Editing China (section)

== Buddhism in China ==
Buddhism entered China from Central Asia along the Silk Road in the first centuries of the Common Era, and the subsequent centuries saw an immense effort of scriptural translation, first from Central Asian intermediary languages and later directly from Sanskrit. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), this process of assimilation had produced a range of distinctly Chinese schools of thought and practice, including Chan (禪), Pure Land (淨土), Huayan (華嚴), and Tiantai (天台), which would define the tradition's institutional and doctrinal shape for the remainder of the imperial period. Buddhism's relationship with the state during this era alternated between lavish patronage and episodes of persecution, most notably the Huichang persecution of 845, and its relationship with the scholar-official class remained ambivalent: Buddhist monastic wealth and the sangha's formal exemption from taxation and corvée labor were recurrent sources of friction with a Confucian bureaucracy that prized this-worldly civic obligation.

Under the Song and Ming dynasties, Buddhism became deeply entangled with a resurgent Confucianism, so much so that Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism has been described as already a hybrid tradition, absorbing elements of Chan Buddhism and philosophical Daoism even as it publicly disavowed both.<ref>Zarrow, Peter (1990). ''Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture''. Columbia University Press, pp. 12–13, cited in Shields, James Mark (2022). "Buddhist Socialism in China, 1900–1930: A History and Appraisal". In: Graeme Kirkpatrick, Peter McMylor, & Simin Fadaee (Eds), ''Marxism, Religion, and Emancipatory Politics'': 81–102. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 85.</ref> By the late imperial period, Buddhism occupied an ambiguous social position: institutionally robust and woven into popular devotional life, but regarded with persistent suspicion by the Confucian literati who staffed the imperial bureaucracy.

The nineteenth century brought a series of severe shocks. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) devastated monastic institutions across the Lower Yangtze region, and temple property was repeatedly confiscated by late Qing and early Republican authorities scrambling to fund modern schools and local militias. The modernizing intellectual current that swept China after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 subjected Buddhism, along with Confucianism and the whole of received tradition, to the charge of irrelevance and obscurantism.<ref>Shields (2022), "Buddhist Socialism in China", p. 81.</ref> The reformer and lay Buddhist apologist Yang Wenhui (楊文會/杨文会, 1837–1911) began the work of response, establishing the Jinling Sūtra Press and reviving Chinese scholarly access to texts that had survived only in Japan. His student Taixu (太虛/太虚, 1890–1947) extended this project into the Humanistic Buddhism (人間佛教/人间佛教) movement, an ambitious program of institutional reform intended to make Chinese Buddhism socially engaged, intellectually credible, and adequate to the crises of a modernizing nation.<ref>Pittman, Don A. (2001). ''Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms''. University of Hawai'i Press.</ref> Alongside this reform current, the lay scholar Ouyang Jingwu (歐陽竟無/欧阳竟无) founded the Nanjing scriptural press and a rigorous, philologically grounded revival of Yogācāra (consciousness-only, 唯識) studies, a project subsequently developed with great sophistication by his student Lü Cheng (呂澂/吕澂, 1896–1989).<ref>Zu, Jessica X. (2025). ''Just Awakening: Yogācāra Social Philosophy in Modern China''. Columbia University Press, pp. 1–4.</ref>

The proclamation of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 inaugurated a new and more coercive phase in the state's relationship with Buddhism. The Marxist-Leninist framework adopted by the new government classified religion as ideological superstructure, a form of false consciousness generated by material conditions and destined to wither away as socialist construction advanced. At the same time, the Party recognized that Buddhism retained a substantial domestic constituency and diplomatic value among Buddhist communities in Southeast Asia, and it therefore pursued a strategy of controlled accommodation rather than immediate suppression. The vehicle for this strategy was the Chinese Buddhist Association (中國佛教協會/中国佛教协会), organized in the early 1950s and formally established in 1953, through which Buddhist institutions were permitted to continue under Party-approved leadership and directed toward officially sanctioned ends such as anti-imperialist declarations and diplomatic contacts abroad.<ref>Welch, Holmes (1972). ''Buddhism under Mao''. Harvard University Press.</ref> Within this framework, Buddhism was a tolerated practice rather than a legitimate intellectual resource for building the new China. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) brought the near-total physical destruction of monastic institutions and the suppression of religious practice nationwide; the reform era beginning in 1978 saw a gradual institutional revival, the reopening of major monasteries, and the reconstitution of Buddhist associations under continued state supervision, alongside the growth of lay practice, Buddhist charitable activity, and renewed international engagement.