SPATIAL STUDIES OF RELIGION AND CHINESE SOCIETY FENGGANG YANG CENTER ON RELIGION AND CHINESE SOCIETY PURDUE UNIVERSITY Philadelphia, March 27 th, 2010

Data Progressing  Exploratory: what can be done with the data?  The data: the official census of all religious sites registered with the government (the “Red Market”)  Address, year of founding, etc.  Geocoding: coordinate the addresses (Batch Geocoding), inaccuracy and irregular format.Batch Geocoding  Include 6138 religious organizations in Zhejiang.  Draw maps. (by ArcGIS; by GoogleMaps)by GoogleMaps

Religious Map of Zhejiang Drawn By ArcGISDrawn By GoogleMaps

An Analysis: Description-Proportion

An Analysis: Description-Time Series  The periodic variations of five religions are highly concurrent.  Two turning points: 1980 and What happened?

An Analysis: Hypothesis  Object : officially registered religious organizations  The “red market” in the triple market theory  The political economy of religion in China: demand, supply, and regulation  Demographic and economic factors of religious change; religious competition factor  Hypothesis: The overriding factor of the “red market” change is religious regulation.

An Analysis: Data  DV: number of organizations.  IV: GDP, population, age, education, and etc..  Unit: year; area (county/township level)  Merge with basic socioeconomic data: 1. Economic data : Zhejiang Statistical Yearbook (only county level), Zhejiang Township Statistical Yearbook (only rural areas). 2. Demographic data: 2000 Township Population Census Data (from Prof. Bao).  Data shortage.

An Analysis: GDP (Time)

An Analysis: GDP (Space)

An Analysis: Demographic Factors (Space)

An Analysis: Summary  Conclusion: there is no significant correlation between the size of “red market” and socio-economic factors in on the county level.  Interpretation 1: data limitation. a) Zhejiang is special, need to expand to Whole China. b) Intra-county differences are huge, need to expand to township level (n=1844). c) Other socio-economic data (e.g. edu) need to be added.  Interpretation 2: possibly, no correlation at all. a) A strong exogenous variable: religious regulation. b) Quantify religious regulation?

Future Plan  Establish “Religious Organization Database”: 1. Expand to whole China. 2. Expand to township level. 3. Merge with other religious data, esp. data of individual level (the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey). 4. Merge with more socioeconomic data.  Conduct further data mining and analysis.

THANKS! FENGGANG YANG CENTER ON RELIGION AND CHINESE SOCIETY PURDUE UNIVERSITY Philadelphia, March 27 th, 2010