Event Details

The Confucius Institute and Lancaster University China Centre would like to invite you to a seminar led by Professor Gerda Wielander, who will be visiting from the University of Westminster. Please see the full details below, and if you have any questions, please email china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk

This talk analyses if China can be considered a post-secular society in Habermas’ sense by focusing on the appearance of the word faith (Xinyang 信仰) in recent Chinese political discourse. Wielander will show who talks about faith in China today and in what way; she will further show the points of agreement and fundamental differences in the understanding of faith between different discourses. The paper will ask whether the emphasis on Xinyang in official discourse is a recognition of the importance of religion in Chinese society today and whether this adoption of spiritual language is what Habermas (2008) refers to as a necessary "complementary learning process of religious and secular mentalities" in a post-secular society, whether this appearance and use of the term Xinyang is an example of how religious voices are “translated” (to stay with Habermas) in a process where secular contributions “pass from the confused din of voices in the public sphere into the formal agendas of state institutions”. The paper also questions the ways in which the use of Xinyang in government discourse is linked to the promotion of “Chinese values” and how, through its use, China positions itself as rigid secularist in its domestic discourse, but as cultural relativist in the international arena.