Taiwan is frequently described as an oasis for freedom of religion where a variety of religious faiths thrive and co-exist, their rights to practise and express beliefs are respected and protected by the government and its institutions. This description is generally consistent with the reality on the ground in Taiwan. However, challenges still exist regarding isolated instances of intolerance and prejudice against certain religions which, although minor when compared to the rest of the world, are still issues of concern.
Religion and diversity
According to a 2019 survey by Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s government-funded research national academy, it was found that 49.3 per cent of Taiwan’s population identified themselves as believers of traditional ‘folk religions’, 14 per cent Buddhism, 12.4 per cent Taoism, 13.2 per cent identifying as nonbelievers, 5.5 per cent Protestants, 2.1 per cent Yiguandao, and 1.3 percent Catholics.
In reality, the mass majority of the so-called ‘folk religions’ practices and even those identified as only Buddhism or Taoism are really a conglomeration of a diverse range of temples, monasteries, and places of worship that combined various blends of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism (儒釋道). Also known as the ‘Three Teachings’, these forms of worship are by no means unique to the Taiwanese as they are also prevalent across mainland China, Southeast Asia, and places around the world where there are ethnic Chinese diasporas.
The dominance of Three Teachings temples in Taiwan’s religious landscape cannot be overstated since all together they form upward of almost 80 per cent of Taiwan’s population. It is customary for Taiwanese elites in business and politics to attend ceremonies or worshiping activities of the Three Teachings temples to pay tribute even if they personally do not share such belief at all. Many Taiwanese politicians who personally identify as Christian or of other faiths have attended Three Teachings ceremonies and temple activities to find favour with Taiwanese voters, the majority of whom do not seem to find issue with such contradictory practices.
Freedom vs tolerance
Most international observations and assessments ranked Taiwan highly in terms of the freedom of religion and belief. The 2020 Freedom of Thought Report published by Humanists International for example, ranked Taiwan at No. 1 in the world alongside Netherlands and Belgium and noted how Taiwan’s existing constitution, government policies, and laws protect freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
The 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom published by the US Department of State also noted Taiwan’s constitutional protection of the freedom of religion as well as the diversity of religious beliefs. The report discussed several issues of concern such as the lack of institutional protection for the religious practices of migrant workers working in Taiwanese factories and those employed by Taiwanese families as domestic helpers, which resulted in isolated instances of these foreign workers being hindered by their employers or brokers from attending religious services freely. The Taiwanese government has taken some steps in recent years to address these concerns by urging companies to give their employees more free time and space to worship.
Religious freedom however is different from religious tolerance, the latter of which is harder to quantify and qualify and naturally is interpreted differently by different parties. It is conceivable (and not at all uncommon) for a country with perfect or near-perfect institutional protections of religious freedom to have a population and society that harbour some or many forms of intolerance of religion(s).
Just because Taiwan has institutional protection of religious freedom does not by itself guarantee that all religious beliefs would be respected and/or tolerated uniformly. Conversely, the high marks Taiwan consistently received for its institutional protections of the freedom of religion might have obscured issues concerning intolerance that are not immediately apparent to foreign observers.
The China factor
Geopolitical challenges, rivalries, and conflicts more often become the catalysts if not convenient excuses for religious intolerance and discrimination. In the case of Taiwan, there have been increasing allegations over the past decade accusing China of trying to conduct propaganda and influencing operations, specifically targeting Taiwanese religious organizations and followers as part of its broader effort to infiltrate Taiwan’s society and population.
The security threats posed by China’s aggressive ambition towards Taiwan are very real. There’s also no denying that the Chinese government, in an attempt to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Taiwanese people, invested considerable efforts and resources into what is commonly referred to as the ‘United Front’, a comprehensive system of political warfare aimed to achieve its desired strategic outcome through influencing and co-opting various elements of one’s opponent.
But despite how often these allegations emerged over the past decade they were rarely elaborated nor specified, and even more seldom if ever proven. In early 2010s, there were several reports concerning Protestant Christians in Taiwan becoming the focus of China’s influence operations as some Taiwanese churches sent delegations to mainland China and held joint forums with churches there. These sporadic exchanges were condemned by many who opposed China’s political influence, though it was unclear how much influence these few exchanges and churches had over the rest of the Christian population in Taiwan, if at all.
Allegations against Taiwan’s temples
Another wave of allegations emerged in recent years accusing Taiwan’s Three Teachings temples of doing China’s bidding in influencing Taiwan’s people and politics. The temples (宮廟) were said to be susceptible to Chinese influence and control and could become China’s Trojan horse to conquer the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese public.
These allegations skyrocketed during and in the aftermath Taiwan’s 2018 local elections, during which the main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) won several major victories over the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). As the accusations go, the success of a number of KMT candidates could be attributed to their perceived close relations with temples that were in term suspected of having been influenced or even controlled by China.
