The Resurgence of Yi Guan Dao

"A Reactionary Secret Society", a communist propaganda film produced in 1952 that depicts the harmful acts committed by Yi Guan Dao members prior to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Image credit: Baidu.cn

At the end of China’s civil war nearly seven decades ago, Yi Guan Dao (一贯道) was proscribed by the Chinese government as an “illegal secret society” and a “heretical sect.” Yi Guan Dao (YGD), which translates to “the Way of Pervading Unity” in English, is a religious group that combines elements of Daoism, Buddhism, and folklore. It first gained popularity in northeast China during World War II – at one point the group had more than ten million followers in the Japanese-occupied regions. While its apocalyptic teachings appealed to those living under Japanese occupation, YGD has long been at odds with the Chinese government.

As with many Qigong, Buddhist, and Christian groups labelled as “cults” by the Chinese government, YGD is banned largely due to the government’s fear of the popularity of a mass spiritual movement. As such YGD continues to be stigmatized in official narratives as “anti-science, anti-humanity, anti-society.” YGD followers are active in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and among diaspora Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe. In Taiwan, YGD had more than 1.2 million followers by a 2010 estimate and the group has been lauded by the Executive Yuan for its charity work on behalf of disadvantaged communities.

Crackdown in 1950

In December 1950, a nationwide crackdown on YGD began after a People’s Daily editorial branded YGD as a “counterrevolutionary tool… utilized by the bandit gangs of imperialism and Kuomintang” and a “retroactive, feudalistic and superstitious” organization deceiving the masses who “do not know the truth.” The editorial labelled YGD followers as “traitors” and accused them of serving as secret agents of Japanese forces. In 1951, tens of thousands of YGD leaders were either executed or imprisoned and an even greater number of followers were forced to undergo intense thought reform in carceral facilities.

YGD has largely been driven underground since the crackdown in 1950, with some branches operating clandestinely under different names including Tian Dao (i.e. Way of Heaven). The sect attempted to re-establish itself in the late 1970s towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, but it quickly became a target of China’s first strike hard campaign in 1983. Many followers were sentenced to death for “organizing/using a sect or feudal superstition to carry out counterrevolutionary activities” in Yunnan and the northern provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Shanxi. Dui Hua’s Political Prisoner Database has information on over 300 YGD followers. Of them, over 80 percent are known or believed to have been incarcerated in the 1980s.

Testimony gathered from former YGD prisoners in the 1990s exposed the harsh prison conditions, the abuse YGD prisoners faced by guards and other inmates, and the fact that several hundred YGD members imprisoned in the 1950s remained locked up in Shaanxi’s Fuping Prison or have perished due to old age or ill-treatment.

Underground Reestablishment - Signs of Tolerance?

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen delivers a speech at a YGD prayer ceremony joined by 15,000 followers at the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, on March 5, 2017, expressing gratitude to the sect and commending religion for stabilizing society. Image credit: Baidu.cn

Although YGD has been dubbed a “universal villain” in official media and is often cited by human rights groups and governments concerned about religious freedom in China, the lack of recent reporting on YGD in China has led some experts to believe that the religion has gained tacit acceptance by authorities. Some are skeptical about the extent of the group’s persecution or even its existence in China today, claiming that “it is unlikely that [the sect] still exist[s].” Others speculate that even if YGD still has followers in China they are likely concentrated in Guangdong and Fujian where there are more practicing Taiwanese YGD members, following the religion’s legalization in Taiwan in 1987.

In May 2009, an official from China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs visited a YGD monastery in Taipei. The Chinese Religious Studies Yearbook also stated that China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) researchers have attended academic conferences organized by Taiwanese YGD groups beginning in 2009. In 2017, CASS researchers joined overseas YGD leaders on a visit to the Zu Lai Temple in Brazil.

