Constancy and Changes in the Distribution of Religious Groups in Contemporary China: Centering on Religion as a Whole, Buddhism, Protestantism and Folk Religion
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study presents some interesting data and brings readers into conversation with contemporary discussions of the sociology of religion in China, both of which are valuable contributions. On a few points, however, the authors should reconsider their methodology and typology.
First, the category "folk religion" seems likely to include both sectarian Daoist practices, institutions, and beliefs as well as practices, institutions, and beliefs that transcend any sectarian label and belong as much to "Buddhism" as they do to "Daoism" or "folk religion."
Second, as the authors themselves acknowledge, Chinese religious culture typically places little emphasis on individual membership, so relying on answers to survey questions such as "Which religion do you belong to?" probably will not capture much of the actual religious activity that is taking place in contemporary China, and the low percentages of respondents who affirmed a specific religious identity confirms this. I suspect that respondents who answer this type of question affirmatively are showing signs of modernization's influence, which includes the Western model of religious membership as a cultural norm.
Finally, it is not clear from the data presented by the authors whether the "urbanization of religion" in China is a discrete phenomenon in its own right or merely an epiphenomenon of China's general shift toward urbanization. In a country where the majority of the population now reside in urban areas, as became the case in China around the year 2000, it is not at all surprising that the percentage of religious believers/practitioners would also become more urban. And since urbanization has occurred in tandem with the growth in China's middle class, the increasing share of middle class people among China's religious believers/practitioners also would seem to be a natural consequence of general urbanization.
Author Response
We thank you very much for your comments. Those comments are valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper. Our main corrections and responds are as flowing:
Point 1: The category "folk religion" seems likely to include both sectarian Daoist practices, institutions, and beliefs as well as practices, institutions, and beliefs that transcend any sectarian label and belong as much to "Buddhism" as they do to "Daoism" or "folk religion."
Point 2: As the authors themselves acknowledge, Chinese religious culture typically places little emphasis on individual membership, so relying on answers to survey questions such as "Which religion do you belong to?" probably will not capture much of the actual religious activity that is taking place in contemporary China, and the low percentages of respondents who affirmed a specific religious identity confirms this. I suspect that respondents who answer this type of question affirmatively are showing signs of modernization's influence, which includes the Western model of religious membership as a cultural norm.
Response 1: These two comments are very important. The typology of religious beliefs in China, particularly Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion, is based more on some intellectual elites’ identification than on Chinese actual religious practices. This is also the main methodological dilemma for quantitative research based on the data obtained from the questionnaire. Since this analysis is based on a nationwide questionnaire and data already designed by the research team of Renmin University of China, and due to the scarcity of national religious data based on scientific sampling, the paper attempts to reveal an aspect of the changing distribution of religious groups in contemporary China.
We will explain this issue more clearly in the commentary to this article. We also propose to improve the nationwide research by exploring more precise measurement methods, and carry out the qualitative case studies in the future.
Point 3: It is not clear from the data presented by the authors whether the "urbanization of religion" in China is a discrete phenomenon in its own right or merely an epiphenomenon of China's general shift toward urbanization. In a country where the majority of the population now reside in urban areas, as became the case in China around the year 2000, it is not at all surprising that the percentage of religious believers/practitioners would also become more urban. And since urbanization has occurred in tandem with the growth in China's middle class, the increasing share of middle class people among China's religious believers/practitioners also would seem to be a natural consequence of general urbanization.
Response 2: Whether there is urbanization trend in faith stratification is one of the most important focus issues in the current religious circles in China. We strongly agree with you that the trend of believers' urbanization is a natural consequence and an epiphenomenon of China's accelerated urbanization process, population migration and the growth of the middle class, which will be emphasized in our paper. However, some scholars still insist that religious believers are mainly rural population. Their studies don’t taking into account the changes in Chinese society or are based on some case studies.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This study uses a quantitative approach to explore the changes in China's religious communities since the reform and opening up in 1978. Overall, the findings of this paper are common in Chinese scholarship, and the conclusions are not new. However, the authors do incorporate some new research methods and perspectives, which is encouraging. There are some areas of the paper that need revision.
1. There are significant problems with the English writing of the paper, and the authors may consider asking native speakers to revise it. For example, the word "faith fever" in line 73 and the content of lines 74-77 will cause problems for western readers.
2. The object of study is selective, ignoring the changing characteristics of Catholicism, Islam, and Taoism. In fact, the number of believers in Chinese Catholicism has not changed significantly compared to Christianity, and scholars such as Sun Yanfei have done much research in this area.
The conclusions drawn are biased because the authors have deliberately chosen Buddhism, Christianity, and folk religion. I recommend that the authors include other religions as well.
3. The conclusion in lines 202-203 is obviously wrong. Many scholars have pointed out that many religions, such as folk religions and Christianity, are spreading rapidly in rural China, and this conclusion is not consistent with reality.
4. The cited Chinese literature is irregular and excessive. The authors should have noticed many similar studies in English academic literature.
Author Response
Thank you for reviewing our manuscript and for the constructive comments, which greatly helped us to improve the paper. As you mentioned, choosing the appropriate statistical methods with statistical inference effects, we attempts to test the existing argument of the “Five types” and “Three trends” in Chinese sociology of religion based on random sampling of national data. However, there are some technical and theoretical shortcomings. According to your comments, the manuscript was carefully revised and point-by-point response was listed below.
Point 1: There are significant problems with the English writing of the paper, and the authors may consider asking native speakers to revise it. For example, the word "faith fever" in line 73 and the content of lines 74-77 will cause problems for western readers.
Response 1:
(1) Through the English Editing System in MDPI, we have asked native English speakers to revise the manuscript file. Please review in the revised mode.
