Published: 08:39 PM, 30 November 2025
China’s plan to assume leadership of the Buddhist world has met with stiff challenge
The Global Peace Prayer festival held in Thimphu in Bhutan this November has exposed the limitations of the ambition of China to emerge as the leader of the Buddhist world.
The main attraction of the festival was the exposition of the Piprahwa relics. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi was the chief guest on the occasion. Believed to be of Buddha himself, the relics had been found in a ‘stupa’ at Piprahwa in Uttar Pradesh in India; the site of the ancient city of Kapilvastu where Buddha had spent his early life. Due to the overwhelming number of devotees offering prayers and seeking blessings, the exposition of the Holy Buddha relics at Tashichhodzong, scheduled from November 4 to 19, was extended by a week till November 25, according to a Bhutan Home Ministry announcement.
In a futile attempt to create the false narrative that China, instead of India, is the leader of the Buddhist world, the Buddhist Association of China organized in October 2024 the World Buddhist Forum, the sixth in the series, at Ningbo, in the Zhejiang province; ostensibly to promote world peace. The world was taken by surprise when in April 2006 China held the first World Buddhist Forum organized by the Buddhist Association of China; communist China’s first international religious gathering. The new-found respect of Chinese communists in Buddhism has only deepened in later years. The aim, however, is not to spread belief in Buddhism as religion but rather to further the aspirations of the Chinese Communist Party.
President of China Xi Jinping is actively pursuing the concept of Buddhism with Chinese characteristics. Under this garb of respect for religion, the real intention of the Chinese communists is to use Buddhism as a tool to legitimize its rule over Tibet and to extend globally China’s soft power.
The promotion of Buddhism as a form of soft power has grown since 2015 when the Ninth National Congress of the Buddhist Association of China formally recognized the global promotion of Chinese Buddhism as a key activity. These efforts were referred to as “soft power” and linked to the Belt and Road Initiative, which is Beijing’s way of taking control of strategic assets in less developed countries through unviable Chinese loans.
In a challenge to the attempts by China to establish its monopoly over Buddhism, India has hosted in recent years a series of international conferences on Buddhism; among them the Global Buddhist Summit in 2023, the Asian Buddhist Summit in 2024 and the International Conference on Young Buddhist Scholars in 2025. The Indian Ministry of Culture and the International Buddhist Confederation in November 2024 held in Delhi the First Asian Buddhist Summit to emphasize “the profound interconnection among Buddha Dhamma, India and Asia; showcasing their complimentary relationship.
Ignoring China’s illegal claim on Arunachal Pradesh, the International Buddhist confederation in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Culture held in April 2025 the International Conclave on Buddha Dharma and Culture of North East India to discuss the impact of Buddhism on the culture of north-east India; attended by over 300 representatives from different countries.
The Chinese Communist Party has been using the mechanism of the state-controlled religious system to incorporate Buddhism into Chinese foreign policy. The state-controlled and targeted Chinese Buddhism ultimately seeks to influence the societies and politics of Buddhist majority countries, and also Western public opinion.
Beijing has adopted a multipronged approach to spread the story of Buddhism with Chinese characteristics. In Asian countries with Buddhist majorities that are economically dependent on China, including Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka, key strategies include the establishment of bilateral Buddhist friendship associations, setting up Buddhist broadcasting networks, organizing joint religious and cultural rituals, providing funds to restore temples, inviting foreign Buddhists to participate in Buddhist Association of China – initiated regional Buddhists conferences, undertaking joint Buddhist scholarship and investing in BRI infrastructure centred around Buddhist themes. In Western countries where the appeal of Buddhism, particularly that of Tibetan Buddhism, is growing, there are efforts to build Chinese Buddhist temples.
In India and Japan which China sees as its geopolitical rivals, the effort of Beijing is to upstage their leadership in the Buddhist world. To compete with the Nalanda University in India, China launched in 2017 the Nanhai Buddhist Academy with courses in Chinese Buddhism and also, ironically, Tibetan Buddhism; while at the same time the Chinese rulers in Tibet trying to destroy the very foundations of Tibetan Buddhism by pulling down monasteries, persecuting monks to commit self-immolation and trying to obliterate the legacies of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. In Japan, Chinese clerics are trying to promote the Shingon school of Vajrayana Buddhism as an alternative to Tibetan Buddhism.
Unfortunately for China, even some of the smaller South Asian nations with strong Buddhist connections have refused to buy the story of Buddhism with Chinese characteristics which Beijing is trying to sell. Because of strong local protests, China had finally to abandon its plan formulated in 2011 to monopolize the birthplace of Buddha at Lumbini in Nepal by financing a huge project to refurbish the place and commercialize it.
India is the natural leader of the Buddhist world as Buddha was born in the Indian subcontinent and had attained enlightenment in India. The ancient university at Nalanda was the seat of Buddhist literature and teaching. From Nalanda, with its centuries-old traditions, Buddhism had travelled to Tibet. For China which has occupied Tibet forcibly, this is an uncomfortable reality. Believing that the Chinese rule will not be based on a solid foundation as long as the Tibetan people, devout Buddhists that they are, continue to look towards India for their religious emancipation, China is now out to suppress the Tibetan Buddhist religious order.
Their first target is to undermine the position of the Dalai Lama as the legitimate leader of the Tibetan religious order. Beijing is suffering from the false hope that it can suppress adverse world opinion against its persecution of the 14th Dalai Lama by spreading the message of Buddhism with Chinese characteristics. The US, for instance, has already formulated an Act that the choice of the successor to the 14th Dalai Lama must be left to the Tibetans themselves.
India, home to more or less a hundred thousand Tibetan refugees ever since the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959, is the biggest obstacle to China in its efforts to emerge as the leader of the Buddhist world. They are keeping the flag of Tibetan Buddhism flying high. The Dalai Lama has complete freedom to pursue his religious activities in India.
Chinese communists will do well to remember the assertion of Hu Shih, the Chinese scholar who had been the Ambassador of the Republic of China to the United States between 1938 and 1942 that “India conquered and dominated China culturally for two thousand years without ever having to send a single soldier across the border. Never before had China seen a religion so rich in imagery, so beautiful and captivating in ritualism and so bold in cosmological and metaphysical speculations.” Ambassador Hu Shih was referring to Buddhism.
>> Source: Asian News Post