But just as in the case of previous accusations against Taiwanese churches, the ‘hard evidence’ of infiltration presented by these accusations almost always centred around a small number of exchange activities (such as Taoist pilgrimages) of Taiwan’s temples with those in mainland China. The small number of temples that have been publicly named as suspects, even if one were to take unproven accusations against them at face value, are a minuscule portion of Taiwan’s temples scene as it has been estimated there are tens of thousands of temples associated with the Three Teachings of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism across Taiwan. The database of Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior alone listed a total of 11,793 temples that have formally registered with the government.
Since the 2018 local elections, many exhaustive investigations conducted by independent, non-partisan researchers and journalists have found very little if any evidence to support these allegations. In fact, several major investigative reports have concluded that the common narrative of ‘China using the temples to influence election in Taiwan’ fundamentally misunderstood the dynamics and intersection between Taiwan’s politics, politicians, and temples.
Unlike churches and mosques, Taiwan’s traditional temples hold relatively little ‘discourse power’ over political and social issues. The ‘heads’ of the temples themselves merely serve as community’s stewards for the particular deity enshrined by the temples and have little opportunity to give sermons or public messaging comparable to authoritative figures in churches and mosques. This means that people who worship at the temples are naturally less likely to be swayed or influenced by the political views of the heads of the temples.
Temples across Taiwan, including the largest and most popular ones, are natural venues for politicians across both sides of the aisle to visit during election seasons to woo voters who worship these deities. But this does not mean the heads of the temples have much power to promote or reject particular politicians or parties. The responsibilities for the heads of the temples are the management and preparations of venues and ceremonies, and it would be considered out of place if they started taking sides in politics.
One of the most frequently cited examples of the ‘Chinese infiltration’ of temples concerns the activities of the Chinese Unification Promotion Party, a fringe yet extremely vocal pro-China, pro-unification political party founded and headed by a former mobster with close ties to the Chinese government. The party itself boasted in 2019 that it had members that had “infiltrated 30 or so temples across Taiwan.” The statement attracted the attention of Taiwan’s government and triggered a wave of investigations by Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau. Yet there has been no indictment nor official revelation of any temple involved as of 2022.
Another high-profile accusation was brought forward by Wang Liqiang, a Chinese defector to Australia who claimed to be a former spy of China. Wang came forward to the Australian media in 2019 with a series of stunning allegations including that he was tasked by his handlers back in China to build a spy network in Taiwan to infiltrate Taiwan’s temples. However, Wang’s allegations were thoroughly discredited in 2021 after Taiwan’s authority announced they found no evidence to support Wang was ever involved in such network or activity after years of official investigation. The individuals that Wang accused as his associates in Taiwan were cleared of all national security charges due to ‘a lack of evidence’.
All together, these facts have not stopped many partisan forces and poorly informed writers from continuing to make over-the-top, unsubstantiated allegations regarding China’s infiltration of temples in Taiwan. Such conspiracies not only misdirect Taiwanese public’s attention away from a wide array of actual, serious national security issues (such as cybersecurity and energy security), they also serve as excuses for some to incite discrimination and unwarranted suspicion against all the temples, and sow division and distrust among the Taiwanese people as a whole.
Discrimination as internet meme
Another popular type of discrimination that has emerged in recent years against the temples comes in the form of an online meme movement. From around the late 2010s, many of Taiwan’s social media users, popular discussion forums and websites started using the derogatory term ‘Ba-Jia-Jiou’ (‘八嘎九’; it literally means eight plus nine) to refer to young people who actively participated in the Temples’ worship ceremonies and activities.
The term ‘Ba-Jia-Jiou’ is a play on ‘Ba-Jia-Jiang’, a common type of performative ceremony associated with a variety of Three Teachings temples, in which participants dress up as ‘eight generals’ who perform exorcism of evil spirits for a variety of different deities these temples worship. The popularity and prevalence of the performance across many Three Teachings temples means the Taiwanese public have come to associate it with the whole ‘temples’ as a religion even though not all Three Teachings temples perform it.
The stereotype of the Ba-Jia-Jiou participants, as commonly depicted by this internet meme, are people that are poorly educated, from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who tend to abuse alcohol or even illegal drugs. Furthermore, they are often implied or even explicitly assumed to be criminals or even gangsters affiliated with larger criminal organizations. The stereotype also sometimes insinuates that their participation in the temples is just a cover for their criminal activities elsewhere — even though there’s very little — if any — factual evidence to support this portrayal.
