This symposium, directed by Walter Russell Mead and Timothy Shah, explored how China’s various major religious traditions (village-based folk religion, Buddhism, neo-Confucianism, Roman Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, Islam, and new religious groups such as the Falun Gong) are contributing to its economic, social, and political development – and stirring up controversy. It also addressed the ways in which religion is playing a stabilizing and destabilizing role in China at the moment, how Chinese government policy towards religion may be changing, and what the long-term consequences are likely to be for country’s social, economic, and political future.

This event was the fourth in the Religion and Foreign Policy Symposium Series at CFR and was funded through the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation.

Summary Report of Symposium: Downloadable PDF