ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses several important themes that show how China’s ethnic minorities may shape their religious knowledge and practice in locally specific ways that carve out a unique social space for themselves. By disallowing the Vatican to consecrate bishops within China, who in turn would consecrate the local priests, China bars access to the proper final sacraments. Concerns about cross-border or internationally mediated relationships to religion, then, loom large in China. Since the Economic Reforms of the late 1970s and the accompanying opening up to religious practices that occurred in that era, ethnic minorities have increasingly managed to give voice to and practice their religions in ways that bring them into dialogue with ethnic “others” from within and outside of China. It is important that the present generation of China scholars keeps abreast of the ethnic minority scholarship, as it builds a new genealogy, religious imaginary, and ethno-history of minority-Han relations.
