INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHINA STUDIES

Guest Editors' Introduction

Chih-yu SHIH, Lang KAO — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

In Huntington’s formulation, civilizations are primarily religious. For him, though, the clash of civilizations takes place between sovereign entities. In this light, the end of the European religious war in the Treaty of Westphalia, that substituted sovereign nations for the Church, profoundly shaped the contemporary international relations and global governance. Thus, the subsequent expansion of the European order through colonialism encountered multiple worlds that were embedded in various different cosmological imaginations. These strangers mingled after this continuous process initiated by such expansion. Even so, invaders and defenders have entrenched a self-other, believer-alien, or West-East binary in the mind of the ensuing generations to save the ostensibly pure beliefs of each.

Combining Contracdictions: Jewish Contributions to the Chinese Revolution

Yitzhak SHICHOR — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

Jews were deeply involved in Communist revolutions in Europe, and primarily in Russia, often in leading positions. This is understandable given their demographic location, extensive education and suffering over the years. However, how could we account for the fact that they also played a role in Communist revolutions in Asia, and especially in China? There were practically no Jewish communities to speak of and those few who lived there had been almost totally assimilated, and had no interest whatsoever in Chinese culture, history and politics. Still, Jews (who arrived out of China) not only took part in the revolution but had also helped igniting it and then stayed on or joined later. While dealing with this puzzle in my paper, I’ll try to offer a typology of Jewish activists and revolutionaries in China, to explain their motives (by choice or not), and to evaluate their contributions in perspective. It appears that
their Jewish identity did not play a direct role in their revolutionary activism, but it did play an indirect role. Included in this study are Grigorii Gershuni, Grigorii Voitinski, Boris Shumiatsky, Michail Borodin, Adolf Joffe, Pavel Mif, David Crook, Sidney Rittenberg, Israel Epstein, Sidney Shapiro, Solomon Adler, Sam Ginsbourg, Michael Shapiro, and more. Their main value to the revolution was mainly writing, translation, communication and publication. Although they were all deeply committed to the Chinese Communist revolution, some of them were jailed – for years – and occasionally more than once. Nonetheless, they continued to believe in, and even to justify, the Chinese Communist Party.

The Propagation of Japanese Buddhism in China, 1910-40s: Japan as the Guardian of East Asian "Traditions"

Shin KAWASHIMA — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

This research examines the propagation of Japanese Buddhism in China in the first half century of 20c. From the Japanese government’s point of view, Buddhism is a useful “device” to understand local society and to make propaganda or penetrate into local society in China. In 1920, Japan organized religious groups including Buddhism to make some movements on cultural exchanges and friendship activities with Asian countries and colonies including China. In the 1930s, Japan occupied Manchuria and built the puppet state, Manchu-kuo. Buddhism and its organization were the important “device” to manage the Japanese society there and were expected to penetrate in Chinese society. However, it was so difficult to set some goals on Chinese local society. This research illustrates the processes in the negotiation about the right of propagation of Japanese Buddhism in China, with the Chinese government, and introduces the views and observations on Chinese religious society by Japanese Buddhism, in order to consider the factor of “religion” on Chinese modern history.

The Russian Ecclesiastical Missions (1715-1864) to Peking and their Influence on China Studies in Russia

Alexi D. VOSKRESSENSKI — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

The aim of the essay is to find out how the Russian Orthodox Church as a religious institution influenced the birth and evolution of China Studies and helped to create a Sinology as a national academic discipline in Russia. The brief analyses of the history of the 14 Ecclesiastical Missions in China helps to figure out what kind of impetus this religious institution gave to Academic Sinology and how it helped to create a university Sinology as a national sinological school.

True Catholic and Authentic Chinese: The Theologico-Political Polemic in China

Wing Kwan Anselm LAM — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0800

After a lengthy negotiation between the Vatican and the Chinese government over decades, both parties signed a provisional agreement on 22 September 2018. Although they did not reveal the details to the public, both sides made a compromise on the appointment of the bishop, which is the crucial part of the conflict. Among those religions in China, the Chinese government paid
much more attention upon the Catholic Church. One of the reasons would be the similarity of two entities, that is the centralization of power on one person. The current policies like restricting children going to church, dismantling the cross of the church, no Christmas decoration or promotion during Christmas, which give negative impact upon the Catholic Church, while the Beijing government signed the provisional agreement on the appointment of the bishop. Pope Francis unlike his predecessor does not excommunicate those
bishops ordained without the Pope’s approval but resumes their episcopal duties, while the Catholic Church in China is still under persecution. How to understand the underlying reasons of the move of the CCP and the Vatican in this agreement? This paper will investigate the nature and principles of religious policy in China and the Vatican’s stance on China affairs in the light of a theologico-political polemic. This paper will first try to elucidate the theologico-political polemic. Then it will review the Sino-Vatican interaction since 1949 looking at how the CCP and the Vatican responded to this theologico-political polemic. Finally, the Sino-Vatican provisional
agreement will be evaluated in perspective or in light of this history. Is the provisional agreement a step towards the solution of the theologico-political polemic in China?

