stylistic:tone, linguistic:paraphrasing
19th–20th century

The ancient Chinese religion was subject to persecution in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many ancient temples were destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion in the late 1800s. After the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 "most temples were turned to other uses or were destroyed, with a few changed into schools". During the Japanese invasion of China between 1937 and 1945 many temples were used as barracks by soldiers and destroyed in warfare.

In the 19th century in the Guangdong region, monotheism, likely of a henotheistic and/or monolatrous character in at least some contexts and locations, was well-known and popular in Chinese folk religion.

In the past, popular cults were regulated by imperial government policies, promoting certain deities while suppressing others. In the 20th century, with the decline of the Qing dynasty, increasing urbanisation and Western influence, the issue for the new intellectuals who looked to the West was no longer controlling unauthorised worship of unregistered gods but the ancient Chinese religion itself, which they perceived as an issue halting modernisation.

By 1899, 400 syncretic temples that combined folk religion elements and gods with Buddhist, Taoist, and/or Confucianist gods existed on the American West Coast alone.

In 1904, a reform policy of the late Qing dynasty provided that schools would be built through the confiscation of temple property. "Anti-superstition" campaigns followed. The Nationalist government of the Republic of China intensified the suppression of the ancient Chinese religion with the 1928 "Standards for retaining or abolishing gods and shrines"; the policy attempted to abolish the cults of all gods with the exception of ancient great human heroes and sages such as the Yellow Emperor, Yu the Great, Guan Yu, Sun Tzu, Mazu, Xuanzang, Kūkai, Buddha, Budai, Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu, and Confucius.

These policies were the background for those implemented by Communist Party after winning the Chinese Civil War and taking power in 1949. The Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976 of the Chairman Mao period in the PRC, was the most serious and last systematic effort to destroy the ancient Chinese religion, while in Taiwan the ancient Chinese religion was very well-preserved but controlled by Republic of China (Taiwan) president Chiang Kai-Shek during his Chinese Cultural Renaissance to counter the Cultural Revolution.

After 1978 the ancient Chinese religion started to rapidly revive in China, with millions of temples being rebuilt or built from scratch. Since the 1980s the central government moved to a policy of benign neglect or wu wei (Chinese: 無為) in regard to rural community life, and the local government's new regulatory relationship with local society is characterised by practical mutual dependence; these factors have given much space for popular religion to develop. In recent years, in some cases, local governments have taken an even positive and supportive attitude towards indigenous religion in the name of promoting cultural heritage.

Instead of signaling the demise of traditional ancient religion, China and Taiwan 's economic and technological industrialization and development has brought a spiritual renewal.