Monasteries for Political Survival: the Rise of Buddhism in Mid-Imperial China

Abstract

Why do some authoritarian rulers co-opt politically uninfluential social forces at the expense of state building? We argue that autocrats can co-opt spiritually influential but politically weak actors, such as non-indigenous religious institutions, to strengthen their legitimacy and to counterbalance entrenched elites. We test this argument in the context of mid-imperial China, where many usurpers actively supported Buddhism by granting tax-exempt land and population to monasteries. While this co-optation undermined fiscal capacity, it served to bolster usurpers’ divine legitimacy as well as to position monasteries to compete with the landed aristocracy for essential resources, thereby weakening elite power. Using a novel dataset of over 10,000 temples and instrumental variable analyses, we show that usurper regimes were associated with higher levels of temple construction compared to those of ordinary successors. Notably, the most pronounced temple-building activities occurred under self-entrenched usurpers, who faced substantial legitimacy and power challenges yet possessed enough power to implement religious policies. Focusing on the reign of the famous usurper Li Shimin, a difference-in-differences analysis shows that regions dominated by aristocrats experienced significantly more temple constructions than other areas. This study contributes to our understanding of state-society relations, and of the rise of Buddhism in China.