Recent Crackdown

A district government in Shantou, Guangdong, issued a public notice concerning the ban on YGD activities on May 30, 2018.Image credit: Baidu.cn

Dui Hua continues to find evidence of a crackdown on YGD activities as recently as 2018. On February 9, 2018, a couple from Jiangsu was given suspended sentences for printing illegal religious books, including over 3,000 copies used by YGD adherents at a private gathering. A year earlier, police had detained the couple for printing nearly 8,000 copies of unlicensed Buddhist titles. The couple was convicted of illegal business activity, a charge frequently used against religious groups and private individuals operating outside the state’s control.

More recently, the Chenghai District government in Shantou, Guangdong, issued a notice on May 30, 2018, concerning the ban of YGD. Labelling it a “superstitious secret society”, the ban states that YGD carries out “infiltration and sabotage” in the name of “prostrating to Buddha” and “doing good deeds” when in fact they are “seriously and adversely affecting the socialist construction of spiritual civilization… and normal life of the people.” YGD followers were called to register with local police, write a statement of repentance, and vow not to re-join YGD.

Dui Hua has found instances of cracking down on YGD followers in local government gazettes and annals.

In 1994, six Taiwanese YGD members were interrogated and “educated” by police in Quanzhou for setting up pulpits, delivering sermons and recruiting more than 400 followers “under the cover of making investments and running factories.”

In June 1998, Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan, authorities carried out a local strike hard initiative against YGD. Over 70 policemen were deployed to raid two gatherings, detaining seven core leaders and investigating 38 members.

In September 2000, Yunnan police clamped down on a YGD gathering in Weishan County, Dali. Three key members were detained, and 304 volumes of “reactionary” scriptures, 148 cassette tapes, 218 hanging portraits, 66 draperies and other items were confiscated. Also in Dali, about 10 YGD members were given administrative detention in 2005 in two townships in Midu County.

In May 2004, Tieling police sent key leaders to re-education through labor camps after raiding a YGD meeting in Longhua Temple in Changtu County, Liaoning. The Buddhist Association of China subsequently sent religious personnel to Tieling to “purify” their practice of Buddhism.

In 2006, Changsha Public Security started “Project 308” to curb YGD infiltration from Taiwan. After a year of investigation, guobao discovered 29 YGD altars in Hunan led by a couple who had previously traveled to Taiwan. The couple recruited several hundred followers from Hunan, Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangxi, and Anhui. On November 25, six places of worship in Ningxiang were raided. Five members were placed in administrative detention and two members were deported a few days later.

In most cases, it is unclear whether YGD members were criminally charged. Dui Hua has discovered a case in 2000 in Hongta District, Yunnan where two leaders were sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for “organizing a cult to undermine implementation of the law.” Miao Huimin (缪惠民) and Zhang Laixian (张来仙) shared the teachings of YGD at Zhang’s home with around twenty villagers. At the time of sentencing, Miao was aged 75. The same government record revealed that two public sentencing rallies were held in October in Hongta District to condemn followers of YGD and the Full Scope Church, a Christian sect. Three people were given fixed-term sentences, four were sent to re-education through labor camps and twenty received administrative punishments.

Asylum Seekers

Since 2000, both the Canadian and Australian governments have reported receiving asylum applications from Chinese nationals on the grounds of religious persecution of YGD. In 2003, an applicant surnamed Li from Fujian sought asylum based on fear of persecution for his perceived affiliation with YGD. Li left China for Toronto with the help of smugglers. Although not a YGD follower himself, he was perceived as one because his fishing farm had been used for YGD religious purposes by two of his business partners, who were each sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

In Australia, the Refugee Review Tribunal determined that two Chinese nationals had well-founded fear of persecution for returning to China due to their affiliation with YGD. The first applicant was a business owner in China and learned about YGD through a neighbour. He was converted to YGD and believed the religion could save China from the prevalence of corruption. He distributed leaflets and provided a secret place of worship for YGD followers. After escaping a police raid on YGD followers, he left China for Australia using a fake passport. He was initially denied a protection visa by the Australian immigration authorities but in November 2007, the Tribunal declared itself satisfied that he would be at risk if he returned to China.

