The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad. The narrative they create is at odds with historical facts and deliberately misleading but, John Powers argues, it is widely believed by Han Chinese. Most of China's leaders appear to deeply believe the official line regarding Tibet, which resonates with Han notions of themselves as China's most advanced nationality and as a benevolent race that liberates and culturally uplifts minority peoples. This in turn profoundly affects how the leadership interacts with their counterparts in other countries. Powers's study focuses in particular on the government's "patriotic education" campaign--an initiative that forces monks and nuns to participate in propaganda sessions and repeat official dogma. Powers contextualizes this within a larger campaign to transform China's religions into "patriotic" systems that endorse Communist Party policies. This book offers a powerful, comprehensive examination of this ongoing phenomenon, how it works and how Tibetans resist it.

Buddha Party: How the People's Republic of China Works to Define and Control Tibetan Buddhism, John Powers, Oxford University Press, Hardcover, 2016,
392 pp, $34.95

John Powers is Professor of Asian Studies in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. He specializes in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan history and is the author of 17 books and more than 80 articles. His books include: A Bull of A Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism (2009) and Historical Dictionary of Tibet (with David Templeman; 2012).

Acknowledgments	ix
Technical Note	xi
Acronyms and Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1
1. Acts of Ingratitude	17
2. The Limitations of Propaganda	52
3. Patriotic Soul Boys and Other Chinese Myths	92
4. Tibetology with Chinese Characteristics	130
5. Chinese and Tibetan Perspectives on History	171
Conclusion	209
Appendix A: Tibetan Glossary	221
Appendix B: Glossary of Chinese Terms	229
Appendix C: Glossary of Buddhist Terms and Names	251
Notes	257
Bibliography	317
Index	361