Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UK and Malden, USATSQThe Sociological Quarterly0038-02532006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.200647193122CHINESE MARKETS: ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS

The economic approach to religion has confined its application to Christendom in spite of the ambition of the core theorists for its universal applicability. Moreover, the supply-side market the-ory focuses on one type of religiosity—religious participation (membership and attendance) in formal religious organizations. In an attempt to analyze the religious situation in contemporary China, a country with religious traditions and regulations drastically different from Europe and the Americas, I propose a triple-market model: a red market (officially permitted religions), a black market (officially banned religions), and a gray market (religions with an ambiguous legal/illegal status). The gray market concept accentuates noninstitutionalized religiosity. The triple-market model is useful to understand the complex religious situation in China, and it may be extendable to other societies as well. Ongoing social change has attracted many sociologists to conduct original research in China (see Bian 2002), but religious change in Chinese society has, with rare exceptions (e.g., Madsen 1998), been neglected. This article seeks to make a twofold contribution: It offers a broad overview of the complex religious situation in contemporary China, and it develops a triple-market model, which may be extendable to other societies, especially t