As it does with all other religious traditions, the Chinese Communist Party is working to transform Buddhism into an arm of the state and a vehicle for its ideology.

“CCP Insists on Falsifying the History of ‘Humanistic Buddhism,’” by Zhu Yaozu, Bitter Winter, October 11, 2024:

On September 21 and 22, 2024, the Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai hosted a national forum on “the theory and practice of humanistic Buddhism.” Bureaucrats from the United Front Work Department and the government-controlled China Buddhist Association spoke at the event.

Venerable Changzang, speaking also on behalf of the absent Master Yanjue, the President of the government-controlled China Buddhist Association of which Changzang is Vice President, hailed Shanghai as “the birthplace of humanistic Buddhism.” He also explained that “humanistic Buddhism” and “Sinicized Buddhism” are one and the same.

“Humanistic Buddhism,” he said, always meant a Buddhism adapted to the most progressive ideologies of the time. Today the most advanced ideology is the CCP’s Marxism with Chinese characteristics as presented by Xi Jinping. It is to Xi Jinping Thought that a Buddhism that is both Sinicized and humanist should adapt, Changzang said.

That Shanghai is the birthplace of humanistic Buddhism is not false as it is there that Master Taixu, one and perhaps “the” key figure in the development of the current, taught in the last period of his life. Taixu died at the Jade Buddha Temple in 1947.

As one participant to the forum told “Bitter Winter,” mentioning the important role of Taixu was the only true statement in Changzang’s speech and indeed in the whole forum. All the rest was false….