Religion in East Asia: A source guide for reporters

By EditorUpdated on . Posted on

In an increasingly multi-polar world, East Asia’s influence on global trade, technology, pop culture, inter-regional cooperation and potential, wide-ranging conflicts is increasingly evident. 

The region’s importance in understanding the landscape of global religion is sometimes less widely appreciated. 

But spend time in the countries of East Asia — China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mongolia, North and South Korea, and Taiwan — and you will find families burning incense before an ancestor’s grave or visiting a Buddhist temple on a holiday. You will witness a Shinto shrine receiving thousands of visitors at New Year or a Korean Christian congregation filling a high-rise sanctuary on Sunday. 

Reporting on East Asia can quickly run aground, however, when journalists import categories developed elsewhere and assume that religion works the same way in Beijing, Seoul, Taipei or Tokyo as it does in London, Lagos or Los Angeles (and, of course, it operates differently in these places too).

In much of East Asia, people may participate in Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, Shinto or local ritual traditions without claiming an exclusive religious identity. Someone may say they have “no religion” while venerating ancestors, visiting temples, making offerings or consulting a religious specialist.

This guide, part of a new series from ReligionLink focusing on different regions in global religion reporting, provides background, resources, relevant stories and sources to help journalists understand East Asia’s religious institutions, communities, histories and political contexts. 

Background and Resources

“East Asia” is a useful geographical shorthand, but it should not obscure enormous differences among societies. Here’s a breakdown of key countries in the region: 

China

Religion in the People’s Republic of China exists within a highly regulated political system. The state officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. Religious organizations are expected to register within state-approved structures, and the Chinese Communist Party and government exercise extensive control over religious institutions and personnel.

At the same time, the Chinese religious landscape is considerably broader, involving various forms of popular religion, practices related to ancestors, qigong, spirit practices and other forms of ritual life complicate any simple division between “religious” and “nonreligious.”

The country’s official position should be approached critically, as the Chinese government emphasizes freedom of religious belief officially while also stressing state management, national unity, social stability and the principle that religions should be independent of foreign control. This can take the form of regulation and repression at times. 

For journalists, that means reporting should distinguish between what Chinese law and officials say, what religious institutions relate and what people actually experience.

China’s policies toward Tibetan Buddhism, Uyghur Muslims, Protestant house churches, Catholic communities and other groups raise questions about the linkages between ethnicity, nationalism, human rights and state power. Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom provide useful documentation, although reporters should understand the institutional perspective and methodology of each organization rather than treating any one report as definitive.

Japan

In Japan, Shinto and Buddhism remain deeply embedded in Japanese cultural and ritual life, while Christianity and newer religious movements have also played important roles.

On the one hand, Shinto, broadly speaking, encompasses traditions surrounding kami, which, according to the eighth-century Shinto chronicle Nihon Shoki, include upwards of 8 million spirits or deities associated with particular places, natural features, ancestors or other forms of sacred presence.

Buddhism, on the other hand, arrived from the Asian mainland in the sixth century and developed alongside, rather than simply replacing, existing practices like Shinto. At first, Buddhist tradition seemed a threat to Shinto practitioners. But over centuries, the two became deeply entangled, as Shinto proved adaptable and Buddhist temples came to be built alongside, or include, Shinto shrines within their precincts. 

Such is the case in the famous Nara Park complex, which houses the massive Tōdai-ji temple and Kōfuku-ji as well as prominent Shinto sites like Kasuga Taisha. This is due to the fact that during the Nara period (710–794), Japan practiced shinbutsu-shūgō, a deep fusion where local Shinto kami and Buddhist figures were viewed as complementary or different manifestations of the same universal truth. 

That is, until the Meiji Restoration when, in 1868, the government passed laws to separate Shinto from Buddhism (shinbutsu bunri) to promote a national state religion. 

Nonetheless, today, Shinto practices may accompany New Year celebrations, visits to shrines, purification rituals and ceremonies surrounding birth. Buddhist institutions are particularly prominent in funerals, memorial rites and relationships with the dead. Because Shinto focuses on the living world, nature, and birth — and even views death as a state of spiritual impurity (kegare) — most modern Japanese families hold Buddhist funerals instead of Shinto ones.

There are other religious traditions in Japan as well. For example, “after the arrival of Francis Xavier in Japan in 1549, Christianity spread rapidly in Japan by European missionaries” and, despite the banning and severe persecution of Christianity, communities survived – including in places such as Nagasaki and the surrounding islands, where communities of so-called “Hidden Christians” maintained forms of Christian practice through centuries of prohibition. There are also Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox communities alongside newer evangelical and charismatic movements across Japan’s urban centers. 

