China Cultural Syncretism Religious Separation Within China's

China Cultural Syncretism Religious Separation Within China's Lack of Cultural Syncretism Interestingly enough, several of the political factions and domestic wars that have typified the vast majority of China's extensive history can be traced, in large measure, to the country's cultural roots and its ability (or lack thereof) to rectify its inherent cultural tendencies with those of other nations and the surrounding world at large.

In particular, the cultural, philosophical and political mandates and manifestos of Europe and Japan can be directly attributed to the political state of China today, particularly when one considers the division between the communist People's Republic of China (which primarily occupies the mainland) and its progressively left-wing agenda, and the right-wing tendencies of the Republic of China which has occupied Taiwan and its surrounding islands for more than the past 60 years.

The speculative historian could make an excellent argument that this division in hegemony between Chinese politics could have been avoided had cultural syncretism taken root in the country during some of its earliest, most formative encounters with the foreign presence of other nations. In fact, it may be propounded that the very tenets which have historically divided this country can be attributed to the influence of foreigners.

Sun Yat-sen, who may well be considered the founder of the Republic of China in the early to mid-20th century, has noted that the primary inspiration for his attempted overthrow of the Quing Dynasty during the Wuchang Uprising was Christianity, a religion which was brought to China centuries earlier from Europe by Britain among other salient nations. The following quotation demonstrates the effect of Christianity upon Sun Yat-sen's rebellion. "…to Christianity more than to any other single cause.

Along with its ideals of religious freedom…it inculcates everywhere a doctrine of universal love and peace. These ideals appeal to the Chinese; they largely caused the Revolution, and they largely determined its peaceful character (Khan, 2011)." It was an attempt to diverge from this same religion which was not indigenous to Chinese culture -- but rather adopted from aspects of European heritage -- that caused other factions within the former country to wage war and rebel against Sun Yat-sen's Republic of China.

In particular, the Boxer Rebellion was just one of many military struggles among the Chinese people in which attempts were made to overthrow the imperialist yoke of Europeans, including their ideology and culture, the latter of which was, of course, comprised of religion and of Christianity in particular.

Although this attempted revolution was eventually quelled by foreign imperialists, this division in cultural tendencies and an effort to "purify" China of foreign cultures would be influential in Mao Tse-tung's People's Republic of China, which waged war against the Republic of China and eventually exiled Yat-sen to Taiwan. The division between these two Republic's still separates China to this day.

The underlying denouement, however, lies in the fact that if China had been able to rectify the cultural differences of religion and imperialist influence upon its minions when the Europeans initially began to sell opium and attempt to colonize the mainland,.