The strategies group examines how religious organizations and networks respond to the intensification of ties between China and other Asian nations by devising strategies of expansion or protection. This includes the intensification of competition between parallel and sometimes intersecting Christian and Islamic missionary movements (Li, Alsudairi). Christian and Muslim missionary projects have often been animated by fears that, without greater activity on their part, their competitors would succeed in making inroads into the country and convert it to Christianity/Islam. Meanwhile, the BRI is seen by many Chinese Christians as a divine plan, opening the road for the “back to Jerusalem” movement to send Chinese Christian missionaries to the middle East (Kang). Away from Christian-Muslim rivalries, other transnational religious networks are circulating along the intensifying links connecting China with other Asian nations, and Chinese temple networks along the South China sea have used the BRI to imagine an alternative, horizontal transnational alliance of local communities and temples (Dean). In Vietnam, some religious groups are mobilising their spiritual powers to resist Chinese influence (Ngo). And, with the growing popularity of yoga and new age-style body-mind-spirit practices among the urban middle classes, Indian new religious movements have spread to China, with a flow of gurus and trainers visiting China and Chinese students heading to India for advanced spiritual training (Iskra).
Sinophone Islam, as found in the Xibei (Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia), is characterized by sectarian (jiaopai) divisions among four groupings: the Qadim, the Sufi orders (menhuan), the Ikhwan, and the Salafis. With the exception of the latter, all of these sects adhere to a common doctrinal and legalistic tradition, shared by their...
In response to the slogan One Belt One Road a small temple in Sibu, Sarawak came up with an alternative slogan – One Sea One Temple. They then built a network of over 100 Dabogong (Tudigong) temples in ports along the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean. This covers much of the same territory as the BRI’s “Maritime Silk Road.” But rather...
The recent military clashes between India and China in the Galwan Valley resulted in the Sino-Indian border heating up to levels unseen in recent years. Meanwhile, India continues to downplay China’s Belt and Road Initiative and refuses to sign a BRI Memorandum of Understanding. In June 2020, parallel to the reports on these tensions, Chinese...
Chinese Protestant Christianity has grown exponentially in the last few decades. China has become a missionary-sending country at the same time as its political and economic importance in the world has grown. Many Chinese Christians believe that God has been calling on them to undertake the great mission of converting Muslims to Christianity. The...
This project studies the intricate and largely overlooked relationship between religious circulation, transportation routes and urban space in the historical context of state building and global connection in mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth-century China. Focusing on the case of Christianity, it examines three cities and regions that have played...
President Xi Jinping’s launch of the One Bell One Road Initiative (OBOR or BRI) was met with a negative reaction in the Vietnamese public sphere, although the speedy development of infrastructure connecting Vietnam and China would stimulate a number of trade sectors. The discussion focused on whether part of Vietnamese sovereignty should be given...