The second applicant was also from Fujian. He converted to YGD two years after he arrived in Australia. In 2012, his brother-in-law invited a Taiwanese YGD preacher to the family shrine in Fujian to deliver lectures. The shrine hosted exchanges and visitors from YGD organizations based in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on a regular basis. Chinese authorities in the applicant’s hometown began to take an interest as the family shrine grew. The applicant obtained a video showing a violent clash in September 2013 between police officers and YGD followers, including the applicant’s wife and two children. The applicant’s mother, wife, and son suffered injuries by police and the son eventually went into hiding. The applicant’s brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and other YGD followers were all charged, with some receiving suspended sentences. The police continued to harass the applicant’s wife in order to coerce her husband to return to China. In August 2015, the Tribunal held that despite a “distinct lack of information regarding the Chinese authorities’ current attitude towards YGD practice,” there were substantial grounds for believing that the applicant faced a real risk of significant harm if he was to return to China.

Overseas Yi Guan Dao Groups

Official narratives have labelled Myanmar and Hong Kong YGD groups as “overseas hostile forces” and accused them of “infiltrating” and “sabotaging.” In 2016, Hangzhou police lauded the success of “preventing infiltration in a timely manner” from a Hong Kong YGD group, which had set up a Buddhist shrine in Beixin Village, Puyang Township. In 2007, another YGD crackdown connected to Myanmar took place. Sichuan’s Binchuan County public security stopped a group of YGD members from attending a training course in Burma, destroying 475 volumes of publications and 159 items.

A government record Dui Hua uncovered provided a detailed account about the government crackdown in 1992 against YGD in multiple border townships in Yunnan’s Dehong Prefecture. A YGD elder who resided in Myanmar after escaping persecution in the 1950s was accused of inciting members in the prefecture to take up “reactionary” tasks and “spying” missions in China. They were invited to attend a religious ceremony in the newly built Wangfo Palace (i.e. Palace of Ten Thousand Buddha) in the Myanmar township of Namhkan as well as the elder’s birthday celebration. In order to halt the more than one hundred Chinese nationals from traveling to Myanmar, a two-day military blockade was imposed at the immigration port requiring nearly two hundred police officers' presence. Anti-YGD materials were broadcasted and distributed in the neighbouring Ruli City to expose the “evil deeds” of YGD members.

YGD continues to face suppression by the government and police. The cases Dui Hua has uncovered show continuity in the official narratives about YGD and the tactics used by authorities to suppress the group’s activities. With the increasing restrictions placed on religious groups in China today, followers of YGD and their family members will continue to face restrictions and persecution.

Will Revisions to the Lay Assessors Law Help Limit the Number of Executions in China?

Lay assessors sitting in court alongside judges in China. Image Credit: China Daily.

In April, the National People’s Congress (NPC), China's national legislature, passed a revised Lay People’s Assessor’s Law (renmin peishenyuan fa), substantially affecting the role that ordinary citizens play on adjudicatory panels in criminal cases in China. Revisions to the law had been contemplated since at least 2015, when a series of pilot projects were launched to determine the feasibility of enacting nationwide reforms. Whether the law’s revisions will affect criminal trials and sentences involving the death penalty is a major question especially in light of China’s efforts in recent decades to limit the number of executions.

Though some might see an expansion of the role of lay assessors in Chinese courts as an imported legal idea, a robust role for lay assessors is arguably a revival of practices from China’s own not-so-distant past. Traces of China’s lay assessor system can be found as early as the 19th century in the late Qing Era, and in Communist-controlled territories before and after the founding of the PRC, lay assessors were granted authority in adjudication practice rivaling that of judges. It was not until the more radical periods following the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution that the lay assessor system was discontinued as part of the larger dismantling of legal institutions countrywide.

