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44 - Contemporary China

from Part VII - Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
By
Fenggang Yang
Edited by
Stephen Bullivant
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
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Summary

Modern atheism in China has borrowed heavily from the west and the Soviet Union, with little historical continuity of Chinese traditional thought. In the first half of the twentieth century, modernists were predominantly secularists who advocated replacing religion with science, aesthetics, or philosophy. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 1949, Chinese Marxist–Leninist atheism has developed into two distinct versions – enlightenment atheism and militant atheism – which have very different policy implications. In the first thirty years of the PRC, militant atheism dominated and climaxed in the eradication of religion. In the era of economic reforms and opening up to the outside world, enlightenment atheism provided the ideological basis for limited tolerance of religion.

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The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 809 - 830
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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