For number of those arrested and executed, the crackdown on Yiguandao in Mao’s China was the largest repression of a single religious group in the history of the People’s Republic.
March 12, 2025
Article 1 of 3
The redemptive religious movement Yiguandao has been called “the main victim” of religious persecution in the history of both Communist China and Martial Law Taiwan. This series presents, first, a short history and outline of Yiguandao and its persecution in Mao’s China. The second article presents its repression during the Martial Law period in Taiwan. The third compares the repression of Yiguandao in authoritarian Taiwan and the crackdown on other religious movements, as well as media slander, in the post-authoritarian period of the history of the island.
China has a long tradition of “redemptive” or “salvationist” new religions (both contested but widely used categories), which connect salvation to the veneration of a specific deity through certain unique rituals. Some of these new religions recruited a lower class constituency, combined religion with social grievances against the Imperial power, and promoted riots and even revolutions. Hence the strict vigilance of Imperial China against these groups, most of which were repressed under the general name of “White Lotus.”
Modern Western scholars demonstrated that, although a Buddhist movement called White Lotus existed in China in the Middle Ages, during the course of the Ming Dynasty era (1368–1644) “White Lotus” became a generic term, describing all the groups banned as “movements promoting heterodox teachings” (xie jiao) rather than a specific religion. The terminology kept being used by the Qing Dynasty (1646–1912). For all practical purposes, xie jiao and “White Lotus” were used as synonyms.
One new religion accused of being part of the “White Lotus” and banned as a xie jiao in Qing China was Xiantiandao, whose remote origins are Medieval, although it took its present shape in the 18th century as worship of the Ancient Mother, Wusheng Laomu. She was said to have created all living beings and sent to Earth a succession of prophets, including Buddha Shakyamuni, to save humans and bring them back to Heaven. As do other Chinese non-Christian new religions, Xiantiandao relies heavily on messages from various spirits and the Ancient Mother herself, transmitted through automatic writing. Despite persecutions in China, Xiantiandao grew and expanded abroad. Its influence is clearly visible on Vietnam’s largest new religion, Cao Dai, which took shape in the 1920s.
The fifteenth patriarch of Xiantiandao, Wang Jueyi (1832–1886?), reformed the religion, or perhaps founded another group parallel to Xiantiandao, known as Mohou Yizhujiao (Teachings of the Final Effort), although not all followers of the parent organization joined his reform. Wang purportedly authored a number of foundational sectarian texts, including “Investigation into the Source of Penetrating Unity” (Yiguan tanyuan), infusing neo-Confucian interpretations into pre-existing teachings sourced from Quanzhen Daoism.
Wang’s successor, sixteenth patriarch Liu Qingxu (in office between 1886 and 1919), changed the name of the group to Yiguandao in 1905. He was succeeded by seventeenth Patriarch, Lu Zhongyi (1849?–1925). When Lu died in 1925, after controversies about the succession, most followers of what was then a comparatively small movement accepted the leadership of Zhang Tianran (1889–1947). He transformed the group he inherited from Lu into a movement suited for modern times by simplifying rituals and structure. In 1930, Zhang allied with Sun Suzhen (1895–1975), later marrying her, and both became known as the eighteenth patriarchs. Zhang expanded membership by establishing networks of temples in northern China and actively seeking converts, including through a martial arts studio in Tianjin.
The martial arts hall was renamed the Temple of Morality and became a hub for the rapid growth of Yiguandao. Zhang selected missionaries to spread the faith to cities and areas like Shanghai, Manchuria, Beijing, and Nanjing. The couple Zhang-Sun simplified the rituals, while maintaining a taste for esoteric secrets and initiations, and presided over a phenomenal expansion of the religion. When Zhang died in 1947, some sources credited Yiguandao with twelve million members.
It continued to promote a rather exclusivist cult of the Ancient Mother (although Jesus, together with Buddha, was included among the prophets sent by her) and to rely on spirit messages, particularly transmitted through young girls and written on the sand (although not all branches, nor all leaders, favored this practice), keeping the tradition of Xiantiandao. It also strongly advocated vegetarianism. The fact that leading figures of the so-called Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, a collaborationist government installed by Japanese invaders in Eastern China, joined Yiguandao, did not endear the religion to the Nationalists. They had already arrested Zhang in 1936, and banned the movement as a xie jiao in 1946.
Much stronger was the repression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although for various political reasons the CCP preferred to adopt for Yiguandao and other similar groups the label “reactionary secret societies” (fandong huidaomen) rather than “xie jiao,” the latter term was also used and the persecution launched by the Communists after they came to power in 1949 was very similar to late campaigns against the xie jiao. Hong Kong-based scholar David Palmer notes that, as it later happened with Falun Gong and The Church of Almighty God, “all forms of propaganda were deployed against it [Yiguandao], from editorials and speeches by Mao Zedong [1893–1976] published in the ‘Peoples’ Daily’ and the rest of the press, to posters, comics, exhibits, denunciation assemblies and even theatrical performances. The name Yiguandao became a synonym of the counterrevolutionary sect and even a favored insult used by children in schoolyards.”
The persecution reached its climax in 1953 and 1954, during which, according to police reports, 820,000 leaders and organizers, and 13 million followers were arrested, with thousands killed in the CCP’s jails. These numbers were so high that scholars suspect that members of other religious groups were arrested and even executed with the false charge of being part of Yiguandao.
The persecution was successful. Yiguandao was almost totally eradicated in Mainland China, although it survived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and South Korea, with branches established also in the West among the Chinese diaspora. Divided in numerous independent branches, so that no central organization can claim to control Yiguandao today, the religion maintains some 2,5 million members outside Mainland China. In Taiwan, prominent businessmen are members, and it has a significant presence in the network of vegetarian restaurants. Since some of Yiguandao’s Taiwanese businessmen have invested significantly in China, in the 21st century the religion has quietly returned to the Mainland. It has been occasionally criticized as a xie jiao, but is not included in the official list of the banned movements. Media and scholars have mentioned confidential discussions, favored by Taiwanese businessmen, to give to Yiguandao some sort of legal existence in China, although these efforts are now made more difficult by President Xi Jinping’s renewed crackdown on all religions. Actually, missionaries from Taiwan sent to China to promote Yiguandao have recently been arrested, and Taiwanese authorities have warned them against these dangerous trips to the Mainland.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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