ABSTRACT
For Confucian rulers, maintenance of the unified empire they had inherited from the Qin in 206 BCE was not only seen as a political task, but also had religious ramifications. Confucian state ritual determined the position of other philosophies and religions in Chinese society, and was given a political interpretation.
This contribution shows how the republican zeal to reestablish a unified nation after the collapse of the Qing Empire was – in its radical decline of Confucianism – fundamentally religious, and how also Maoism was shaped within the traditional politico-religious paradigm. This contribution also argues that, in its dynamic relation with a growing religious adherence, contemporary CCP-supported New Confucianism has become a religious component of the CCP nation-state.
