CHAIRPERSON
Dr Shen Yipeng, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
ABSTRACT
It is tempting to think of the Communist Party of China as being axiomatically opposed to religion. In its six decades, the People’s Republic has launched repeated campaigns against figures such as the Dalai Lama and against groups ranging from the Catholic Church to Falungong, not to mention the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the Cultural Revolution. However, the litany of suppression provides only a partial view of the complex issues surrounding religion in China. Conflict over the definition and status of religion far predates the founding of the People’s Republic, and continued even after 1949, when China consciously diverged from the strict anti-religious policies of the Soviet Union. While the 1982 promulgation of ‘Basic Ideas and Policies Concerning Our Country’s Religious Question in the Socialist Era’ marked a turn to an apparently more tolerant approach to religion, it also resurrected older theoretical contradictions that Chinese scholars have approached from the dual perspectives of religious and Marxist theory. This talk will outline the complex of ideas, which Standing Director of the Chinese Society for the Study of Human Rights Zhu Xiaoming (朱晓明) has termed ‘Socialist View of Religion with Chinese Characteristics’. (中国特色社会主义宗教观), that guide Chinese religion policy.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Thomas David DuBois is Senior Research Fellow in the history of China at the Australian National University, College of Asia and the Pacific.
REGISTRATION
Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP Mr Jonathan Lee via email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg
