When Buddhism meets development : how commercialization affects Buddhism in China today

Abstract

Economic development has become a double-edged sword that has brought joy as well as sorrow to the Chinese people. Chinese Buddhism has also been effected by the country's developmental process. This process, especially commercialization, turns things into commodities, frames human interaction as market exchange, and interprets the value of things through pricing. Commercialisation transforms human experience by establishing commercial transactions in settings where markets had previously been absent or unimportant. Many Chinese people are locked into this new religion. Today, the most attractive value-system happens to be consumerism. The discipline of the system is less a science than the theology of this religion, and its god, the market, has become a vicious circle of ever-increasing production and consumption by pretending to offer a secular salvation.