religions in china

Daoism 道家 has long been taught about as a philosophy. Scholars have noted, however, that in some places and at some times, daoism was followed as a religion. The Yellow Turbans, for example, was a secret society, which brought down the Han dynasty after four centuries were led by a Daoist faith healer (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yellow-Turbans).

Ian Johnson, a NY Times reporter long interested in Chinese belief systems, recently interviewed Terry Kleeman, a scholar and author of a book that argues Daoism should be thought of as a religion, not just some of the time, but from its core founding documents. Read the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/world/asia/china-taoism-terry-kleeman.html?emc=edit_ae_20160808&nl=todaysheadlines-asia&nlid=53391876 .

Jeffrey Richey also argues that Confucianism should be understood as a religion in the book Teaching Confucianism. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/teaching-confucianism-9780195311600?cc=us&lang=en a portion of the book is here: https://books.google.com/books?id=w8vSE2lN0H4C&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=review+of+teaching+confucianism&source=bl&ots=9slNPnvTLU&sig=oQZUZ62uwy1OdjSGgBQ5icMTXi4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiur53EgrXOAhUC9WMKHUqYBTw4ChDoAQgbMAA#v=onepage&q=review%20of%20teaching%20confucianism&f=false