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Religious market theory has figured prominently in recent scholarly debates in the social scientific study of religion in China. This article argues that the existence of "religious markets" should not be assumed as axiomatic but should be investigated as concrete social processes, distinguishing between market and non-market relations. Based on field research among popular religious and spiritual groups in China and drawing on the literature of economic anthropology, I propose an alternative model of a "religious gift economy" constituted by gifting exchanges between humans and between gods and humans. Five ethnographic cases from China illustrate the operation and coexistence of gift and market exchanges. In contemporary China, there is a tendency towards an increasing marketization of religion, with a simultaneous growth of religious movements explicitly offering nonmarket forms of sociality. Rather than subsuming all exchanges under the blanket concept of the market, studies of religion must be attentive to the distinct logics of different models of exchange.

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