The East Asia Center will be hosting Yanfei Sun, associate professor of sociology at Zhejiang University, for the first talk in our Spring Speaker Series, "New Religious Movements and the State in Post-Mao China." The event will be held Friday, February 10, from 3:15 - 5:00 p.m. in New Cabell Hall 309, and is free and open to the public.
This talk analyzes the patterns of development of New Religious Movements (NMs) in post-Mao China by focusing on Falun Gong and the Jingkong Buddhist Movement, the two biggest New Religious Movements emerging in post-Mao China. It demonstrates that certain conditions generated by the Chinese state in the 1980s and the early 1990s actually facilitated the explosive growth of the two movements. Furthermore, in the case of the Jingkong Buddhist movement, it is the state actions that triggered the movement's transition from a Buddhist sect into an NRM. Finally, although Falun Gong and the Jingkong movement eventually were both identified as "evil cults" by the Chinese state, the suppression campaigns were conducted differently, leading to very different post-suppression consequences for the two movements. By focusing on the intricate roles and unintended consequences of the state and its patterned activities, this talk invites mainstream scholars of NMs studies to centralize the role of state in their analysis, and China specialists to move beyond the kind of analysis emphasizing largely the theme of repression and resistance.
We hope to see you there!
