and often labeled as "heretical doctrines" ( zōngjiào yìduān). Recent scholarship has begun to use the label "secret sects" ( mìmì jiàomén) to distinguish the peasant "secret societies" with a positive dimension of the Yuan, Ming and Qing periods, from the negatively viewed "secret societies" of the early republic that became instruments of anti-revolutionary forces (the Guomindang or Japan). Origin and history Many of these religions are traced to the White Lotus tradition ("Chinese Maternism", as mentioned by Philip Clart) that was already active in the Song dynasty; others claim a Taoist legacy and are based on the recovery of ancient scriptures attributed to important immortals such as Lü Dongbin and Zhang Sanfeng, and have contributed to the popularisation of neidan; other ones are distinctively Confucian and advocate the realisation of a "great commonwealth" (datong ) on a world scale, as dreamt of in the Book of Rites. Some scholars even find influences from Manichaeism, Mohism and shamanic traditions. In the Ming and Qing dynasties many folk religious movements were outlawed by the imperial authorities as "evil religions" ( xiéjiào). With the collapse of the Qing state in 1911 the sects enjoyed an unprecedented period of freedom and thrived, and many of them were officially recognised as religious groups by the early republican government. The founding of the People's Republic in 1949 saw them suppressed once again, although since the 1990s and 2000s the climate was relaxed and some of them have received some form of official recognition. In Taiwan all the still existing restrictions were rescinded in the 1980s. Folk religious movements began to rapidly revive in mainland China in the 1980s, and now if conceptualised as a single group they are said to have the same number of followers of the five state-sanctioned religions of China taken together. Scholars and government officials have been discussing to systematise and unify this large base of religious organisations; in 2004 the State Administration of Religious Affairs created a department for the management of folk religions. In the late 2015 a step was made at least for those of them with a Confucian identity, with the foundation of the Holy Confucian Church of China which aims to unite in a single body all Confucian religious groups. Many of the movements of salvation of the 20th and 21st century aspire to become the repository of the entirety of the Chinese tradition in the