Worldmaking at the Edge of Empire: The 7th Changkya Khutugtu, Postcolonial Rectification, and Cold War Utopian Buddhism in Taiwan

This paper situates the 7th Changkya Khutuktu’s post-1949 activities in Taiwan within the early Cold War as a project of postcolonial rectification that sought to purge the island of its Japanese Buddhist colonial legacy while reimagining Taiwanese Buddhism as part of a mainland Chinese pedigree. After relocating to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and assuming the presidency of the Buddhist Association of the ROC, the Inner Asian tulku undertook initiatives to “return” temples formerly administered by Japanese sects to Chinese Buddhist lineages, toured the island to promote what was framed as “proper” Chinese Buddhism, and advocated for the transfer of Xuanzang’s relic to Taiwan rather than to the PRC. I argue that, although articulated as anti-Japanese imperial redress and cultural restoration, these efforts participated in a new (arguably imperial) Buddhist worldmaking shaped by Cold War pressures and the ideological climate of the White Terror martial law era. Ultimately, they consolidated centralized Buddhist authority among waishengren mainlanders while marginalizing localized religious networks that had integrated multiple layers of colonial history.