| Summary/Abstract |
The article analyzes primary sources about regulating Catholic and
Protestant communities in Dali, Southwest China, during the heyday of
the People’s Republic. It was a process of sophisticated containment,
in ltration, spying, and coercion, with a corresponding restrained use
of violence. is is surprising given that, rst, both Catholic and Protestant communities were small and, second, that violence against other
potential threats—counterrevolutionaries and landlords—was severe. I
suggest the goal for the local Department of United Front ( 統戰部
tongzhan bu) was not to eradicate Christianity by force but to divide the
church into those who would submit themselves to the communist
utopia and isolate the hard-core devotees with the expectation that both
would eventually die out without “contaminating” the emerging
socialist subjects. e regulatory process was one in which the state
power attempted to remove the Christian transcendence with a communist one. e article challenges the state-society dichotomy underlying
the study of Chinese religiosity, especially the claim of “militant
atheism,” which depicts the People’s Republic of China’s early policy on
Christianity.
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