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But strangely, if you take a step out of his office, you can find a woman selling Taoist trinkets. A hundred steps away is a small Beijing park that is packed most mornings with dozens of Chinese practicing the slo-mo robotics of Tai Chi, which while secular is deeply Taoist. A mile away is a Protestant church that draws 3,000 souls to its weekend services. Within a hundred miles are scores of monasteries, seminaries and altars. Despite 50 years of the most violent scrubbing, religion still coats China with an ancient varnish. And as the nation's core ideology of Marxism-Leninism cracks under the weight of the 20th century, the pope of Marxism is no longer a man controlling a monopoly. China's rickety economy and its opaque, chilly leaders have left most Chinese looking for something, someone, to believe in. "People have lost their beliefs," explains Xu Haoyuan, a U.S.-trained Beijing psychiatrist. "They do not know what will happen to them the next day, the next year. They could lose their job, their business. They wonder what will happen to the country."
Everywhere in China you hear talk of a spiritual vacuum, an echoing nihilism that quiets this hyperkinetic nation. This week, as China celebrates the 50th anniversary of Mao's October revolution, high-tech military jets will scream over Beijing, foreigners will arrive in search of new investment opportunities, and the government will celebrate a nation transformed. But what will be missing is faith. Fifty years ago, on an overcast fall day, Mao and his cadres gathered in Tiananmen and stared at a nothing future--no food, no remnants of a healthy economy, no allies. All they had was faith. And it will be the only thing missing from this week's party.
Viewed against China's 5,000-year history, Mao's revolution already looks like a tiny, violent, unmatchably murderous moment. But no more than a moment. China is remaking itself at warp speed. Deng Xiaoping's immortal slogan, "To get rich is glorious," has replaced Mao's aphorisms in the same way that the tabloid Shopper's Guide has supplanted his Little Red Book. But the Chinese are discovering that while getting rich is marvelous, it can also be numbing. Communism and its concordant atheism remain the state religion. Indeed, Hu Jintao, a contender to succeed President Jiang, built his career partly on suppressing Tibetan Buddhist followers of the Dalai Lama and, it is believed, supported the crackdown on Falun Gong, the mystic sect that claims millions of members in China. As a sign of his ascendancy, Hu, a civilian, was elevated last week to the vice chairmanship of the critical Central Military Commission.
Nevertheless, many Chinese are looking to Buddhism, Taoism and even brand-new religions to slake a thirst that all the Cokes in the world won't abate. Explains William T. Liu, an American sociologist working in Singapore: "Chinese communism is a system of economic development, but there is no theology to explain what people should believe in. China is very fertile ground for any religion right now."