A view on religious socialization in contemporary China: the role of new media, literature, education, and participation

Introduction

The study of media and media use in China, and particularly use of new media, is a rapidly growing field (e.g. Yang 2009; Shirk 2011a; deLisle et al. 2016). In the past couple of decades, the Chinese media landscape has developed from a tightly state controlled environment toward an increasingly diverse, competitive, and commercialized one (Shirk 2011b). While the Internet and social media sphere remain firmly controlled by the Chinese state, the information available to Chinese populations online has been constantly expanding. Due to the distinctive interplay between the state and the digital media sphere in China, much previous scholarship has focused on the Internet as a site for social activism and change (deLisle et al. 2016), but also on reactions by the state (Yang 2009). Research on religion and media in China has tended to focus on either issues of control or resistance, but the limitations of these perspectives are becoming increasingly obvious (Lengen 2017).

Religion remains strictly regulated in China (Chao and Yang 2018) while the Chinese population in general displays low levels of religiosity and religious commitment. For example, according to the (at the time of writing in 2019) latest wave in the World Value Survey (Inglehart et al. 2014), China had the lowest numbers of individuals reporting that religion is very important or rather important to them (2.6 percent and 8 percent). Although the Chinese YARG sample also displays low overall levels of religiosity and religious engagement and practice, it also included a minority that identified as religious. In this chapter, we explore the main sources of religious socialization among the respondents who belong to this active religious minority of the sample and who self-identified as either moderately or highly religious. More specifically, we explore the most important sources that they report turning to for information about religion and the importance (or lack of importance) that they attach to new media in this regard. We have identified

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these individuals on the basis of four indicators in the YARG data, which we account for in more detail in the next section. The following sections provide an overview of the current religious and media landscapes of China and the main ways in which they intersect as well as brief account of the young adults that took part in our study. We then turn to our more specific findings and conclude the chapter with discussing aspects relating to media, socialization, agency, and authority.