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THE FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM IN MODERN CHINA
HOLMES WELCH
(This article is the preliminary version of a chapter in a forthcoming book, The Buddhist Revival in China. It deals with most aspects of its topic except for certain activities of T'ai-hsu, who is the subject of a separate chapter. Some readers may have personal knowledge of the events described and be in a position to add or correct. The author hopes that they will communicate with him at the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that the chapter in its final form may be as complete and accurate as possible.)
The Ch'ing government frowned on its people having contact with foreigners almost as much as does the government in Peking today. From 1911 to 1950, however, there was a forty-year interlude during which foreigners could travel freely in China and the Chinese found it relatively easy to go abroad. This was also the period when foreign ideas and ways of doing things enjoyed the highest esteem, when the impact of the West was at its zenith. The Buddhist monastic establishment could not remain unaffected, although, being "outside the secular world,” it was affected somewhat less than other segments of Chinese society.
Sometimes the foreign impact on Buddhism was circuitous--such as, for example, the Western military victories, which led to the call for modern secular schools, which led to the confiscation of monasteries, which led to the establishment of Buddhist associations, seminaries, and social action by the sangha. But in other ways foreign impact was direct. Chinese Buddhists entered into contact with foreigners for a variety of reasons and purposes.
Contact with Japan
From the sixth through the seventeenth century imports of Chinese Buddhism had been entering Japan. In the late nineteenth the process was reversed. Japanese Buddhism began to be imported to China, partly because of the Japanese parishes that were springing up in the Treaty ports and partly because of the possibilities for the use of Buddhism as an instrument of foreign policy.
Copyright 1966 by Holmes Welch.
The author is a Research Associate of the East Asian Research Center, Harvard University.