Japan is also home to a remarkable array of new religious movements, from large organizations such as Soka Gakkai — a Nichiren Buddhist tradition that focuses on the development of world peace through the spread of Buddhist humanism and been heavily involved in Japanese and global politics — to groups that have attracted far less international attention, such as Happy Science and other Japanese-founded religious movements that have developed their own distinctive cosmologies, rituals and institutions. 

Islam is increasingly part of the country’s religious landscape as well. Japan’s Muslim population has grown substantially over the past several decades, driven largely by migration for work, study and family formation. A 2025 estimate by Waseda University professor emeritus Hirofumi Tanada put the number of Muslims living in Japan at roughly 420,000 at the end of 2024, including an estimated 55,000 Japanese Muslims. There are now more than 160 mosques across the country and an increasing infrastructure catering to culinary, sartorial and other daily needs. 

Yet relatively few Japanese people describe religion as central to their lives. Pew’s 2024 research found that 42% of Japanese adults identified as having no religion, while 46% identified as Buddhist. At the same time, the distinction between religious identity and participation in rituals can be fluid.

North Korea

North Korea presents a fundamentally different set of reporting challenges.

Independent access to religious communities is extremely limited, and reliable contemporary data are scarce. Reporters should therefore be especially cautious with numerical claims about religious affiliation, underground religious communities, or state policy. Accounts from defectors, international organizations, governments and advocacy groups can provide important evidence, but their provenance and limitations should be made clear.

To accurately report on this region, journalists must account for the important role of Juche (also known as Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism) as well. As the country’s sole state-recognized religio-political philosophy, Juche operates less like a standard political theory and more like a dominant mythos with theocratic characteristics.

While officially promoting state atheism, Juche functions sociologically as a religion in North Korea, as it uniquely blends Marxist-Leninist language with Confucian hierarchy, fierce nationalism and a cult of personality that deifies Kim Jong-un and his predecessors.

Some demographic indexes go so far as to classify Juche as the world’s 10th largest religion, accounting for roughly 19-20 million adherents within the state. Such estimations should be treated with extreme caution.

But because the regime demands absolute devotion to the monolithic belief system of the Kim family, independent religious practices are treated as existential, anti-state threats. Thus, when analyzing claims about underground Christian networks or shamanic practices, reporters must remain keenly aware of how the state enforces compliance not merely out of political control, but out of a strict intolerance for competing spiritual or ideological authorities.

South Korea

South Korea has one of East Asia’s most institutionally visible Christian populations, alongside substantial Buddhist communities and a large population with no formal religious affiliation.

Pew Research Center’s 2024 report found that 52% of South Korean adults identified as religiously unaffiliated, 14% as Buddhist and roughly one-third as Christian. Christianity cannot be reduced to one political position or social constituency, and Korean Protestantism encompasses a wide range of theological and political orientations.

The same report also detailed the Korean American diaspora, which has a significant Christian contingent, constituting some 59% of Koreans in the U.S. 

Religion in South Korea is also closely connected to modern history, democratization, education, politics, nationalism, migration and social movements. 

For historical comparisons, Gallup Korea’s long-running surveys are particularly useful. Its 2021 survey, the sixth major national study in a series beginning in 1984, provides data on religious affiliation and attitudes across several decades, showing a significant rise in the non-religious population compared to previous years. 

Taiwan

Taiwan is another rich religious landscape with plenty of statistics for reporters to dig into. 

Buddhism, Daoism, popular religion, ancestor veneration, Mazu pilgrimage, folk practices, Christianity and newer religious movements all form part of the landscape. Pew’s research found that 27% of Taiwanese adults identified as religiously unaffiliated, while 28% identified as Buddhist and another 24% as Daoist.

To help keep track of it all, the Taiwanese government maintains unusually detailed information on religious organizations, temples, churches and religious foundations. The Ministry of the Interior’s religious statistics and Taiwan Religious Culture Map can be useful starting points for identifying institutions and understanding the country’s religious infrastructure.

Most religious practices in Taiwan, including Buddhism, Taoism and different folk traditions, trace their origins to mainland China and many believers regularly visit ancestral temples in China to honor shared deities like Mazu and Guandi. The Chinese government uses these historical and cultural bridge to influence public opinion and political attitudes in Taiwan.

