20th Century — Disruption, Suppression, and Diaspora Survival

Few periods in Taoism's long history brought disruption comparable to the 20th century — successive waves of political upheaval, foreign invasion, civil war, and ultimately the Cultural Revolution's deliberate campaign against traditional religion collectively threatened the institutional and lineage continuity that had, despite considerable earlier variation in fortune, persisted for nearly two millennia.

Republican Era Challenges

Following the Qing dynasty's 1912 collapse, China's new Republican government, influenced by modernizing and often explicitly anti-traditional-religion intellectual currents, implemented policies converting numerous temple properties to secular use (schools, government offices) and generally treating traditional religious institutions, including Taoist temples, as symbols of a backward past incompatible with national modernization — a pattern of pressure that, while less severe than what would follow under Communist rule, already substantially reduced organized Taoism's institutional footprint during the Republican period (1912-1949).

The Celestial Master's Relocation

Following the Communist victory in 1949, the 63rd Celestial Master, Zhang Enpu, relocated to Taiwan along with the Nationalist government retreat — establishing continuity for the Zhengyi lineage's hereditary leadership outside mainland China and contributing to Taiwan's subsequent emergence as perhaps the single most important location for actively maintained, living traditional Taoist ritual practice through the remainder of the 20th century.

The Cultural Revolution's Severe Impact

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) brought the most severe disruption mainland Chinese Taoism had experienced in its history — temples were destroyed or repurposed on a massive scale, religious practitioners were persecuted, scriptures and ritual implements were destroyed, and public religious practice was effectively suppressed entirely for roughly a decade, severing or severely damaging numerous local transmission lineages that had persisted, in some cases, for many centuries.

Diaspora and Taiwan Preservation

Throughout this mainland disruption, Chinese diaspora communities across Southeast Asia and, increasingly, in Western countries, along with Taiwan's continuously maintained temple and priestly infrastructure, preserved active ritual practice, textual transmission, and ordination lineages — providing the essential living continuity that would later support the tradition's gradual mainland revival once state policy shifted toward greater religious tolerance beginning in the late 1970s and accelerating through subsequent decades.

Post-1978 Mainland Revival

Following the Cultural Revolution's end and subsequent policy liberalization, mainland China has seen substantial, if carefully state-managed, revival of Taoist institutional life — the state-recognized China Taoist Association (headquartered at Beijing's White Cloud Temple) oversees officially sanctioned Taoist institutions, numerous historically significant temples have been restored or rebuilt, and a new generation of ordained priests and scholars has emerged, even as the relationship between the tradition's officially sanctioned institutional form and its full historical range of practice and belief remains a subject of ongoing negotiation and, among scholars and practitioners, considerable discussion.