Tensions around Chinese folk religion tend to arise wherever questions of authority, legitimacy, and proper ritual order come to the surface. Confucian thinkers and officials, for example, often accepted ancestral rites and certain state cults, yet criticized practices they judged “superstitious” or emotionally excessive, such as spirit‑mediumship or fortune‑telling. Imperial governments repeatedly tried to distinguish orthodox sacrifices from heterodox cults, sometimes banning local spirit cults or sectarian movements. In this sense, conflict did not simply concern belief, but the struggle to define what counted as morally and socially acceptable ritual life.

Relations with Buddhism and Daoism reveal a similar pattern of both overlap and competition. Temples of popular deities, Buddhist monasteries, and Daoist institutions often competed for donations, ritual clients, and local prestige, and their clergy could denounce one another’s practices as impure or ineffective. At the same time, laypeople commonly blended these traditions, venerating bodhisattvas, local gods, and ancestors side by side, which softened overt doctrinal clashes. Organized Daoism in particular sought to standardize and control many folk practices—exorcisms, talismans, funerary rites—sometimes condemning unlicensed mediums or lay ritual masters, yet also absorbing many local gods and festivals into its own liturgies.

More sharply defined tensions appear where monotheistic traditions meet the polytheistic and ancestral dimensions of folk religion. Christian missions frequently rejected ancestor veneration and temple worship as idolatry, leading to household‑level conflicts when converts withdrew from lineage rituals, temple festivals, or geomantic burial customs. A famous example is the Catholic dispute over whether ancestral rites were civil or religious, which resulted in imperial restrictions on Christian activity. Muslim communities, guided by strict monotheism and aniconism, generally avoided participation in folk temples and ancestral rituals, creating clear boundaries of practice and, at times, local friction when they declined to join shared village rites.

Another enduring source of tension lies in the relationship between folk religion and the state. Both imperial and later governments have labeled certain practices—spirit‑mediumship, fortune‑telling, some local cults—as heterodox or superstitious, subjecting them to regulation or suppression. Campaigns against “superstition” have closed temples, destroyed images, and targeted groups rooted in folk beliefs that evolved into more organized, salvationist, or millenarian movements. Even where there is partial tolerance or revival, suspicion persists toward practices seen as economically exploitative, socially disruptive, or incompatible with officially endorsed notions of rational order. In this complex landscape, conflict is rarely absolute; it is more often a shifting negotiation over who may speak for the sacred and how the invisible world should be honored in public life.