Religion and Belief Systems

             Religion during the Cultural Revolution

            China’s government, since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China n 1949, has had an officially atheist government. Atheism is the disbelief in gods and deities. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong and the Chinese government promoted atheism. They believed that religion symbolized feudalism. Karl Marx, a German philosopher, described feudalism as the economic situation before Capitalism. One of the worst things that you could be accused of being during the Cultural Revolution was being a Capitalist, as people had been essentially brainwashed, in a sense, that Communism was the greatest ideology to follow, and that Capitalism was the worst.
            Due to the government’s extreme discouragement of religion, many places of worship were destroyed as a result. However, this policy was only so strict during the 1960’s and early 1970’s, as when the Cultural Revolution began to draw to close, during the mid-late 1970’s, the policy relaxed considerably. Two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao Zedong, the 1978 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China stated complete “Freedom of Religion.”