China did lose many.

Let's take religion as an example. In Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore, traditional temples are still "alive" with popular and active ceremonies, while most temples in China I went are just dead buildings: people lived there and do things have nothing to do with divine, CCP-permitted official events, foreign tourists, modern decorations that have no integrity, etc.

It's just sad to see those religious sites dying. The spiritual essence died, during exactly the Cultural Revolution.

Isn't religion looked at as a possible source of dissent against the government in China?

Since state atheism is the order of the day, of course.

Prevents organization or association other than the party

Why is that a bad thing? Religion has been the cause of much strife. Sure, you miss the nice parts when it’s gone. But I take one look at other societies that still fight over this arbitrary “faiths” which make no scientific sense and it makes me wonder if it isn’t a simpler world to not believe in the superstition of religion ( or at least treat it that way legally)

They were pointing out that this was a loss of cultural heritage. Personally, I'm not one to find much value in cultural heritage in the first place, but religious culture seems like a pretty clear example of culture that was stamped out.

Its interesting that Buddist religions don’t appear to encourage strife per se, my knowledge of asian religions is very spotty, but I don’t think they have the same wars and justification for violence as the western religions do.

Look at Sri Lanka, very bloody civil war between Buddhist majority and Hinduist minority. Atrocities done on both sides, ie at the end when rebels were losing and surrounded, state army was shelling civilians left and right. Another example - history of Ladakh province in northern India - conquered by buddhist armies some +-1000 years ago. Buddhist army, interesting term.

I also had this view that buddhism is a faith that promotes peace - which might be true, but you still have the same human beings behind it. History proves my naive idea wrong.

The current anti-Muslim pogroms in Myanmar (incited by the Buddhist clergy) would seem to provide a counter-example.

> traditional temples

If you mean buddhist temples, that's at max 2000 years of history.

I am happy to call something that has been going on for 2000 years “traditional”

Why, was Buddha around after Jesus then?