Along with most governments around the world, the current Chinese government guarantees freedom of religion and neither advocates nor persecutes a certain religion. However, such trend is a relatively recent one, as past empires of China have extensively utilized advocacy and persecution of religions in order to achieve a certain effect. Buddhism is a prime example of such imperial exploitation; ever since Buddhism was first introduced to China in the Han dynasty, it was extensively utilized in politics, whether by being advocated or persecuted. Some emperors did advocate or persecute the religion for purely religious reasons, but for the most part it was because they attempted to achieve a certain effect. This paper will explain the rationale …show more content…
Wu zetian was also a part of the minority, regarding her gender, and the common people who Wu zetian considered as potential supporters were also from the minority class. Therefore, the empress attempted to spread egalitarianism through Buddhism, which directly contradicted the teachings of Confucianism (Harvey 2000, 406). Although Buddhism did increase in popularity during the Tang dynasty, Confucianism was the prevalent philosophy and majority of the aristocracy were Confucians. The Confucian emphasis on male dominance and female subordinacy is proved in the popular Chinese proverb “Being untalented is a virtue in a woman” (Yuan 2005, 2), and from this the fact that Wu zetian was heavily opposed by the aristocracy can be inferred. As a female ruler, which was unusual in China at the time, it would have been critical for Wu zetian to stress the fact that women are not subordinate to men and that she has the capability to rule the empire. Buddhism would thus have been helpful to Wu zetian’s rule, with its emphasis on egalitarianism (Harvey 2000, 406). Not only gender equality but also class equality was useful for Wu zetian. As mentioned above, the empress was in need of support from the common people and members of the lower bureaucracy; thus she overtly demonstrated her support of egalitarianism by supporting the welfare …show more content…
However, there was more than simple enhancement in the religion itself, as China was also affected politically and economically. As one of the political reasons for the royalty advocating Buddhism was to solidify their rule, this was an obvious result in many of the cases, but there were other signs of political impact that had a more negative connotation. Monks started to enter the political stage and gained important positions in court, which is visible during the regimes of Tang Daizong and Wu zetian (Wang 2005, 133). Both created several of their most-favored monks as dukes which gave them more political say (Tang and Winkler 2016, 275). There is also proof that even monks who did not directly associate with the government exerted massive power. Some monasteries constructed under Liang Wudi’s rule were highly similar with imperial architecture (Strange 2011, 75), which not only proves that excessive money was consumed for Buddhist architecture but also that the authority of the Buddhist clergy had risen immensely. Such court influence of monks was not well-accepted by other government officials; according to Tang sources, political participation of monks are likely to compromise state secrets (Tang and Winkler 2016, 276), which would decentralize imperial authority and incur social unrest. To prevent this, some