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The Ren’ai Charity Foundation

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Religion and China's Welfare Regimes

Part of the book series: Religion and Society in Asia Pacific ((RSAP))

Abstract

This chapter presents an ethnography of the Ren’ai Foundation and its sponsor, the Longquan temple, an important Buddhist monastery in a suburb West of Beijing suburb. The Ren’ai Foundation has benefitted from state support, and its founder, Xuecheng, as leader of the BAC prior to his sudden fall from grace in the summer of 2018, was the most influential Buddhist actor in the country. I do not elaborate on the circumstances of this situation, which have remained unclear at the time of writing. I do offer impressions of my visit there, complemented with the fieldwork undertaken by another colleague and a variety of local primary sources.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As the director and vice president of ABC Television in New York from 1982 to 2004, Dzodin became a commentator on China Global Television Network (CGTN) and a columnist for the China Daily in 2010. He is also president of Cinergy International Culture Consulting Company and was a counsellor to President Jimmy Carter.

  2. 2.

    Three years later, my colleagues Ji Zhe in Paris and Stefania Travagnin in Groningen told me they had received similar delegations, and the purpose of these visits was even more ambitious, as the visiting monastics were looking for land on which to establish their first European branches.

  3. 3.

    McCarthy (2013).

  4. 4.

    McCarthy (2013, 2019).

  5. 5.

    The languages are Japanese, Korean, English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. This selection of languages speaks volumes: the report does not target the Thai-, Burmese-, or Vietnamese-speaking Buddhist communities, which are arguably much larger in number than European-language communities interested in Buddhism.

  6. 6.

    BRCJ (2020a).

  7. 7.

    McCarthy (2013: 65) reported a main office in a high-rise apartment building in an apartment complex in downtown Beijing in Ren’ai’s early years, in contrast to Juequn’s office in Shanghai, which appears to be a late development. Her information and that which the Ren’ai website offers suggest that the foundation has a legal address extremely far from the temple, in the Fengtai district south of Tian’anmen Square, not far from the Beijing Audit Bureau. See Ren’ai cishan (2016).

  8. 8.

    ZFJ (2020).

  9. 9.

    The CFPA has not returned the favor to Ren’ai: none of the Buddhist associations mentioned in this book so far appear on the long list of donors, which includes sums ranging from 10,000 to 214 million RMB across the country. However, many firms—both Chinese and transnational—as well as individual donors are included. This is demonstrably a case of invisibility imposed on religious actors by the CFPA. For the list of donors, see ZFJ (2020: 72–83).

  10. 10.

    CFC (2020a). CFC vice president Wang Lu was deputy director of the Ren’ai Foundation when the Capital Philanthropy Federation, a quasi-governmental organization, granted it the status of an exemplary charity. McCarthy (2019: 81).

  11. 11.

    CFC (2019). The CFC online report for 2020, however, includes the Lingshan charity based in Wuxi as 73rd among the top 100. See CFC (2020b). The same report also includes Tzu chi as 91st.

  12. 12.

    Ren’ai, or “benevolence,” is a widely used term, regardless of whether an organization is religious or non-religious. This is why other Beijing foundations with Ren’ai in their names tend to use a qualifier, such as the Beijing Mazu Ren’ai Charity Foundation北京妈祖仁爱慈善基金会. For a complete list, see CFC (2020c).

  13. 13.

    McCarthy (2013: 65).

  14. 14.

    Chengxi (2013a).

  15. 15.

    Huikong (2012).

  16. 16.

    Chengxi (2013b).

  17. 17.

    He joined the Fujian CPPC in 1998 and the CCPPC in 2001. In 2005, he joined the Council for United Front Theory Research Center (tongyi zhanxian lilun yanjiuhui lishi 统一战线理论研究会理事) and was appointed vice chairman of the China Youth Federation. As of 2020, the Ren’ai Foundation website has erased all traces of Xuecheng from its archives, and little is known of his whereabouts since 2019.

  18. 18.

    McCarthy (2019: 83). She previously used the phrase “compassion congee” (McCarthy 2013: 65). The translation proposed by the Ren’ai Foundation is either “love porridge” (Huikong 2012: 228) or “(delivery of) free congee” (Chengxi 2013b: 82).

  19. 19.

    The “civic virtue award” was an example of the marriage between Buddhism and Confucian values that Dutournier and Ji (2009) have noted in their case study of Ven. Jinkong’s program of moral education.

  20. 20.

    This is a very imperfect translation, but I chose it because the Ren’ai Foundation has translated it this way. Chengxi (2013b: 82).

  21. 21.

    This reminded me of the attitude taught to Tzu Chi volunteers, but no Ren’ai volunteer I talked to said they had derived this approach from the Taiwanese foundation.

  22. 22.

    By 2017, Ren’ai had added the cities of Qinhuangdao, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, and Datong. See RXB (2017).

