China "never needed God", really?
My last article on secularism in China stirred quite the debate, which genuinely surprised me given that I was under the impression that the secular nature of China had been settled knowledge for centuries.
After all, as I note in the article, it is this very observation - that China had built an equally (if not more) sophisticated civilization without religion at the center of its political life - that was one of the most powerful intellectual weapons of the European Enlightenment.
The debate around my article shows that many people not only are unfamiliar with China's history, but also - more unexpectedly - with their own.
I think the title of my article - “The civilization that never needed God” - had a lot to do with the controversy. I admit it was designed to provoke, and it did. But a provocative title isn't the same as an inaccurate one. Let me explain why it wasn't.
The man who probably best summed up this topic - ever - was Pascal, the legendary 17th Century French thinker (you've surely heard of Pascal's wager, or Pascal's theorem).
In his Pensées ("Thoughts"), he summarized it with this very short but incredibly profound question: "Which of the two is more credible, Moses or China?" That's it. I should almost finish my post here because, when you think about it, everything is said.
But let me develop further. Not through my words this time, but through those of François Jullien, one of the most respected intellectuals on Chinese classical culture in the world today.
Jullien wrote an entire book in 2022 on Pascal's question - entitled "Moïse ou la Chine" - in which he explains its incredible depth. Unfortunately I don't think there's an English translation of the book but if you can read it, please do.
What Jullien explains - the central thesis of his book - is this: what Pascal's question reveals is that the most fundamental divergence between civilizations in human history is the fact that the idea of God, which structured the entirety of Western thought (and that of Islam too of course), simply did not deploy itself in China.
How so? Jullien (or Pascal) is not saying China is atheist in the Western sense (which would still be defined by reference to God, as negation). He's saying the entire conceptual architecture that makes "God" a meaningful category - Being, transcendence, creation, revelation, the ontological question - simply didn't arise in China (except maybe briefly in the early Shang dynasty as I explain in my article). It's not absence: it's non-deployment.
As such, Jullien reads Pascal's "Moses vs China" juxtaposition as representing two equally powerful but entirely different ways of organizing human experience. As he explains, China developed an equally sophisticated ethical and metaphysical framework as that of Western civilization - itself centered around religion (hence "Moses") - but oriented instead around things like process, the "reciprocal caution" between Heaven and the emperor, ancestor worship and an introspective moral vigilance that never required a transcendent deity.
And, no, contrary to what so many bad takes have been saying in the comments around my post, the concept of "Heaven" in China has absolutely nothing to do with any notion of God as we understand it in the Abrahamic tradition. You're confused by the usage of the same word "Heaven" but it's just a fundamentally different concept.
Actually this very question of the meaning of Heaven/Tiān (天) gave rise to one of the biggest debates in the history of the Catholic church, known as the Chinese Rites Controversy, that consumed the Vatican for over a century.
The debate centered on whether Tiān could be equated with the Christian God (but it ultimately applies to the Abrahamic definition of God as a whole). The answer was ultimately no - and for good reason: it is not a personal deity who creates, judges, and reveals. Tiān is an immanent regulatory principle - closer to what we might call the natural order of things - with which the emperor must align through moral conduct and ritual propriety. There is no covenant, no revelation, no "I AM."
To project the God of Abraham onto Tiān is a fundamental category error.
Last point, and probably the most interesting one of all. Pascal wrote the "Moses or China?" question in his Pensées but, crucially, ended up crossing it out of his manuscript. Both scholars of Pascal and François Jullien treat this as deeply significant.
Why? The explanation, according to Jullien, is that Pascal sensed that this single question could unravel his entire intellectual edifice. Pascal - a Catholic, the author of Pascal's wager - had constructed his defense of Christianity on one non-negotiable premise: that the Bible is the universal truth of mankind. But the moment you ask 'Moses or China?' as a genuine question, you've already conceded the point: you've placed THE Biblical patriarch and a secular civilization on equal footing, implicitly acknowledging that an equally credible way of organizing human experience exists - one that never needed God at all.
The question, once honestly posed, already contains its own answer, and Pascal was just too uncomfortable with the implications.
Conclusion of it all: yes I titled my article "The civilization that never needed God." As we say in French: je persiste et signe! - I stand by it.
Excellent piece, and I'd argue your central point is even more fundamental than the theological dimension suggests.
You write that many people don't understand China. True. But the deeper problem is that most Western analysts don't even register why they don't understand it. They apply their own conceptual framework – built on God, on transcendence, on universal truth – and then wonder why China's behavior seems irrational or opaque.
Here's one example that rarely gets mentioned: until very recently, classical Chinese had no real equivalent for the Western concept of "I" – the autonomous, self-contained individual subject that Descartes placed at the center of Western philosophy. The Chinese self has always been relational: defined by its position within family, society, and the cosmic order – never as an isolated unit standing apart from the collective.
Think about what that means epistemologically. Western political analysis rests on two foundational pillars: God (or its secular derivatives – universal rights, absolute truth, moral absolutes) and the individual. China built an equally sophisticated civilization without either.
This is why Western attempts to understand China so consistently fail. You cannot decode a civilization's behavior using conceptual tools it never employed. When China acts to preserve "face" or social harmony, Western observers see irrationality. When China prioritizes collective stability over individual freedom, Western observers see oppression. They're not seeing China – they're seeing the shadow their own framework casts onto China.
Add to this the historical dimension you touched on: China was humiliated, invaded, and exploited by Western powers twice in living memory. The Century of Humiliation is not ancient history for the Chinese – it is the foundational trauma that explains everything from Xi Jinping's rhetoric to Beijing's absolute red lines on sovereignty. Any serious analysis of China's current geopolitical behavior has to start there.
Pascal crossed out his own question because he sensed it would unravel his entire edifice. Western China analysts should ask themselves the same uncomfortable question: what if the framework I'm using to understand China is the very thing preventing me from doing so?
– Michael Hollister
Your article is excellent Arnaud. It reflects a thorough understanding of China's history and culture. I am as surprised as you are that it should stir up a heated debate. Anyway, you've said all that need be said on the subject. The secular nature is hand-in-hand with a faith in HUMANITY, if that's what makes China "secular". I need not repeat what you said already. I just wanted to say thank you for a wonderful piece.