1. The Impact of Religion in Maoism on Chinese People
By Nicole, Katie, Leon, Domitille, Maddie, Faye and Dean

2. Mao’s views and Chinese opinion before
Chinese communism saw religious belief to be a superstition deliberately cultivated by the exploiting classes to suppress the people. Mao had a strong personal distaste towards religion by describing it as poison and comparing the Christian missionaries (religious orders of priests and nuns) in China to the Nazis in Europe.

3. The Campaign against religion & propaganda
The 1950 campaign was against religion. The official justification was that now the workers were in power (because China had become proletarian), religion had no purpose since people no longer needed such escapism. Religious worship had now to be replaced by loyalty to the Communist Party and the state.
The traditional Chinese beliefs, Buddhism and Confucianism, were forbidden to be open practised as were the major foreign religions, Christianity and Islam. Priests, monks and nuns were prohibited from wearing their distinctive dress; disobedience led to arrest and imprisonment. Churches and mosques were closed, their property seized and their clergy physically abused. Foreign clergy were expelled from China

4. Attacks on Chinese customs and traditions
It was not only the formal expressions of belief that were outlawed. The customs and rituals that had helped shape the life of the peasants were proscribed. These included:
The songs and dances performed at weddings and festivals
The chants that had accompanied work in the fields
The sagas with which the wandering poets entertained whole villages
These traditional ways were replaced with political meetings and discussions organised by the Party. The huge social experiment of collectivization which Mao introduced in the 1950s was meant to destroy the time-honoured pattern of rural life.
Troupes of agit-prop performers toured the countryside putting on shows and plays which was mandatory for villagers to attend. The shows took place in halls and public spaces. Sometimes the players arrived in brightly painted lorries carrying slogans and images extolling the wonders and benefits of the new Maoist world.

5. Attack on Chinese customs - the message in the propaganda:
The message constantly portrayed in the films and the live performances was that the old days of cruel landlords and abused peasants had been replaced with a communal way of life perfectly suited to the new era of collective endeavour.
The shows were played at knockabout pantomime level; the villains were always bad, but religious figures such as scheming Confucian officials and exploring priests also appeared and were hissed and jeered at.

6. The patriotic churches
To make it sense as if they were tolerant, the authorities allowed some churches to remain open provided that they did not endanger the security of the state. What this meant, was that they became state-controlled. Known as “patriotic churches” , the clergy had to profess open support for the communist regime and accept that the authorities had the right to appoint priests and dictate the forms of worship. One consequence of this was conflict between the PRC and the Vatican (administrative centre of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome), whic hrefused to accept the validity of the patriotic churches

7. Religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution
The PRCs decision to allow a semblance of religion to remain was a reluctant recognition that religious faith was too deep-rooted in Chinese tradition to be totally eradicated. Nevertheless, the persecution continued and during the Cultural Revolution, religion was denounced as belonging to the ‘Four Olds’ and the attack upon it intensified. Any clergy who had survived the earlier persecution were rounded up and imprisoned.
Confucianism was denounced as representing all that was worst in China’s past. The name of Confucius was linked to any person or movement that the authorities wished to denounce. ‘Confucius and co’ became a standard term of abuse directed at the any suspect group or organisation. significantly when Lin Biao was disgraced during the Cultural Revolution, the slogan coined to attack him was ‘criticise Lin Biao and Confucius.

8. Religion and opposition in the Provinces
A basic fear of Mao’s government was that religion might encourage the breakaway tendencies in the PRC’s provinces. From the beginning of its rule in 1949, the PRC let it be known that it would not grant independence to any of its regions. That was why in 1950 it sent the PLA into Tibet, Xinjiang and Guangdong to enforce its authority. It claimed that the strength, indeed the survival, of the People’s Republic of China as a nation demanded total unity and acceptance of central control