(2) When I emailed to ask the reviser about the translation of "religious fever, " which was left unmodified, she answered that it was okay to use it. At the same time, we also searched more broader literature, and found that David A. Palmer, the Prof. of the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong, published a book, "Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Ukraine in China." According to your comment, we changed “faith fever” in line 75 into “religious fever”.
Point 2:The object of study is selective, ignoring the changing characteristics of Catholicism, Islam, and Taoism. In fact, the number of believers in Chinese Catholicism has not changed significantly compared to Christianity, and scholars such as Sun Yanfei have done much research in this area.
The conclusions drawn are biased because the authors have deliberately chosen Buddhism, Christianity, and folk religion. I recommend that the authors include other religions as well.
Response2:
This is the very important questions to our paper. We indeed examined differences in the distribution of the three chosen types of religious groups: Buddhists, Christians, and folk religion followers. This study is base on CGSS data, which is conducted by the China Survey and Data Center of Renmin University of China. Because of the limitation of the data, we can not discuss the characteristics of Catholicism, Islam, and Taoism.
- The proportion of Taoists and Catholics in the total sample is lower than 0.5%, which made it difficult to conduct more complex multivariable statistical analysis and effective statistical inference.
- Because of the ethnic and regional nature of Islam in China, and the CGSS did not give any special consideration to this in its sampling. Since there is not representative in Muslim data , we had no means of measuring it in our analysis.
We have to take the second best and research the distribution of Buddhists, Christians, and folk religion followers. But they are the most popular and representative religions in China to a certain extent, as reflected in the CGSS data. Buddhism can be regarded as a representative of traditional Chinese institutional religion; folk belief is a representative of traditional diffusive religion; and Christianity is a representative of Abrahamic religion. For nearly three decades, the gap between Christian religion and traditional religion was largely driven by the rapid growth of Christianity. The number of Catholics is rising just as fast as the population(Sun Yanfei, 2014).
We have added the above reasons to the article in order to make it more rigorous.
Point 3: The conclusion in lines 202-203 is obviously wrong. Many scholars have pointed out that many religions, such as folk religions and Christianity, are spreading rapidly in rural China, and this conclusion is not consistent with reality.
Response3:
I'm sorry that I couldn't find the expression in lines 202-203. Therefore, we could only respond to the comment based on our own understanding. In the conclusion and discussion part of the article, we don’t deny the reality of the rapid development of religion in rural China. We proposed that "the growth rate of urban believers of Buddhism and folk religion will be faster than rural ones, and the rural Christian will be faster than urban ones, but with the deepening urbanization process, ‘more urban believers’ will become a stable pattern in the future" based on the data analysis at the end of the paper.
In order to eliminate possible misunderstandings, we revised the text.
Point 4: The cited Chinese literature is irregular and excessive. The authors should have noticed many similar studies in English academic literature.
Response4:
Thank you for this pertinent comment. I deleted some Chinese literature, and added some important English literature, especially Richard Madison, Karrie Koesel, and Sun Yanfei’ s articles.
Thank you again for your comments. Please give us more suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I continue to regret the lack of data on Catholicism and Islam. Many scholars have pointed out that there are significant differences between the development patterns of Chinese Catholicism and Chinese Christianity. The case of Islam in China is even more different from other religions. If these two religions are ignored, the conclusions drawn from the study are incomplete.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comment again. We fully accepted your suggestion. After careful discussion, due to the limitations of the CGSS data about religion, our main corrections and responds are as flowing:
- Constraint the topic of this paper
- Revised the subtitle.
To avoid giving the reader an understanding of the distribution of all religions, we changed the title to "Constance and Changes in the Distribution of Relevant Groups in Contemporary China: Centering on the Holistic Religion, Buddhism, Protestantism and Folk Religion".
- Explained the reasons for focusing on these religions.
We have revised the original modified contents and placed them in the "Introduction" section (line 44-65). These are stated as follows:
On the basis of the main topics of the academic discussion of "Five types" and "Three trends", the number of religious believers and the characteristics of CGSS data, we mainly discusses the religious believers distribution of the holistic religion and three specific religions, i.e. Buddhism, Protestantism, and folk religion. This is because, firstly, these three religions are the most popular in China (State Council Information Office of the P. R. C., 2008), as reflected in the CGSS data. Buddhism can be regarded as the representative of traditional Chinese institutional religion; while folk religion is the representative of traditional diffusive religion. Secondly, some scholars pointed out that Chinese Catholics have not changed significantly compared to Protestantism, for nearly three decades, the gap between Christianity and traditional religion was largely driven by the rapid growth of Protestantism(Sun, 2014; Richard, 2003), but the proportion of Catholics in the CGSS data is lower than 0.5%, which made it difficult to conduct more complex multivariable statistical analysis and valid statistical inference. Therefore we have to abandon the analysis of the distribution of Catholics. Thirdly, Taoism is also not considered in this paper, as it accounts for a low percentage (about 0.25%) in the CGSS data. Lastly, because of the ethnic and geographical nature of Islam in China, and the CGSS did not specially take this into account in its sampling, its data is not nationally representative.
Accordingly, the paper mainly focuses on the holistic religion, Buddhism, Protestantism and folk religion, presents the distribution of these religious believers in contemporary China, from which we can also observe the influence of social change on religion and the trends in the religious landscape in the future to a certain extent.
- Some technical revisions to accommodate the above adjustments.
- Modified "each religion" to "some representative religions" in the Abstract section (line 14).
- Modified "Christianity" to "Protestantism", and "Christian" to "Protestant".
- Revised "the" to "these" in the appropriate places to avoid misunderstanding in the Conclusion and Discussion section.
We would like to express our great appreciation to you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for your patience and explanations.
Author Response
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