Religion and History in China

China's religious landscape is shaped by an officially atheist state that recognizes five religions, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, through state-sanctioned associations, while a large share of the population identifies with no organized religion or practices folk traditions blending ancestor veneration, Buddhism and Taoism without exclusive affiliation. Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 places roughly half the population in the religiously unaffiliated category by strict self-identification, though folk religious practice remains widespread outside formal identification.

Buddhism entered China from India via Central Asia in the first centuries CE and developed into Chan and Pure Land schools; Taoism arose indigenously from the Warring States period and was formalized as an organized religion under Zhang Daoling in the second century CE; Confucianism, more a social and ethical system than a religion in the Western sense, structured state ritual for two millennia until the fall of the imperial system in 1912. Islam arrived via Silk Road traders from the seventh century, and Catholic and Protestant missions expanded from the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, before the 1949 revolution nationalized religious institutions and the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976 suppressed religious practice outright.