On Taiwan’s popular bulletin board system PTT — read by millions of Taiwanese — netizens have posted thousands upon thousands of discussion threads fantasizing the ‘Ba-Jia-Jiou’ as a class of young people different from the typical ‘us’ – which is more educated, law-abiding people with day jobs. While the meme began as a stereotype targeting specifically the younger performers in the Ba-Jia-Jiang ceremony, it has now been used to portray many other religious workers and participants of all the temples.
While people who create and interact with this meme online might find it a harmless and even humorous exercise in free speech, the stereotype it perpetuated has had long-lasting consequences for the participants and workers of the temples. Many have begun to complain about this unfair and inaccurate portrayals of them and their religious practices, even though there have been very few Taiwanese media and academic studies devoted to this subject. Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture also made a statement in 2020 rejecting the inaccurate stereotype of the temples and urged people to treat religious workers with more respect and open-mindedness.
The dilemma of regulation and tech accountability
Just as it often receives high praise for its religious freedom, Taiwan is also frequently described as an oasis for the freedom of speech especially in contrast to many of its neighbours in the region. Taiwan’s constitution explicitly provides for freedom of speech, and as of 2022 Taiwan does not have any hate speech law like those in many other countries in the world. Public speech inciting discrimination or even hatred against religion, race, ethnicity is not explicitly criminalized. There are however provisions in the Taiwanese criminal code that can be used by authorities to prosecute speeches deem libelous or “disrupting social order”.
In the latter case, the so-called ‘Social Order Maintenance Act’ is increasingly cited by civil rights advocates as an area of concern that they said could be misused by Taiwan’s authorities to curtail free speech. In a 2020 report published by Control Yuan, the auditory branch of Taiwan’s political institutions, it was revealed that Taiwanese authorities have dramatically increased prosecutions of cases concerning “disrupting social order” in recent years — mostly targeting individuals they suspected of “spreading misinformation”, though a majority of these charges were eventually dismissed by Taiwanese courts.
Taiwanese in general are avid social media users. Facebook is usually credited as the largest and the most used platform. While not currently required by Taiwanese laws, many foreign platforms like Facebook have their own global policies regulating and prohibiting against “harmful and hateful speech”. In a policy whitepaper published in 2020, Facebook suggested that local governments of respective countries should explicitly draw legal boundaries on what’s “prohibited” speech in their legal framework, so as to absolve Facebook from the sole responsibility of having to decide what speech is acceptable and what’s not. Since Taiwan does not have legal framework regulating speeches outside of prosecutions against those involving libel and “disrupting social order”, Facebook in Taiwan generally follows its global policies in terms of content moderation.
On the other hand, local Taiwanese platforms such as Taiwan’s popular bulletin board system PTT have even fewer or no policies against hate speech and only prohibit speeches openly inciting violence. Taiwanese public discourse and debate concerning the self-enforcement of speech related policies on these platforms is usually centred around political speeches and concerns over “disinformation” from China.
In September 2022, Taiwan’s ruling government attempted — but ultimately failed — to introduce a “digital intermediary service act” which contained draft provisions requiring platform operators (including social media and even messaging apps) to proactively place a “warning label” on user-generated content that would be considered factually inaccurate or deceptive. The draft legislation became highly controversial after it emerged as a topic of public discussion, with many Taiwanese public figures and opposition parties sharply criticizing it as intrusive and threatening the freedom of speech. As a result, the government swiftly withdrew it from the legislature.
Overall, Taiwan’s reliance on social media platform self-governance, combined with a lack of a formal hate speech law, means that currently it is up to tech companies themselves and Taiwanese society as a whole to uphold a spirit of tolerance and to combat abuse of its free speech environment. Due to the homogenous nature of Taiwan’s religion composition, this equilibrium has not been put to serious stress test — though there are signs that politically-motivated polemics and conspiracies targeting specific religions could be on the rise that have the potential to derail the harmonious status quo.
Conclusion
Arguably the most identifiable and significant form of religious intolerance currently at play in Taiwan is the one against Taiwan’s ‘folk religions’ or Three Teaching temples. Outside observers might find it counterintuitive or even inexplicable why the dominant form of religious intolerance in Taiwan’s society is the one against its own dominant religion that’s practised by 80 per cent of the population. After all, the prevailing type of religious intolerance and prejudice in many parts of the world is one in which the believers of the dominant religion discriminate against other religions and believers that are in the minority.
But it is precisely because how ingrained and widely embraced this one single school of religion is in Taiwan that many seem to find it acceptable and harmless to make and incite unwarranted discrimination, prejudice, biases, and even conspiracy theories against it. So far, the scale and severity of such intolerance is mostly limited to chatters, but it is important that international observers become aware of this phenomenon and urge Taiwan to do better in ensuring that it remains a beacon of freedom of religion in Asia.
This report is part of DRM’s exclusive journalism series exploring Big Tech’s failure to contain hate speech and lack of corporate accountability across Asia.
