History of religion in China
Open-knowledge reference entry
Forms of religion in China throughout history have included animism during the Xia dynasty, which evolved into the state religion of the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Alongside an ever-present undercurrent of Chinese folk religion, highly literary, systematized currents related to Taoism and Confucianism emerged during the Spring and Autumn period. Buddhism began to influence China during the Han dynasty, and Christianity and Islam appeared during the Tang.
Today, the government of the People's Republic of China is officially atheist. The United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party manages the official religious bodies of the five recognized religions in the country: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.
Proto-Chinese and pre-imperial culture
Prior to the formation of Chinese civilisation and the spread of world religions in the region known today as East Asia (which includes the territorial boundaries of modern-day China), local tribes shared animistic, shamanic and totemic worldviews. Shamans acted like mediators, communicating prayers, sacrifices, or offerings directly to the spiritual world, a heritage that survives in some modern forms of Chinese religion.
Ancient shamanism is especially connected to ancient Neolithic cultures such as the Hongshan culture. The Flemish philosopher Ulrich Libbrecht traces the origins of some features of Taoism to what Jan Jakob Maria de Groot called "Wuism", that is Chinese shamanism.
Libbrecht distinguishes two layers in the development of the Chinese theology and religion that continues to this day, traditions derived respectively from the Shang (c. 1600 – 1046 BCE) and subsequent Zhou dynasties (1046–256 BCE).
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