Chinese religious belief. For example, the categorization of religious belief is an extremely difficult task. Field surveys in rural areas have found that if one discusses religious belief deeply and in detail with farmers, asking whether they believe in Buddhism or Taoism, they find it difficult to distinguish between the two. However, if one speaks of honoring ancestors, venerating gods, or praying for the protection of Bodhisattvas or Heaven, they find it much easier to understand and accept. Furthermore, it is quite difficult to discover practitioners of any cults—including heterodox sects [18]—without in-depth investigation and thorough analysis of research materials. It is rare to encounter anyone who dares to publicly admit they follow a particular cult. Similarly, for measuring religious practice, the so-called "burning incense and worshipping Buddha" (shāoxiāng bàifó) in the CFPS seems irreproachable, but in concrete empirical investigation, these are two different concepts. Burning incense does not necessarily mean worshipping Buddha; it might be for honoring ancestors at home, or a temporary plea for protection from supernatural forces due to a sudden emergency, or even simply for psychological comfort. It is fundamentally impossible to classify such a person as a Buddhist or a Taoist based on this alone. This is exactly the logic behind the common Chinese saying: "In normal times, one does not burn incense, but when a crisis hits, one clasps the Buddha’s feet" [19].
Through the examination and analysis of the Lu article and its cited CFPS data, it becomes clear that in current empirical religious research, discussing precise numbers of Western religious adherents not only fails to yield accurate answers but also lacks significant practical meaning. From a sociological perspective, researchers should be concerned with trends; significant increases or decreases indicate potential changes in underlying structural factors that require attention. As for whether the precise number of Western religious adherents is "99" or "100," this should not be the focus of attention, nor should it be allowed to blur the research focus. The more important path is to conduct solid field investigations, gathering primary qualitative data step-by-step and then subjecting it to research and analysis. Only on this basis does it become meaningful to consider using questionnaires as a supplement. Similarly, the Xiuyuan Report did not aim to focus on specific, precise numbers or "North and South" in a literal sense; rather, it sought to proceed from facts and North-South differences to understand the formation mechanisms behind the spread of Western religions in rural areas. Its purpose was to attend to the "Total China" [20] as nurtured behind these regional differences.
The basic policy of our country's religious work is to fully implement the Party's policy on freedom of religious belief, manage religious affairs in accordance with the law, adhere to the principle of independence and self-management, and actively guide religions to adapt to socialist society. "These four sentences form an organic whole: the first three speak to major policies and principles, while the last sentence speaks to the fundamental direction and purpose, and is the focus of our work." Respecting and protecting the freedom of religious belief is a basic policy that our country's religious governance must adhere to over the long term. Therefore, neither the Xiuyuan Report nor this article opposes freedom of religious belief that conforms to legal norms. However, while we agree that freedom of religious belief is a basic right of the Chinese people, we must also clarify the premise: the development of religion in China must adapt to a society of socialism with Chinese characteristics. China is a socialist country. Regarding religious belief, we must both actively guide the healthy development of Western religions in our country and prevent various social risks that may arise from the rapid spread of Western religions in rural areas. This is the essence of religious governance under socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Online Editor: Tong Xin Source: Science and Atheism, Issue 3, 2022.