In the last two weeks, both the Southern Weekly (南方周末) and the South China Morning Post have published stories about an official survey that revealed that a high percentage of civil servants (i.e. cadres) believe in feng shui, physiognomy and other superstitions that members of the officially atheist Party are supposed to stay away from.

Guest contributor David Drakeford spoke to one of the researchers of the report, whose worry about the superstitious cadres in earlier interviews has been replaced with worry about the report being misconstrued.

Southern Weekly charts the superstitions (click to enlarge)

The study was conducted by the China National School of Administration, a body responsible for training mid- and high-level government officials and policy makers. According to Cheng Ping, a researcher in charge of the project "As civil servants, most of them are members of the Communist Party. Party members are supposed to be atheist."

They may not believe in God but 19 percent of the 900 government officials polled were shown to have faith in ancient philosopher Zhou Gong's spiritual explanation of dreams. Only six percent advocated the use of I Ching divination but 28 percent believed in physiognomy, a method of determining character from the form and features of the face. This last figure was higher even that than representing the general population.

A bimonthly Party magazine Seeking Truth (求是) published a criticism of the trend in its May 1 issue. "At present, a small number of party members are wavering in their loyalty towards the Party and they are gradually weakening...some Party members believe in gods and ghosts instead of Marx and Lenin." This backlash was only to be expected, president Hu Jintao's Eight Honours and Disgraces includes the unambiguous instruction "follow science; discard superstition."

Superstitious civil servants may be viewed as even more damaging to the state than people who have merely lost their faith in Marxism-Leninism. According to an article published in Southern Weekly (南方周末) on May 17, Tai'an county former party secretary Hu Jianxue re-routed a section of an expressway over a reservoir because a fengshui master advised him that the lack of a bridge was all that was holding him back from the position of vice-premier.

The vice-premiership was not his destiny though as he was eventually convicted for corruption charges and given a suspended death sentence.

Researcher Cheng Ping said there had been incidents where physiognomy was used together with Chinese astrology to judge the suitability of civil servants for promotion but with nearly a third of officials giving weight to the practice it seems unlikely they are isolated. She expressed the view that some superstitions had roots in traditional Chinese culture and that Chinese people would naturally look at a person's face to try and predict their destiny. A Shanghai Daily opinion piece responding to the Seeking Truth article however remarked "It's ridiculous that an official who calls himself or herself a staunch Marxist should give his or her soul to elusive spirits."

The practice of fengshui was also deemed inappropriate for members of the Communist Party: "It's dangerous for China's governing Party to have quite a few members clinging to a superstition whose only goal is to help enrich oneself in terms of either material wealth or political advancement."

According to a South China Morning Post article published on May 12, a report on the survey had been submitted to the central government. It has been suggested off the record that this would be in the form of a neican (internal reference) issued by Xinhua but Cheng Ping declined to comment to your correspondent on the workings of the government.

In fact, Dr Cheng was reluctant to talk with the media because of what she saw as misunderstanding in the reporting of her survey's results so far.

"The survey found that 47.6% didn't believe in superstitious practices and that's where the misunderstanding was. In media reports it has been that said that 52.4% believed in superstition and that's wrong," she said.

For a person to be classed as "not believing in superstitions" they must match five requirements. If they matched only one they were put into the category of "believing in superstitions" but in reality that does not mean they are strongly superstitious, she said.

In what seems to be a change of heart from the interview for the South China Morning Post where Cheng Ping was quoted as saying that the number of superstitious officials was "worrying" and that they "didn't expect the figure would be so high," she now contends that almost all of the results were within their expectations except for the number of believers in physiognomy which she describes as "very surprising."

Dr Cheng emphasised that this was a large-scale survey with superstition as only one area within the study. New figures from the survey are to be released soon.

• Thanks to Kristine Kwok at the South China Morning Post. Additional reporting by Gan Tian.

• The chart above from Southern Weekly compares county-level officials (blue) with the general public (purple), showing percentages who "believe strongly" or "believe somewhat" in I Ching casting stick divination, face reading, astrological reading and Zhou Gong's interpretation of dreams.