Tag Archives: economy

the business of religion: buddhism, stock markets and the “authenticity” of religion

June 7th, 2012

A recent news story on Reuters, headlined Thou Shalt Not Launch IPOs, China tells temples, reports that the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) has issued an injunction against temples listing on the stock exchange. SARA official Liu Wei is reported as staying:

Chinese worshippers offer coins for prosperity while praying at Longhua temple to greet the lunar new year in Shanghai on February 9, 2005.

Such plans “violate the legitimate rights of religious circles, damage the image of religion and hurt the feelings of the majority of religious people.”

Like much reporting on Chinese religion, this story is left unexplained, as an item of “bizarre news” which lends weight to the Orientalist stereotype of China, and especially Chinese religion, as being ineluctably mysterious. To those whose knowledge of religion is limited to the West, there are two main issues that need to be explained:

  • Why do religious sites want to go public on the stock exchange?
  • What interest does the state have in preventing them from doing so?

A pervasive modern view of religion is that it is somehow incompatible with money. This sentiment perhaps goes back to the familiar Biblical texts that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6:10) and  “you cannot serve God and money” (Matt. 6;24). There are certainly some parallels in China, notably in monastic religion where a contentious issue has always been how much time should be spent on properly religious activities such as meditation, and how much on the actual business of running the monastery. In Imperial times, many monasteries in China had significant landholdings. The rent collected from tenants was used to fund the operations of the monasteries. But from the times of the first anti-religious protests in 1922, the economic status of monasteries declined, first as tenants refused or were unwilling to pay their rents, and secondly as land was expropriated by the state (an act that bears comparison with Henry VIII’s dissolution of English monasteries and appropriation of their wealth). After the reforms of the 1980s monasteries were allowed once again to operate as religious sites under the ultimate supervision of SARA, but very little land was returned to them. As Jing Yin writes in his essay “The Economic Situation of Chinese Buddhist Monasteries” this meant that the monasteries were faced with a dilemma:

The good news is that Buddhists today have buildings to operate and services to perform; the bad news is that they have almost no money with which to work. Therefore the urgent priority for nearly every monastery is to find a way to generate revenue. Monasteries are thus trying to become economically independent and to minimize their dependence on state government.

Today, temples do not make money from renting out their land but rather as sites for religious tourism. Many are located in sites of outstanding natural beauty and have become ecotourism destinations in their own right. But probably the most successful religious site in China today is Shaolin Temple, in central Henan province, home to the famous martial arts school. Shaolin has been remarkably successful in marketing itself as a tourist destination, and as a site of global Buddhist pilgrimage, and has generated huge revenues that have benefitted the local economy. According to the Reuters report, there was an outcry when Shaolin contemplated an IPO three years ago, which led to the ruling reported on recently. To many, running the temple as a profit-making activity implies that it cannot also be a religious activity. But as André Laliberté notes, this view is often the view of outsiders rather than insiders.

Buddhist devotees may criticize the activities of organizations like Shaolin because of its emphasis on martial arts, but they do not fault the management of the temples because they appreciate the fact that the temples are wealthy. In the moral economy of Buddhism …  donors can gain merit by contributing to the building and furnishing of a monastery … . It is therefore non-Buddhists who are more likely to object to Buddhist temples gaining wealth.

In the case of local Daoist religions, the link between religious life and local economic life can be quite close. In rural China, local Daoist temples came to be owned and funded by the collective rather than by priestly lineages. Thus in contrast to affiliation-based religions in which people pay tithes to a religious organization that is distinct from secular society and governed by a special class of religious professionals, Chinese people founded community associations (hui) or common management organizations (gongsi; now the term for “corporation”) in order to manage their collective religious lives (see Schipper 2008). As a result the gap between “religious” activities and other local economic, educational or charitable activities becomes harder to discern. These communal associations, for instance, became significant managers of local wealth held in trust for the benefit of the community. In keeping with their originally religious motives, some of these funds are typically devoted to religious activities, but in many cases a significant proportion could be channeled into local enterprises or educational activities. Adam Yuet Chau (2005: 38) writes:

Besides being a site of both individual and communal worship, a temple is also a political, economic, and symbolic resource and a generator of such resources. A beautifully built temple and a well-attended temple festival attest not only to the efficacy of the deity but also to the organizational ability of the temple association and the community.

Chau goes on to note that such temples have been involved in local development work such as paving roads, planting trees, and building schools. The lesson to be learned from this is that the line between “religious” and “nonreligious” activity has no self-evident boundary. Rather what has happened in China is that the modern state has moved to create such distinctions, defining for religious institutions what constitutes proper religious activity.

