[bashmelek]

That seems to contradict my understanding of Chinese history and culture. Historically they seem to be strongly spiritual like any people, and government support for religions. I admit most of exposure is from literature and not much more. Could you elaborate on the point?

[solardev]

I think their spirituality is more about mysticism rather than the apparatus of organized (and politicized) churches run by humans. There's not some huge clerical institution vying for power against the state, just a general background noise about the heavens and the ancestors and the such.

Even with the influence of Buddhism, that was only tolerated as a philosophical system of self improvement. When the Dalai Llama became an actual political threat, he was replaced with a puppet.

Modern China is pretty much an atheist state that is pretty religion unfriendly, but I think that's a lasting consequence of the Cultural Revolution and not something from their older history.

[xkcd-sucks]

Maybe the absence of a strong unified church which is separate(-ish) from a strong state, as the Catholic church related to European states? Like, there were religious institutions in classical Chinese civilization; the government did participate in it ("the role of the emperor is to maintain harmony between heaven and earth, he rules with the mandate of Heaven" etc); there was lots of "worshippy activities" in temple-ish buildings; the closest things to "official religion" were a bit syncretic but Christianity was also pretty syncretic in origin just presented later as something fully formed in unity; mythology overlapped with history in that mythological power structures resembled real power structures and government etc. One big difference seems to be the absence of Christian-style religious services in which a large audience listens to a preacher / regularly participates in a long shared ritual like Mass, but this is from the anecdotal perspective of comparing (very little) experience in modern Catholic churches vs received information and visiting historical sites in China

[cyberax]

China did not have a unified religion, or even a unified pantheon.

Each region had its own sets of gods and traditions. Even the somewhat unified Confucianism is more of a philosophical teaching, and it works just fine alongside the traditional Chinese religions. People understood this and generally were content to leave each over in peace over the religion.

Compare this to Europe and Middle East where people (still!) wage actual holy wars over doctrinal matters.

GRRM's world is closer to China than to Europe in this regard.