In recent years, a growing number of Buddhist groups have established officially registered charitable foundations. One response to this development from political scientists has been to ask whether or not the growth of religious charities signals the development of an autonomous civil society in the PRC, which might, in turn, promote democratization.

This project is based on interviews with staff and volunteers from seven Buddhist charities in Xiamen, Fujian, and it argues that policies encouraging the development of Buddhist charities have interacted with developments within Buddhism during the reform period to encourage this recent growth. These policies aim to instrumentalize Buddhist charity to serve state policy goals related to social welfare and cohesion. However, Buddhist charity also continues to also draw on practices of almsgiving, merit-making, and ritual sponsorship that are not fully in alignment with, and are perhaps even subversive of, the utilitarian-productivist ethics promoted in the official discourse of the party-state.