The lay assessors’ system was revived along with other aspects of the legal system at the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution, first as part of the 1978 Constitution and subsequently in several pieces of relevant legislation including the Law on Organization of Courts and the Criminal Procedure Law. In 2004, The NPC Standing Committee decided to reform the lay assessor system, and the effort to revamp the adjudicatory function of lay assessors eventually led to a pilot program in 10 provincial-level regions starting in 2015.

The Role of Lay Assessors Expands to Include Death Penalty Cases

In April, a second draft of a law on lay assessors was passed by the NPC, which expanded the role of lay assessors in participating in judgments in many types of disputes, including sentencing in criminal cases that involve the death penalty. A draft law on lay assessors was initially submitted to the NPC Standing Committee in December 2017, and recognized that the lay assessors “‘have equal rights’ as professional judges in trials, unless the law specifically provides otherwise.” According to the law, high-school educated citizens of the PRC who are 28 years of age or older can serve as lay assessors, with some exceptions; once in court, an assessor can exercise power equivalent to that of a judge but cannot hear cases independently or serve as chief judge of a collegial panel (heyi ting). In a report on lay assessors’ pilot projects conducted across China since 2015, Supreme People’s Court President Zhou Qiang reported that a total of 13,740 assessors in the ten pilot locations participated in 30,659 criminal cases, 178,749 civil cases and 11,846 administrative cases.

More specifically, when the Lay Assessors’ Law came into effect in April, assessors were granted authority to serve on seven-person judicial panels that pass judgment on death penalty cases. Although observers, researchers, and human rights advocates will need a much longer period of time to examine whether the expanded role of assessors can help continue the decrease in the number of executions in China, developments in the early days after the passing of the revised law indicate that the law is being followed in local courts even in potentially sensitive, high-profile cases. In April, Zhao Zewei killed nine classmates and injured several others in a school in Mizhi County, Shaanxi province in one of the most violent mass murders in China in recent times. In the trial presiding over Zhao’s eventual conviction and death sentence, media outlets reported that four lay assessors and three judges sat on the seven-member panel ruling on Zhao's guilt and death sentence, indicating that plans to include lay assessors on judicial panels even in high profile death penalty cases with potentially “severe social impact” continues to move forward.

Lessons from Reforms in a Neighboring Country

Allowing lay assessors to participate more actively in death penalty cases would mark an important opportunity for human rights advocates and researchers to examine whether changes to the lay assessor system will continue to influence efforts to limit the number of executions. According to the new law, lay assessors who serve on seven-person benches will have more weight when questioning lawyers and defendants and examining physical evidence.

Based on research from other legal systems, China’s reforms of its criminal legal system toward incorporating greater input from lay actors – away from the unquestioning authority and deference given to the criminal judges – is a step in the right direction. As noted, a robust role for lay assessors is consistent with legal practice at various periods in China’s Communist and non-Communist past. Expansions of the role of jurors in the neighboring country of South Korea also indicates that concerns that expansions in the authority of assessors, and even the adoption of a full jury system, were overblown. Although many in Korea criticized the implementation of a jury system as being against cultural norms, the recent jury reforms in Korea beginning in 2007 have shown that culture is not a deterrent to the effectiveness of a jury system; in fact, the adoption of jurors seems to have raised the quality of the legal profession, a shared goal of the Korean and Chinese governments. The need to persuade a jury has been cited as a factor in raising the quality of oral advocacy of criminal lawyers and improving the quality of evidentiary rules and discovery processes.

An expanded role for lay assessors in China appears to be a positive step in the careful adjudication of serious criminal cases, and for human rights in China more broadly. The next step is to ensure that assessors are given more than simply a passive role in the criminal justice system, and strong enforcement of elements of the law on lay assessors designed to guard against retaliation for criminal verdicts is critical in this regard.