Academia.eduAcademia.edu
Merit, Karma, and Exchange: Chinese Buddhist Mountain Tourism Company Listings on the Stock Market Kin Cheung* Since Mount Emei, one of the four famous Chinese Buddhist mountains, became associated with a publicly traded stock as a tourism company in 1997, other Chinese Buddhist sites in mainland China have announced plans for their own Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in China’s stock exchanges. This has elicited sharp criticism by Chinese officials and citizens denouncing these actions as greedy and against the spirit of Buddhism. However, Chinese Buddhist institutions have always extensively engaged in commercial economic activities. Attributing IPO plans’ agency to Buddhists is not straightforward due to the conflict between state actors, who control local tourist development, with others in how to present a public Buddhist image. There are differences in class perceptions of these IPOs. Examining mountain gazetteers, news articles, and public finance records, I argue Buddhist economies of merit, karma, and exchange offer alternative lenses for understanding the epitome of contemporary capitalism: engaging the stock market.    * Kin Cheung. Department of Global Religions, Moravian University, 1200 Main St., Bethlehem, PA, 18018, USA. Email: cheungk@moravian.edu. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2021, Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 931–955 https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab073 Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Religion 2021. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jaar/article/89/3/931/6377686 by cheungk@moravian.edu on 29 September 2021 Roundtable on Living Neoliberalism: Negotiating Markets and Morality Outside the West