Serving Society, Repurposing the State: Religious Charity and Resistance in China

Abstract

AbstractFaith-based charities are among the hundreds of thousands of non-profit, non-state organizations that have emerged in China in recent decades. The social service activities of these groups can rightly be seen as supporting the regime’s policies and long-term goals. Yet faith-based organizations (FBOs) also enable religious adherents to resist aspects of China’s authoritarian system, albeit in subtle and nonconfrontational ways. They do so by expanding the spaces and forms of religious practice beyond the limits imposed by the state, through organizational forms which the state itself has created and approved: the non-profit, non-enterprise unit and the charitable foundation. In transforming the organizations, spaces and behaviors of charity into vehicles of spiritual practice, FBOs “repurpose” the state for religious ends. The repurposing practiced by Chinese religious charities constitutes a distinct mode of subtle, non-contentious resistance.