The Buddhist Association of China and Constitutional Law in Buddhist Majority Nations

Abstract

This chapter looks at the Buddhist Association of China (BAC), which claims authority over the largest Buddhist community in the world, as it has tried in recent years to assert itself as an influential actor on the global stage. The BAC has acted with the full support of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), via one of its key instruments for influence in Chinese societies and abroad, the United Front Work Department (UFWD, herein United Front) (Brady 2019). The goal of this chapter is to understand how the emergence of the BAC affects constitutional law in countries where Buddhism plays an important role in the political and legal system.I will introduce the BAC as the main institution representing Buddhists today in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and examine the relationship between the BAC and the CCP United Front. Next, I assess the BAC efforts to establish itself as one of the prime movers among Buddhist international organizations and interpret the significance of this increasing visibility. The chapter dovetails with a broader research agenda headed by Yoshiko Ashiwa and David Wank (2020), examining how the United Front operationalizes Buddhist activities outside China. THE BUDDHIST ASSOCIATION OF CHINAThe BAC claims authority over the largest Buddhist community in the world. Estimating the precise size of the community is difficult, in part because, as in other East Asian societies, many people practice what Michael Carrithers calls "polytropy," which means that they simultaneously practice more than one religion (2000). The BAC estimateswhich err on the conservative side and are reproduced routinely by the official mediaof the total number of Buddhists in China suggest that there are around 100 million adherents (ZFX 2017a). Recently conducted sociological surveys, however, point to widely divergent numbers, depending on 285