The German media outlet Deutsche Welle (DW) reported on Chinese religious influence, noting that ties between certain temple leaders and opposition figures create openings for external pressure. 

The Taiwanese government monitors such interference in religious groups in order to protect national security and some local religious communities host civil defense and informational events inside temples to counter what they see as foreign influence. 

Tips & Suggestions

Covering religion in East Asia spans a wide range of topics, including political repression and state control, new religious movements, the “spiritual-but-not-religious” demographic, pushback against proselytization, declining temple attendance, corruption, scandals and beyond.

To help you navigate such a wide range of topics, here are some best practices and general guidelines for finding and following stories in East Asia:

1. Don’t equate “no religion” with “no religious practice”

In its 2023 survey of Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, substantial shares of people identified as religiously unaffiliated even while participating in practices commonly understood as “religious” elsewhere. For example, Pew Research Center  found that 27% of Taiwanese adults, 42% of Japanese adults, 52% of South Koreans and 61% of adults in Hong Kong said they had no religion. 

While religion may be surprisingly difficult to see in the data, many people in these same societies report participating in practices such as venerating ancestors and local spirits. A Japanese person may visit a Shinto shrine at New Year and still say they have no religion. A Taiwanese family may maintain an ancestral altar, participate in a Mazu pilgrimage and identify as Buddhist, Daoist, neither or some combination of the three. A Chinese citizen may participate in temple rituals without belonging to an officially recognized religious organization. A Korean may attend church while also drawing on Confucian traditions that they would not necessarily describe as religious.

To underscore this point, China presents an additional challenge. The Chinese term zongjiao (宗教), usually translated as “religion,” is often associated with formal, institutionalized traditions rather than “traditional Asian forms of spirituality” according to Pew.

That means survey questions about whether someone “has a religion” may miss forms of ritual, devotion and popular practice that people themselves do not classify in those terms. Pew’s research on China consequently distinguishes formal religious affiliation from a much broader landscape of beliefs and practices.

For reporters, it means asking what people do before assuming you know what they believe. Pose questions such as:

  • What religious or spiritual practices do you participate in?
  • What happens in your family during major festivals?
  • Do you visit temples, shrines or churches?
  • What role do ancestors play in your family’s life?
  • Would you describe any of those practices as religious?

You might also ask questions of the numbers themselves: Who counted whom, using what definition, at what point in time, and for what purpose?

2. Learn the vocabulary

As mentioned above, words such as zongjiao in Chinese, shūkyō in Japanese and jonggyo in Korean are often translated as “religion,” but the categories do not necessarily map neatly onto the English word.

Likewise, “Buddhist,” “Daoist,” “Shinto,” “Confucian,” “folk religion” and “spiritual” can carry different meanings in different contexts.

Ask your sources what the relevant term means to them rather than assuming the English translation settles the question.

3. Distinguish institutions from individual communities

A national religious association, denomination, temple network or government-recognized body is not necessarily representative of everyone who participates in that tradition.

This is especially important in China, where the relationship between religious institutions and the state is itself an important part of the story. China’s five officially recognized religions — Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam and Protestantism — operate through state-regulated structures, while religious activity outside those structures can occupy different legal and political positions.

A government-approved Buddhist association, a local temple, a monk, a lay practitioner and an unregistered religious group may have very different perspectives on an issue or a topic you are covering. 

4. State and civil society

In China, the government is tightening its oversight of religious institutions while promoting what it calls the “Sinicization” of religion. Christian congregations, Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, Daoists and practitioners of popular religion encounter the state in very different ways — some experiencing repression and state-sponsored persecution. 

In Taiwan, temples and religious organizations are woven into civil society and public life as the island navigates an increasingly consequential relationship with Beijing. 

In South Korea, churches remain major social and political institutions even as religious affiliation declines and the country becomes more religiously unaffiliated. 

In Japan, Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples remain deeply embedded in public culture even though many Japanese people describe themselves as having no religion.

These developments intersect with some of the biggest stories in the region, such as Chinese nationalism and state power, Taiwan’s democracy and cross-Strait tensions, South Korea’s political polarization and demographic decline, Japan’s aging population and debates over national identity as well as the movement of people, money and ideas across East Asia.

Just as in other contexts, question how religion — even if it appears at first peripheral to the story — intersects with broader headlines or trends in politics, culture, economics, technology or society. 

Recent Stories and Newswriting

Experts and Sources

Related ReligionLink Content