Abstract
Throughout the 20th century, Chinese religion has undergone a process of massive destruction, which historiography has so far largely ignored. Traditional relations between the state, society and religion broke down around 1898. This break led within a few decades to the destruction of most Chinese temples. The western notion of “religion” upon which both Nationalist and Communist China built their religious policies separated legitimate forms of religion (world religions) from local cults considered as folklore and superstition. The author outlines the political and intellectual history of this process of partition and selective destruction, and then attempts to evaluate the role of the science of religions in the current reinvention of religion in China.