It seems that upscale Chinese have the same spiritual issues as overstressed Americans. A new BusinessWeek article suggests that upscale, overworked Chinese are discovering the wonders of Buddhism. After acquiring homes and BMWs, materialism that is new to most Chinese, they are discovering that they are bored and they begin to ask, “Is that all there is?” Some have gone so far as to opt out of the rat race to live their lives in monasteries.

From BusinessWeek, January 10, 2008

Downloadable mantras are available and flights to Tibet are sold out. At the 2nd Annual Buddhist Items and Crafts fair “more than 40,000 entrepreneurs descended on the vast Xiamen International Conference & Exhibition Center and loaded up on statuary, prayer beads, incense burners, and other goods.” It certainly sounds like they could give the CBA (the International Christian retail show) a run for its money.

So perhaps this marketing of religion is not just an American phenomenon.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 11:36 am and is filed under Religion and Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.