The mass emigration driven by the Chinese civil war and the retreat of Kuomintang regime from the Mainland had many profound effects, not least on how and where Chinese Buddhist traditions were transmitted among overseas Chinese. This study proposes that especially from 1949 to 1980, which can be seen as an ongoing part of the ‘immigrant transmission period’, set the course for the subsequent internationalization of humanistic Buddhist organizations in Taiwan. However, the adaptation of Buddhism to prevailing societal conditions was not limited to any one region. Over centuries, this belief tradition had followed the footsteps of sojourners and immigrants to Nanyang as well as Taiwan, although admixed with popular beliefs, it gradually became ‘orthodox’ after the arrival of monastics. The worldly, engaged Buddhist ideas, established since the emergence of the Republican era, were transmitted to these areas, being an important foundation for local Chinese Buddhist modernization. On the whole, the above-mentioned served as the common background. The characteristic of transmission in the focused time range (1949-1980) is that those who fled the civil war to Taiwan and British Hong Kong, monastics and lays, accompanied by industrialization, commercialization, and urbanization of the two societies, have gained some developments during the capital boom. Thus apart from the immigrant ‘bring-in’, Taiwan and Hong Kong as the center, there was a more delicate model for the spread once again to Southeast Asia and North America to a certain extent. This dissertation explores three forms of ‘cross-regional communication’ as textual community, groups, and individuals, to describe the various interactions among overseas Chinese Buddhists. Textual community here is based on the resumed and newly founded Buddhist magazines in Taiwan and Hong Kong, circulated through overseas distribution sites elsewhere, by reading and writing, constructing a cross-regional network. The World Chinese Buddhist Sangha Congress (Shijie fojiao huaseng hui 世界佛教華僧會) had convened overseas monastics of the same tradition in cooperation with Kuomintang regime’s public diplomatic need. It was in events of groups gathering like this that had a similar function with the textual community, where Buddhists were able to propose and exchange views on issues of their own, giving them an imagined identity. Communication in the form of individuals, on the other hand, refers to cross-bordered monastics, who traveled to other countries to propagate Buddhist teachings. In any case, the significance lies in the fact that Buddhism of a worldly nature was brought to Taiwan and Hong Kong mainly by these civil war diasporas, who set up a template and absorbed energy. It eventually diffused to become the most conspicuous symbol of international Chinese Buddhism today.
