Successive governments in China over the past century and a half have stressed science and technology in asserting different visions of modern nationhood. Every major political and social transition in China’s recent history - from the establishment of the Jiangnan Arsenal after the Opium Wars in the late 19th century, the Science and Life Debates during the New Culture and May Fourth Movements in the early 20th century, and the Science and Culture Fever Movements prior to the Tiananmen Incident – has been presaged by a re-evaluation of science and technology as the central symbols of China’s changing place in the world.

A common thread running through each of these re-evaluations has been violent attacks against popular religion and culture as the antithesis of modern nationhood. Both the Republican and Communist governments in China attempted to exterminate so-called superstitions. Then as now, scientism has been but a thin veil under which to forcefully eradicate such traditions from society and history.

Hu Jingtao’s emphasis on “scientific development” of a “harmonious society” is but the latest chapter in this ongoing saga of scientism as the primary rubric of ideology and rhetoric about political, economic, social, and cultural change in China. Since 2003, the CCP’s version of compassionate conservatism aims to continue economic expansion by turning away from heavy industries and concentrating on higher value added production and services that would pollute less and save energy. At the same time, the ideal of the “harmonious society” seeks to alleviate social inequality by promoting employment, social security, medical care and environmental protection.

Yet, with the central government still controlling major steel, energy, transport, and communication industries, energy consumption and inefficiency consistently fails to meet the goals of the 11th Five-Year Plan. Pursuing massive hydroelectric, transport, and urbanization projects, the government also plans to move nearly 300 million rural residents in the next decade. Displaced people who have lost their homes and communities have no say in these changes, as Hu’s administration has suspended village-level direct elections and other experiments at expanding local political participation. This has set the stage for increasing opposition framed as religious protest.

Popular Religious Protest and Technological Resistance

Scientific and technological development is becoming the focus of rising social unrest as people in China perceive their daily lives transforming in ways over which they have no control. Already there are frequent riots over industrial pollution in rural areas. Widespread popular suspicion of corrupt officials is fed by cases such as doctors spreading AIDS in Henan due to unsanitary blood collection and another case of Harvard researchers collaborating with the local government in Anhui to experiment on villagers without consent. These problems will simply multiply as new technologies such as GM foods, biomedical testing, and nuclear energy become more widespread and potentially harm people’s lives. As faith in the communist system continues to crumble, people have increasingly identified state and foreign sponsored science and technology projects with problems of social injustice, corruption, exploitation, and inequality.

With no other place to turn, rural villagers have thronged to popular religious organizations and culture as a vehicle to express their opposition and protest. Since China’s opening in 1989, there has been a widespread resurgence of popular religious culture throughout the country. These forms of worship include not just Daoism and Buddhism, but an eclectic mix of religious traditions focusing on the worship of local gods, often tied to a specific region or trade. These local religions and gods have traditionally been potent sources of identity, social and labor organization, and popular understanding of the moral and natural world.

The first tremors of such popular religious protest in recent times began with the Fa lun gong cult in the late 1990s. In a stunningly effective and unexpected move, thousands of cult members shut down the government by surrounding the capital building, essentially transforming its nature as a public space. Rather than bodies in service of the state, people used this reinvention of self-expressive spiritual and meditative practices to try and heal themselves where the national healthcare system had failed.

Shocked seized the government, surprised not only by the level of logistical organization but also by the cult’s pervasiveness, with claims as high as 100 million members, some even high level officials, scientists, and businessmen. After several months of a negotiated eerie calm, the party’s crackdown was swift and harsh.

When SARS swept through the country in 2003, it highlighted on the world stage the total failure of the government’s attempts at health care reform. Without any access to healthcare, local villages in several areas held religious ceremonies, heralded by the burst of firecrackers, to drive away the pestilence – a typical response to epidemic disease throughout Chinese history. The government once again attempted to crack down on these activities and the media propaganda machine condemned such “superstitious activities.”

The CCP’s Changing Response to Popular Religious Resistance

Without any real social improvement or official dialogue with rural people to respond to their needs, the Chinese government is likely to encounter more opposition in the form of religious organization and culture. Continued attempts at direct suppression are doomed to failure as heavy-handed measures fail to address the underlying reason why people turn to such faiths. Scientism has not been an adequate ideology to prop up either the Republican or Communist governments. The ongoing revival of popular religious has become so widespread, even in affluent urban areas, that it has become synonymous with the revival of China’s cultural heritage.

Policymakers have recently learned from their own history by attempting to control this religious and cultural revival from within. Imperial governments would often incorporate the gods of popular protestors into the official pantheon, even bestowing official titles, as a means of opening dialogue with local people. Recent government programs to preserve the nation’s cultural heritage and relics employ a similar tactic. As development projects such as the Three Gorges Dam continues to displace communities, the central government has sought to preserve some of the local culture and relics by relocating village temples. Rather than places of worship, these temples have been transformed into tourist theme-parks; the local gods, often prominent historical figures, have been appropriated as national heroes. The government’s initiatives at historical preservation are actually political programs to exclude “superstitious practices” as not part of what authorities define as cultural heritage.