Nevertheless, it should perhaps not be so surprising that a student in a Chinese university would assume a common commitment to atheism among her readers. After all, China is ruled by a communist party that advocates atheism, and consequently, many Chinese are in fact atheists. Thus, this student's assumption about her readers is not altogether unreasonable. However, this does highlight a rather significant difference between China and the United States--while many Chinese are atheists, most Americans are not. While I do not know the exact percentages, to the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of Americans are theists of some kind--though this does not necessarily mean that they are orthodox religious believers, Christian or otherwise. It seems that for many in China atheists are the "good guys" while religious believers are suspect; in the United States, I suspect, the opposite is true.
More surprising perhaps was a sentence appearing in another student's essay several years ago. I do not remember whether the student was writing about "The Devil and Daniel Webster" or another topic. In her essay, to the best of my recollection, she wrote: "As a Chinese, I cannot believe in religion." After comtemplating this rather amazing statement, I couldn't help thinking: "Hmm, let's see--Buddhism, Taoism..." In short, this student seemed rather confused about the place of religion in Chinese culture and history. However, I think such a statement does reflect how successfully the Communist Party has inculcated the idea that to be Chinese is to be a Communist, and to be a Communist is to be an atheist.
To conclude, one could say that such language appearing in my students' writing demonstrates how prevalent atheism is among some educated Chinese. Nevertheless, a February 11, 2012 article in The Economist (see here) notes that a 2007 survey found that one of every six members of the Communist Party was a religious believer. Many of these Party members were probably recruited from the ranks of the well-educated. Moreover, there is evidence that at least some Chinese intellectuals are turning to Christianity. Thus, whether atheism will continue to be the default system of belief for China's educated elite remains to be seen.