In recent years, religion in general and Buddhism in particular has started playing a more significant role in Chinese society, both at governmental policy levels as well community levels. According to a survey by the East China Normal University it is estimated that 31.4% of Chinese people aged 16 or over were religious, putting the number of believers at roughly 300 million, three times higher than the official figure. China Daily, carrying a report on the survey, claimed about 200 million of these are either Buddhist or followers of other traditional religions in China.

The current Chinese leadership is trying to find ways to use religious characteristics to help find solutions to social problems. President Hu Jintao has himself spoken out about religion and its role in China. According to Ye Xiaowen, head of China's State Administration for Religious Affairs, Buddhism with its "profound ideas of harmony and a conception of peace" could relieve the stresses and strains in people’s lives as well as between them and nature, thus enhancing social accord.

Similarly, at the community level there is an increasing acceptance of religion in people’s lives. Buddhism is seeing a revival at all levels of Chinese society and many Chinese are increasingly turning to Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist masters for spiritual guidance and succor.

The discussion at ICT will therefore be about the potential for Tibetan Buddhism to be the common ground for Tibetan and Chinese communities to come closer to and understand each other better.

Featuring:

Gray Tuttle
Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia University  

Chun-Hung Chen
Professor, George Mason University

Moderated by:
Pema Wangyal  
Research Analyst, International Campaign for Tibet

Details:

6:00PM, Friday, October 30, 2009
Please RSVP to info@savetibet.org or 202-785-1515

Location:

International Campaign for Tibet
1825 Jefferson Place, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202-785-1515

Biographies:

Gray Tuttle, Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia University  
Gray Tuttle received his Ph.D. in Inner Asian Studies at Harvard University in 2002. He studied the history of twentieth century Sino-Tibetan relations as well as Tibet’s relations with the China-based Manchu Qing Empire. The role of Tibetan Buddhism in these historical relations is central to all his research. In his Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (Columbia UP, 2005), he examines the failure of nationalism and race-based ideology to maintain the Tibetan territory of the former Qing empire as integral to the Chinese nation-state. Instead, he argues, a new sense of pan-Asian Buddhism was critical to Chinese efforts to hold onto Tibetan regions (one quarter of China’s current territory). His current research project focuses on the role of Amdo as a middle-ground between Lhasa and Beijing in the early modern period (1570-1870). Other long term writing projects include co-editing Sources of Tibetan Tradition for the series Introduction to Asian Civilizations and co-writing Tibet: History, Society, and Culture.

Chun-Hung Chen, Professor, George Mason University
Dr. Chen received the B.S. degree in Control Engineering from National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, in 1987, and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1989. During 1989-1991, he participated in a C3I project while performing his obligatory service in the Taiwan military. After finishing his obligatory military service, he worked with Dr. Larry Ho and obtained his Ph.D. degree in Simulation and Decision from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 1994. Since 1994, Dr. Chen has been as Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. His interests cover a wide range of areas in discrete event systems modeling and simulation, ordinal optimization, manufacturing systems design, and robot motion planning. Recently, he has been engaged in the development of very efficient approaches for stochastic simulation and decision problems, and in their applications to manufacturing, scheduling, supply chain management, network design, logistics, robot motion planning, stochastic equilibrium problems, and robust engineering design problems. He is also a specialist in web-based distributed simulation. Dr. Chen won the 1994 Harvard University Eliahu I. Jury Award for the Best Thesis in the field of Control. He is one of the recipients of the 1992 MasPar Parallel Computer Challenge Award and is listed in Who'sWho in America. Professor Chen is also a Tibetan Buddhist Practitioner.

Pema Wangyal, Research Analyst, International Campaign for Tibet:
Pema Wangyal (Baima Wangjie), is the China Research Analyst at International Campaign for Tibet. Born in Amdo, educated at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, Pema lectured at the Central University of Nationalities and the University of West on Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Cultural History before joining ICT in 2007. He has been frequently invited to comment for Voice of America and Radio Free Asia Broadcast Services.  He is also a prolific translator of various Buddhist texts.