The Sincization of Buddhism by President Xi Jinping is the most dangerous threat to global security today. The recognition of this came from the legislation passed by former US President Donald Trump at the end of last year, and which seeks to protect Tibetan Buddhism from interference by the Chinese State. Since President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, the Chinese state has been promoting itself as the global centre of Buddhism. Ironically, the aim of this exercise is not to promote Buddhism but to show the aspiration of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that China is the country that inherited Buddhism. What is cleverly left out of this narrative is that Buddhism originated in India and moved to China, where today, Tibetan Buddhism has become symbolic of the practice of Buddhism globally.
Buddhism is both a soft power tool and a weapon in the hands of the Chinese. This is the apt conclusion reached by the seminal policy brief written on the subject by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank titled “The Chinese State’s Global Promotion of Buddhism” (Georgetown University, November 2020). Many of the points made by this policy document have been summarized in the present analysis to draw attention to the consistent and all-pervasive way China has used Buddhism to promote the interests of the CCP overseas.
The aim of President Xi Jinping’s “China dream” is to regain the glory of the Tang dynasty during which time Buddhism was introduced into China and Sinicized. The objective is to export the Chinese brand of Buddhism to the rest of the world. The use of Buddhism by the Chinese state to promote itself can be compared to the historical rise of Europe as a global power accompanied by Christianity. The point of note is that China uses Buddhism as a weapon to achieve its goals abroad. This is because China uses the system of state religion to control and expand the influence of the CCP, both domestically and internationally.
Pertinently, China today has three forms of Buddhism being practiced. Mahayana is practiced by the Han people, Theravada, practiced by the Dai people and Vajrayana practiced by the Tibetans. As of 2012, the PRC had 240,000 clerics, 38 Buddhist seminaries and 33,000 Buddhist temples. Little wonder then that China tries to portray itself as a cultural power with a past. While China’s efforts to promote Buddhism both domestically and for international purposes can be traced to the 1950s, it was not until 2015 that a concerted campaign was initiated by Xi Jinping to use Buddhism as a tool to promote Chinese interests abroad. Essentially, what China wanted to do was to use Buddhism flourishing in Tibet as the means to showcase its Chinese origins and offset the influence that other countries had on the lineage and heritage of the Buddha. In this case, the main focus is India, from where in fact Buddhism originated and spread to the rest of the world.
In 2015, the Buddhist Association of China [BAC] (at its Ninth National Congress) officially declared the global promotion of Chinese Buddhism as a key activity. The BAC identified three different aspects of Buddhism to be promoted globally, including ‘Sinicized’ Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism and Buddhist culture. Notably, all three are CCP created narratives; the first being the adaptation of the Buddhism that entered China at the time of the Tang dynasty.
This has today been politically incorporated by the CCP by introducing concepts like harmony in the framework. The second aspect was Chinese Buddhism, which at one point time meant the coexistence of Vajrayana, Theravada and Mahayana forms of Buddhism in China. Today, Chinese Buddhism is the tool being used to promote Chinese culture overseas. Connected to this the idea of Buddhist culture, but as seen through Chinese eyes. This promotion of Buddhism is state-sponsored enterprise, and the monks and lay persons are usually those taught and trained in state run Buddhist academies approved by the CCP.
Chinese strategy of promoting its brand of Buddhism is divided into three categories of countries. The first list includes Buddhist majority countries in South & South East Asia, with an economic dependency on China like Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Myanmar. The second list consists of countries in the West which have recently been exposed to Buddhism with many followers who are trying to adapt it as a way of life. The third list consists of Asian countries like India, Japan and Taiwan. These are nations which China views as rivals and the objective here is to promote Buddhism as a counter to the major forms of Buddhism being practiced.
Notably, China also funds and controls international Buddhist organizations. China controls the World Buddhist Sangha Council founded in Sri Lanka in 1966. In 2014, China hosted the World Fellowship of Buddhists meet. Across Buddhist countries, Chinais helping repair, renovate and resurrect Buddhist institutions. Beijing lobbies for countries to hold major international events such as the UN Vesak Day held in Sri Lanka in 2017.
In October 2018, China hosted a two-day conference in Qinghai province to discuss how Buddhism could better serve the BRI and reduce separatism. Ironically, while Buddhism is being rapidly promoted globally, within Tibet the religion, its culture and identity is being monitored, censored and even Hanised. This is best exemplified in the 2007 remark by Zhang Qingli, former TAR Party Secretary, who said: “The Central Party Committee is the real Buddha for Tibetans”. That being the case, the world should be under no illusions about the real intentions of China in promoting Buddhism.
There is little doubt that China wants to use Buddhism as a tool to spread its influence globally and more specifically wants to make Tibetan Buddhism, its own and reverse engineer its Indian origins, so as to enable it to claim Buddhism as its own. That being the case, India must be alive to the deleterious impact that China has had on Tibetan Buddhism in terms of controlling and stifling Tibetan culture, identity and religion.
Further, China has introduced mechanisms to manage the lineage system in Tibetan Buddhism and this has had serious security implications on India, which is home to the Dalai Lama and many others who have settled in India. In the long run, India will have to look beyond the Tibet card to a Buddhism card, if it is to compete with China. That is the key takeaway from a reading of China’s promotion of Buddhism.
