The religions in China, and why the religion in China declined

Before European explorers arrived China. The most common religions in China were Taoism and Buddhism. Buddhism was first appeared in India and came to eastern Asia thousands of years ago. And Taoism was a local religion appeared in SiChuan, the place which had a huge earthquake last year in western China.

Buddhism was welcomed by the government of China thousands year ago. Because it always ask believers don’t against hardship, don’t against their lords. It told the believers: “The much hardship you have now, the better life you will have in your next life”.(As the rule of Buddhism, when a person die, you will have a new life as a new animal—maybe human, maybe birds, maybe fish.” In their mind, the hardship you have now is because of you were a bad person on your last life. As a result, the government liked it because it helps the government controlled the people easily. The rich people like it, because they can give the money to the temples, so the religion will let they have a better life. In addition, the poor people like it because they give hopeless to them, that they will have a better life after they die. However, in Qing dynasty, (The last dynasty before the civil war of China began) because the temples asked their believers to give lots of money and lands. Tens of thousands of poor people lost their home to collect enough money for the temples. On the other hand, the temples have had lots of money without gave any to the government. As the war began, the government destroyed thousands of temples to get money to solve the bad economic because of the wars.

Taoism was very popular, because its rule, “You will have longer life if you believe our religion”. When someone is rich enough and very powerful, they always afraid of death, because they don’t want to loss things they have now. In deed that the kings of countries don’t want to die, Taoism was welcomed by powerful and rich people. Taoism asked people to have a simple and natural life. However, as the technology developed a lot. People find many ideas of Taoism is not true, and Chinese people got interested in the new stuffs come from all over the world, they don’t want to have a natural or simple life.

In summary, all of the old religions in China disappeared in the history. Most of Chinese people believed the communist party after the civil war as the only religion they had. However, after so many people were killed during Cultural Revolution of China, many people lost their regions and didn’t know what to do.


Ps: you may get confuse on “Taoism”, the mysterious of it was come from the local environment, as can be seen on the picture above. Because of the local environment, those mountains were always covered with cloud, and the temples of Taoism were all located in those mountains. It asked people to have a simple and natural life, but as the people know more on our environment, they find out how those clouds come from. They don’t feel any mysterious from those temples anymore.
A good region always asks people to do good things, and make a better society. However, when people find the region he believed was wrong or bad, he will loss the way or don’t know what to do. When someone loss the way on his life, he may do bad things.