Katharina Wenzel-Teuber
Translated by Anna Clart*
At the moment, studies on the sociology of religion by Chinese authors are appearing frequently in publications outside of China, featuring in the English-language journals of various disciplines: not just religious studies, but sociology, psychology, and economics as well. A central topic that enjoyed attention in 2024/2025 was the connection between religion and trust. The first part of this statistical update presents four relevant studies. The second part continues with data on the five large religions of Mainland China. For Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, and the Protestant churches, these consist of the already-known basic data; for the Catholic Church, the numbers were updated in 2025.
Religion and Trust
Individuals cannot live together in groups or society without trust. The social sciences understand social trust as a vital component of social capital. The term “trust” – xin 信 or xinren 信任 in Chinese – also plays an important role in the PRC’s political discourse. As early as the 1990s, public intellectuals in China were diagnosing a “triple crisis of xin” (san xin weiji 三信危機), that is, a crisis of confidence (xinxin 信心), trust (xinren), and belief (xinyang 信仰). The Party, under Xi Jinping’s leadership, countered this with the idea of “Four Self-Confidences” (si ge zixin 四个自信). The Chinese scholars whose English publications of studies into the ramifications of religious belief on social trust will be presented here use the term trust or social trust. Chinese terms do not appear in their texts – only in two instances can it be proven that “trust” stands for the Chinese xinren 信任. While the first study, by Zhao Deze, investigates the question of religious belief’s impact on social trust in general terms, the second study, by Tu Bingqiang, examines this phenomenon in “ethnic regions.” The third study, by the authorial duo Cai Yongshun and Hung Sin Yu, examines the relationship between religion and trust in Hongkong. The fourth study discussed here (Chu Liqi et al.) uses the very concrete case of waste sorting in rural Shaanxi to examine religion’s impact on social capital and social cooperation. Three of these articles conclude with policy recommendations.
The topic “Religion and Social Trust in China: An Analysis Based on the Belief in Deities” is addressed in a study that appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health (Springer Nature publishing group) in July 2025. The author Zhao Deze 赵德泽 is engaged in research at the Institute of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Development Studies of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. In his introduction, Zhao writes that the field is divided about whether religious belief promotes or hampers social trust. He argues that, while researchers have conducted many studies on this topic in Western societies, the relationship between religion and trust in China, with its specific religious landscape – one less shaped by institutionalized religion – has not received enough attention.
Zhao Deze bases his study on data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS, Zhongguo jiaoting zhuizong diaocha 中国家庭追踪调查), gathered in 2018. That year, CFPS asked its religious question in a “deity-based” manner – that is, it asked participants whether they believed in Buddha or Bodhisattvas; deities and immortals; Allah; [the Catholic] God; Jesus Christ; ancestors; ghosts; or fengshui. Participants could give more than one answer. In the same year, CFPS also asked about general trust: “Do you believe that most people can be trusted, or should one be as careful as possible in interactions with others?” Additional questions then determined the degree of particularized trust in specific social groups.
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