  23. 23.

    The other locations are in the Qinghua 清华 hi-tech park, the commercial hub of Chaowai 朝外, and the industrial districts of Yizhuang 亦庄 and Tongzhou 通州.

  24. 24.

    Most of the passersby looked away or politely declined the volunteers’ offerings.

  25. 25.

    I did see a few of them who gratefully accepted the offer.

  26. 26.

    BRCJ (2019a).

  27. 27.

    These includes 18 stations in Beijing, 11 of which registered after I left: ten in Guangdong, seven in Fujian, five in Hebei, four in Henan, and the rest from Sichuan to Shanghai. See BRCJ (2019b).

  28. 28.

    BRCJ (2019c).

  29. 29.

    Huikong (2012: 228–229).

  30. 30.

    BRCJ (2019c).

  31. 31.

    Chengxi (2013b: 108).

  32. 32.

    BRCJ (2020a: 3).

  33. 33.

    Moreover, the regulations on religious affairs forbid people under 18 to enter any religious venue.

  34. 34.

    McCarthy (2013: 70).

  35. 35.

    BSBS (2016).

  36. 36.

    Monks and lay devotees collect used clothes in schools and communities. I could not find out how the donations were solicited in the first place. None of the sources or documents produced by Ren’ai discloses this information. However, McCarthy (2019: 79) mentions that Communist Party branch members working for SARA donated some of their clothes, as they were on a mission to study and practice charity.

  37. 37.

    Huikong (2012: 228).

  38. 38.

    BRCJ (2019d).

  39. 39.

    Huikong (2012: 236–237). The earlier version of Ren’ai’s website, which has now been deleted, provided more precision: the volunteers answered questions related to spiritual suffering, emotional entanglements, work pressure, family conflicts, children’s education, property disputes, and difficulties with the social environment.

  40. 40.

    It used to be called “The Sound of Longquan Listening Hotline”.

  41. 41.

    BRCJ (2019e).

  42. 42.

    This service, which was mentioned on the 2014 edition of Ren’ai’s website, was in the making when I was in Beijing that year; it had yet to be mentioned in Chengxi (2013b) and Huikong (2012).

  43. 43.

    BRCJ (2019e). The foundation claims that over 7000 volunteers have assisted close to 20,000 people.

  44. 44.

    Introductory information on each of these projects, accompanied with many photos, is available in a digitalized document. See Ren’ai Cishan (2016).

  45. 45.

    BRCJ (2013).

  46. 46.

    BRCJ (2019e).

  47. 47.

    The foundation does not operate contact sites (zhandian lianluo fangshi 站点联络方式) in any of the autonomous regions.

  48. 48.

    BRCJ (2019f).

  49. 49.

    The Xixia County Ren’ai Association for Relief to Young Children (Xixiaxian Ren’ai ertong jiuzhuhui 西峡县仁爱儿童救助会) appears to be unrelated to the Ren’ai Foundation. See Guo (2019).

  50. 50.

    BRCJ (2019g).

  51. 51.

    BRCJ (2019h).

  52. 52.

    Volunteers alternate during the week, so in the end, for every stand there could be up to 100 participants.

  53. 53.

    The last report with information about donors which I could access disclosed data for 2012; since 2014, my online requests have returned a blank page. The same is true for other reports dated 2010.

  54. 54.

    Some of the individual donors I had identified in the 2012 report were part of the foundation’s supervisory staff, while many others were anonymous.

  55. 55.

    The foundation displays 16 of them. See BRCJ (2019i).

  56. 56.

    BRCJ (2019j). The 2019 organizational chart differs considerably from the one I saw in 2012, which, alongside the council, included a supervisory board (jianshihui 坚事会) assisted by consultant (guwen 顾问) and advisory (zixun 咨询) committees, as well as different departments for the management of charity programs (xiangmu guanli 项目管理), property (zichan 资产), volunteers’ affairs (zhiyuanzhe guan’huai 志愿者关怀), relations with the media (meiti gongguan 媒体公关), and program development (xiangmu tazhan 项目拓展).

  57. 57.

    Legal opinions are not laws, and therefore the political signals they seem to send can change rapidly.

  58. 58.

    BRCJ (2020a).

  59. 59.

    BRCJ (2020b).

  60. 60.

    For a map of the counties and prefectures put under lockdown, see Leung (2020).

  61. 61.

    Pavolini et al. (2017: 254–255).

  62. 62.

    Ibid.: 256.

  63. 63.

    Cook (2017) and Wenzel et al. (2020: 8–10).

  64. 64.

    McCarthy (2019: 77).

  65. 65.

    Private correspondence, 2015.

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    André Laliberté

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Laliberté, A. (2022). The Ren’ai Charity Foundation. In: Religion and China's Welfare Regimes. Religion and Society in Asia Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7270-5_12

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