God and Caesar in China

In the late 1970s when Mao's Cultural Revolution ushered in China's reform era, religion played a small role in the changes the country was undergoing. There were few symbols of religious observance, and the practice of religion seemed a forgotten art. Yet by the new millennium, China's government reported that more than 200 million religious believers worshiped in 85,000 authorized venues, and estimates by outside observers continue to rise. The numbers tell the story: Buddhists, as in the past