Beyond China's Threat: The Contextual Theology of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan

Chih-yu SHIH, Samantha Wan-Yu TSENG — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0800

Colonial relations have remained inspiring and vivid in the 21st century. They ave provided powerful morale for the Taiwan Independence Movement. In the quest for independent statehood, Taiwan can easily see China’s territorial ambition, economic invasion, and violation of liberalism. To regain selfrespect, the postcolonial elite could rely best and conveniently on the colonial
modernity brought by Japan. This perspective enabled the persistence of the image of inferior China. However, a particular string in the postcolonial relations did not assume Chinese inferiority. Rather, self-reflection on one’s practical conditions, which was independent from relations with China, inspired the effort to re-constitute Taiwan’s identity. This string of thought is the Presbyterian Church. Contextual theology resulted from the critical reflection and determination emerged to guide the Church’s subsequent approach to China. For the independence advocacy informed by colonial relations, the issue of human rights immediately suggests the image of
inferior China. However, for the Church, the issue connotes a mission in China that the Church should have cared about equally. This construction of a non-inferior/threatening China is how religion has brought to the intellectual perspective of Taiwan independence.

Heidegger's Legacy for Comparative Philosophy and the Laozi

Thomas Michael — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0800

The ancient text known as the Laozi Daodejing is a treasure of Chinese culture and civilization, and it also represents one of the world classics of religion and philosophy. However, it is also a notoriously difficult work to interpret, and modern scholars have exerted tremendous energy in attempting to make an overall sense of just what the text is all about: is it religious or philosophical? Is it a synthetically coherent work with a unified perspective, or an anthology of disparate ideas compiled from multiple sources? Is its
main character, the anonymous sage, a master of bodily techniques living in mountain reclusion, or an enlightened ruler who manipulates the Dao from his royal throne to order an empire? The famous German philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), himself dabbled in the thought of the Laozi, and in doing so he opened a novel phenomenological reading of the text that rejected the metaphysics traditionally read into it, but his approach had little impact until the discovery of several excavated versions of the ancient manuscript that appear to confirm his phenomenological interpretation. Since then, a growing number of contemporary scholars are
accepting, absorbing, and furthering this phenomenological reading of the Laozi, allowing them to make great progress in exploring its religious and philosophical foundations that have deeply influenced Chinese culture and society for more than two thousand years. This paper examines this legacy bequeathed by Heidegger to Laozi studies as well as comparative philosophy more generally.

Healing Practices Regenerate Local Knowledge: The Revival of Mongolian Shamanism in China’s Inner Mongolia

Saijirahu Buyanchugla — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0800

Shamanistic healing practices, including divination, have coexisted with other religious and medical practices in modern Inner Mongolia and China for many years. However, scholarly research has yet to investigate the effectiveness of shamanic healing and its physical and psychological benefits. This paper discusses the practice of shamanic activities, including healing rituals, on the boundaries between the spiritual communities and the masses in Eastern Inner Mongolia, and how the contrasts between the perspectives of healers or practitioners and the lay people’s more fluid understanding of the practices impact health, illness, and ethnic/cultural identity. Why is it that shamanistic healing is not included in any of the official healing systems, despite its importance as a health resource and as a factor in identity formation in Inner Mongolia.
This study will show that shamanistic healing is not included in the official healing systems due to several historical forces and geopolitical events, such as the invasion of exotic cultures and China’s ban on religious activities during and after the 1940s, when land reform, socialist transformation policies, and the Cultural Revolution took hold in Inner Mongolia.
In addition, the official recognition of Mongolian medicine as a national medicine in the 1960s left no room for other local healing practices, including shamanistic healing. I argue that the revitalization of shamanism during the decades since China has reformed and opened up is due, in part, to the suffering of both individuals and communities from cultural tensions, ecocosmological crises, and lost traditions and the effectiveness of these practices in healing these wounds. Healing practices or rituals have continued to exist
in this modernizing socialist state because of their effectiveness.

Sinitic Languages in the English Periodical Press of 19th Century China: Focus on The Chinese Repository and The China Review

Luisa M. Paternicò — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0800

Since the time of the first Jesuit mission to China (from the late 16th century onwards), learning the locally spoken language(s) was considered a priority. The Protestant missionaries of the 19th century continued this languagefocused trend: it was fundamental for them as well to be able to learn the language of the Court together with the dialects spoken in Southern China, the area where they mainly settled, especially after the First Opium War. If, on one hand, they could benefit from a good amount of works compiled
in the previous centuries to describe Mandarin, on the other hand, they found themselves in lack of tools to learn Cantonese, Hakka, Wu and other Southern topolects. Therefore, they began compiling all sorts of dictionaries, phrasebooks and grammars to fill in this gap. At the same time, they published their linguistic analyses, and considerations, together with Romanization proposals on the periodical press they had set in China, thus reaching a worldwide audience. After an introduction on the English periodical press in China, its founders and main contributors (both missionaries and laymen), this paper will conduct a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the articles concerning the description of ‘dialects’, better defined as Sinitic languages. The final aim is to show the contribution provided by the authors of two journals in particular, The Chinese Repository and The China Review, whose papers had
the merit to broaden the scope of Chinese language studies, thus promoting western and Chinese scholarship on this subject.