The "Rhetorical Toolkit": Proposing a New Theory to Explain the Varied Implementation of Xi Jinping's Sinicization of Religion Campaign

Abstract

In 2015, China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping announced a new campaign to strengthen the Chinese Communist Party’s control over religious groups. Called the “Sinicization of Religion,” this campaign calls on Party leaders to “actively guide religion” to adapt to China’s socialist society and urges clergy to use religious teachings to support the Party’s policies and ideology. Since 2015, the Party has taken direct control over regulating religion, and religious groups throughout China have faced heightened restrictions. This thesis presents the first comprehensive study that compares the official rhetoric of the Sinicization campaign to local religion policies. I analyze two key sources of Party-approved language on the campaign. First, an analysis of the revisions to legal regulations reveals the Party’s objectives and strategies for managing religion, and second, a thematic analysis of the 500 most-cited Chinese academic articles outlines the theories that have been advanced to justify and support the campaign. This thesis then presents four case studies to compare this national rhetoric to policies on the ground: (1) Han Buddhism in Shanghai, (2) Uyghur Islam in Xinjiang, (3) Hui Islam in Ningxia, and (4) Christianity in Zhejiang. This research challenges the prevailing notion that Sinicization is a simple top-down campaign, where local authorities must exactly implement the national Party’s directives. First, the legal and scholarly language both advance two conflicting theories of Sinicization: an “active” approach that emphasizes government intervention and surveillance and a “natural” approach that promotes gradual integration through cultural engagement. Second, local policies often do not exactly reflect the official directives of the national Party. These findings denote the need for a more nuanced understanding of the role the national rhetoric plays in local policy. As such, I advance a new theory that suggests that the approved language provides a “rhetorical toolkit” that allows the Party to pursue its diverse interests regarding religious groups, while maintaining the image that these varied strategies represent a unified campaign that adheres to the rule of law.