By now the answers to the questions posed above should be somewhat clearer. Religious sites want to list on the stock exchange because it is in their interest to secure funds for their continuous development and expansion. Religious activity is not simply “spirituality” but requires buildings, staff, management, cars, roads and other infrastructure. In contrast, it is in the state’s interest to emphasize the modern definition of authentic religion as “personal spirituality” so that it can continue to limit the material base that religious institutions require in order to develop and expand. In China religious activities can only legally take place in spaces that are authorized religious sites: they may not take place in the public sphere. The stock exchange is clearly viewed as public space, and to allow religions to list on the stock exchange would be to permit the encroachment of religion into the public sphere. This is something that the Chinese government is clearly not willing to tolerate.

the religion and ecology of the blang minority nationality

August 16th, 2011

A Blang nationality woman

The question of how to promote a culture of ecological sustainability in China took me this summer to conduct exploratory fieldwork among the Blang minority nationality, in Yunnan province, close to the border between China and Myanmar. The Blang are one of China’s smaller nationality groups and occupy a remote mountainous terrain that is a gruelling and dangerous three-hour drive from the county town of Menghai.

The economy of the Blang village where I stayed was based increasingly on the production of tea. Previously subsistence farmers, the villagers had now turned almost exclusively to the production of tea leaves which, when processed, become the famous and expensive pu’er tea. Since the economic and land reforms after the cultural revolution, the villagers had been steadily converting their lands to the production of tea, with tea bushes now dominating the steeply-terraced mountainsides. After harvesting the tea leaves, the villagers dry and lightly roast the tea leaves before selling them via middlemen to nearby tea factories that ferment, process and package the finished product.

A Blang nationaity Buddhist monk on his motorbike

The village is distinguished by well-preserved social customs: villagers are divided into a number of exogamous clans; newly married men live in their wife’s family’s home for three years; and most young men spend a period of time as a Buddhist monk in their youth. The Blang, like many nationalities in southwest China are Theravada Buddhists, but their highly complex religious life is also informed by local beliefs and customs that relate to the traditional ecology, with special attention being paid to rice, water, bees, beeswax, and the various local spirits that are associated with them. The production of tea has not been integrated into the religious life of the village and remains detached from it. On the other hand the relative wealth that has come to the village has enabled the renovation of old temples, the construction of new ones, and the hosting of lavish religious festivals, including the Kaowasa festival, known in Chinese as guanmenjie 关门节, a Theravada Buddhist festival to mark the beginning of the rainy season.

Here the relationship between religion and ecology becomes more evident. During the three month period inaugurated by Kaowasa, injunctions are placed on the life of the monks and laypeople in the village. Most notably these include a prohibition on cutting down large trees. In traditional times such large trees might be cut down and used for building houses. While most of the houses in the village are still made of wood, the more important reason for cutting down trees nowadays is to increase the land available for tea production.

Four important point can be made here. The first is that there is clear evidence of religion playing an influential role in managing the direct relationship between the Blang people and their local ecosystems. Their religious life is not a matter of private belief or personal spirituality, but a cultural system that clearly intersects with ecological and economic systems. In this regard, at least, religion is a cultural force that acts as a constraint upon a economic activity that has a deleterious effect on the local environment.

Secondly, in this regard at least, the Blang religion supports Chinese government policy and law which prevents deforestation. While I was in the village, I saw that this policy is supported by educational programs that aim to get local people to understand the important relationship between forests, water and the livelihood of local ecosystems. What struck me was that in this regard, religion could clearly be an ally towards government policy and environmental policy. When I interviewed a local CCP member, he informed me that the Party did not put up any obstacles to his participation in local religious activities, but would certainly view the spread of non-indigenous religions such as Christianity as highly problematic.

A new pagoda outside a Blang village is testimony to new-found wealth

Thirdly, the complex and lavish nature of the religious activities in the village were directly supported by the village’s economic development. Without the wealth brought by tea monoculture, it would hardly be possible to support the scale of religious activities that I witnessed. The village’s wealth could clearly be seen in the renovation of the main temple, and the building of a new pagoda outside the village. This pagoda was built upon the advice of a visiting Burmese monk and was located according to fengshui principles to ensure that the wealth generated in the village would as much as possible remain in the village. Economic development supports religious activities, and in turn religious activities are designed to support economic development.

The final point relates to the power of Buddhism as a transnational religion. The border between China and Myanmar was clearly a notional border for the local people. Commercial, religious and family relationships straddled the border, and villagers were able to cross easily into Burma by foot. Some monks had spent time in Thailand and were able to live there without any passport, so long as they had proof of their religious status.

From my exploratory research it seems clear that there exists a complex relationship between religion, economy, ecology and nationality among the Blang people that is deserving of much deeper study and analysis. At the same time, it is not clear how long these relationships will remain intact. The current five year plan holds out the prospect of a proper paved road from the village to the county town. This will make communications with the “outside world” far easier and undoubtedly bring momentous changes to the religious, economic and social life of the village.