The 2024 Buddhist Lecture Exchange Conference, with the mandatory references to the Third Plenum, explained what “further Sinicizing Chinese Buddhism” means.
by Zhu Yaozu
The yearly Buddhist Lecture Exchange Conferences are important events for the government-controlled China Buddhist Association. The 2024 edition commenced in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on August 11, 2024.
This year, as it happens with other religions, there were mandatory references to the Third Plenum of the of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its presentation of Xi Jinping as Deng Xiaoping’s legitimate heir and China’s new “Great Reformer.”
The Buddhist Lecture Exchange Conferences are controlled by the United Front, which coordinates the use of religion as a propaganda tool domestically and internationally. Believers who attended the Nanjing event told “Bitter Winter” that there was a recurring attempt to present reforming Buddhism as “humanistic Buddhism,” a label attractive to many world Buddhists, as the counterpart of reforming Chinese society according to the Third Plenum’s statements.
Buddhist classics, it was argued, need to be reinterpreted in a “humanistic” sense. However, the words “reinterpretation” and “humanistic” do not have the same meeting for the United Front as they do for Buddhists throughout the world. Making Chinese Buddhism more “humanistic” and reinterpreting the classics as such, explained United Front bureaucrat Ma Lianmei, means advancing even further in the “Sinicization” of Chinese Buddhism.
Of course, Chinese Buddhism is very much Chinese. If “Sinicization” meant adapting Buddhism to Chinese traditions and culture, this was done two thousand years ago. However, for the CCP and the United Front “Sinicization” means adapting Buddhism to Marxism and the programs and directives of the Communist Party. What is advertised as “humanistic Buddhism” is in fact “Marxist Buddhism.” Ma called for finding and emphasizing in Buddhist scriptures “the aspects that resonate with socialist core values” and enforce the principle of “strict governance” of religious communities, a new slogan that means direct control by the CCP and the United Front without relying only on the bureaucracy of the China Buddhist Association.
Master Qiu Shuang, a leader of the China Buddhist Association, highlighted in his address that the national Buddhist Lecture Exchange has become a crucial event for the “Sinicization” of Chinese Buddhism.
Master Yanjue, the President of China Buddhist Association, called the Third Plenum a historical event and asked Buddhist clergy and monks to study its documents carefully. “The Buddhist community should align with the Plenum’s directives by embracing President Xi Jinping’s guidance on religion, thus advancing the integration of Buddhism with the core socialist values in the country,” Yanjue said. He added that a “humanistic Buddhism” is one “aligning with socialist core values” and “more aware of Buddhism’s political identity in China.”
Source: BITTER WINTER
