Religion fills a gap in China

From the Economist: "Religion in China - When opium can be benign"

Many local governments in rural China are mired in debt. Recent central government efforts to keep peasants happy by abolishing centuries-old taxes have not made life any easier for these bureaucracies. With their revenues cut, rural authorities have found it ever more difficult to scrape together money for health care and education. So they are only too happy to allow others to share the burden of providing these services - even the Black Dragon, whose 500-year-old temple was demolished by Maoist radicals during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Now officials in Yulin, the prefecture to which Hongliutan belongs, give the temple their blessing.

It would seem that Communist China is communist in name only: first capitalism takes hold and now religion is being allowed. It's like watching the second half of "Animal Farm."