[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.