Philanthropy and the religious life of goodness in China

Abstract

A history of religious philanthropic associations, given in this chapter, shows how different they are from their past equivalents under the imperial Chinese dynasties. While they are still dedicated to betterment of the world, ideas of goodness and of the civic self have changed radically. Examples of mainly Buddhist but also Christian and other associations are given to show that in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), they accommodate themselves to secular charity and welfare, to models of political goodness and to modernizing conceptions of a civic self. And the scale of their activities is far larger and more organised, in what this chapter calls industrialized religious philanthropy.Accepted manuscript2021-08-0