According to some writers, the answer to the question posed by the title of this blog post is "yes." For example, writing about religion in Taiwan (the majority of whose inhabitants are culturally and ethnically Chinese), Daniel P. Reid tells us:
Throughout their long history the Chinese have absorbed and accommodated every major religion in the world, and consequently China has been the only major civilization free of wars, bigotry, and pogroms based on religious preference. (Images of Taiwan, Republic of China, p. 52--emphasis added)
Reid must have known what he was saying since, according to the blurb on the inside back page of his book, he earned an M.A. in Chinese Language and Civilization from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
For her part, Ann Paludan, author of Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China, acknowledges that there was an effort to restrict Buddhism during China's Tang dynasty in the 9th century. However, she informs us:
The decrees of 845 ordering the destruction of temples, monasteries and icons, were directed against the economic powers of the Buddhist church which were draining revenues through tax exemptions and withdrawing manpower from the state. There was no Western-style religious persecution of belief; monks and nuns were returned to the tax registers and active life, and millions of acres of arable land recovered for state use. (p. 117--emphasis added)
In other words, according to Paludan, the suppression of Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China was due to legitimate economic concerns--it was nothing as nasty as "Western-style religious persecution of belief."
Nevertheless, is it really true that China's history has been more-or-less free of religious intolerance? Consider the following quotation from historian Charles O. Hucker. Hucker is writing about a period during which China was politically divided between north and south until the advent of the Tang (T'ang) Dynasty in the 7th century:
State control of religion in the north and ultimately throughout China was not necessarily oppressive, though damaging proscriptions were occasionally imposed. The Northern Wei emperor T'o-pa T'ao...who favored Taoism, initiated a sequence of restrictions on Buddhist establishments in 438 that culminated in full-scale persecution from 446 into 452, when all Buddhist monks and nuns were ordered executed, and all Buddhist architecture, art, and books destroyed. In the next century, when the Northern Chou dynasty undertook to reestablish China's classical traditions, both Buddhism and Taoism were under proscription from 574 to 578. All religious buildings, art, and books were ordered destroyed; monastic treasuries were confiscated; and more than three million monks and nuns were reportedly returned to lay status--undoubtedly an exaggeration of vast proportions.
These early persecutions do not seem to have had serious lasting effects in the north, where they solely applied. The policies cannot have been implemented effectively, and after the persecutions new rulers zealously tried to undo whatever damage had been done. Thus the state proscriptions did not impede the progress of Buddhist influence to its peak in the T'ang dynasty. But in the last T'ang century Buddhism was persecuted again, this time on a national scale and with sufficient effect to force it into an economic and organizational decline from which it never recovered. The persecution was provoked by Taoists but was rationalized on grounds commonly argued by Confucians. The persecution was cumulative, progressing through a series of restrictions from 841 to 845, when it culminated in an almost total suppression. (China's Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture, p. 218--emphasis added)
In other words, religious persecution was more than a one-time occurrence in Chinese history, and such persecution was at least due in part to religious/ideological rivalry (I say "religious/ideological rivalry" since Confucianism, technically speaking, is not a religion but a system of ethics).
As for wars, it is true that Chinese history lacks wars that were fought due to differences in religious belief, like the medieval Crusades (Christians vs. Muslims) or the Thirty Years' War in 17th century Europe (Protestants vs. Catholics). Nonetheless, there were quite a number of rebellions in Chinese history that were at least in part motivated by religion. Hucker gives us an example:
Out of the Taoist cult eclecticism of Han [dynasty] times there developed in the second century A.D. a most remarkable phenomenon: a faith-healing, drug-dispensing, polytheistic Taoist church practicing congregational worship, preaching salvation through immortality, and eager to establish its own state and fight for it. It had two branches, one based in Shantung in the east and the other in Szechwan in the west. Both were dominated by hereditary theocrats surnamed Chang, who were perhaps related...The Shantung group's influence spread so rapidly that the Han government took steps to suppress it, whereupon in 184 the church's adherents, donning yellow turbans for identification purposes, openly rebelled. So began the Yellow Turban uprising that precipitated the decline of the Han empire. The Szechwan church rebelled separately in the same year. (p. 205)
In addition, there was another religious group, the Red Turban Movement, which helped end the Mongol Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century. In the mid-19th century, yet another religious movement, the Taiping Tianguo (whose name, ironically, translates as "the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace"), led by a man who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus, nearly overthrew the Qing Dynasty.
In other words, the history of China has indeed included instances of religious persecution and wars motivated by religion. Sad to say, it can be argued that even today in China state-sponsored persecution of religion has not totally disappeared.
Image of Buddhist temple in Shanghai, China from Wikimedia Commons