The Forgotten Bonds: A Coevolutionary Framework on the Diffusion of Tzu Chi in Four Southeast Asian Countries

Introduction

The diffusion of new religions is an important social and transnational phenomenon. Existing sociological theories tend to analyze this phenomenon from the voluntaristic paradigm where the unit of analysis is mostly individuals (e.g., migrants and missionary; Cadge, 2004; Wuthnow, 2009). The success of the diffusion of a new religion is easily attributed to the strategies of the religious communities and the leaders’ charisma (Snow & Phillips, 1980). The voluntaristic view may explain well those cases where religious landscape functions as a market (e.g., the United States), but offers poor accounts in cases where the social and cultural environment differs significantly from the market-like environment.

In this article, the diffusion of Tzu Chi, a Chinese Buddhist organization that originated from Taiwan to four Southeast Asian countries—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines, is used to highlight the insufficiency of the voluntaristic view in explaining the divergent diffusion patterns of Tzu Chi in these four Southeast Asian countries. Despite being known as one of the most influential charities and Buddhist organizations in contemporary Taiwan and the wider Chinese world, the global diffusion of Tzu Chi has not been examined seriously. Its diffusion into the United States seems to fit the voluntaristic aspect well in that individual migrants’ efforts are crucial for the religion’s rapid growth in the United States (Denoon, 2006; W. Huang, 2010) and Canada (Braun, 2004). The popular case study method may strengthen the voluntaristic view while using a comparative method helps us to see similarities and differences beyond the cases. In the four cases of this research, migrants began arriving and practicing their Tzu Chi style charitable and religious practice around the same time (the early 1990s), but why does the pattern of diffusion differ significantly? How do we explain this difference? Through comparing these four cases, this article aims to reveal what I call the forgotten layers of interactions behind the voluntaristic narrative. Borrowing Padgett and Powell’s (2013) organization emergence theory, I develop a coevolutionary framework to explain the different diffusion patterns of Tzu Chi.

The article proceeds as follows. First, I will review the voluntaristic tradition in the study of diffusion of religion and discuss my attempt to bridge the gap between the study of diffusion and the study of the emergence of new organizational forms. Second, I discuss the comparative research design and sources of data. Third, I briefly discuss the background of Tzu Chi and its cultural significance. Then, I turn to my discussion to the four empirical cases—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. In each case, I try to identify the most significant network genesis mechanism that makes the diffusion possible and sustains the evolution of local Tzu Chi. In the final section, I summarize the findings of this research with a discussion on how the framework advances our understanding of the diffusion process.

Beyond Voluntaristic View

The phenomenon of diffusion has been well-studied in social science (Katz, 1999; Rogers, 2003). Scholars have examined the origin, the process, and the consequence of diffusion (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; McAdam & Rucht, 1993). The success of diffusion is determined by multiple factors such as the community structure of the receiving place, and the infrastructure of communication (Strang & Meyer, 1993). However, in the area of the diffusion of new religion, most of the existing studies tend to emphasize the voluntaristic perspective explicitly or implicitly (e.g., Wuthnow 2009). From the voluntaristic aspect, the diffusion of new religion is made successfully by individuals such as missionaries. The analytical focus is usually anchored in the strategies and characteristics of individual migrants such as migrant identities (Levitt et al., 2011).

For example, in explaining the success of Soka Gakkai in Italy, Barone (2007) argues that we cannot simply attribute the success to the individual’s action, but at the end, it is still the “emotional strategies” employed by Soka’s members the key to the success. Similarly, the strength of immigrant religion in the United States is usually analyzed through the lens of individual identity within both the host and the home countries (Cadge & Sigalow, 2013). The emphasis on the voluntaristic dimension of diffusion of new religion contains a certain level of truth, but at the same time, the voluntaristic perspective’s analytical power functions best in the existence of a market-like environment where government regulation, cultural barriers, and ethnic discrimination are reduced to the minimal. In the model case of the United States, the market-like environment creates space for new religious organizations and aspiring immigrants. However, this market-like view has difficulties in explaining cases where local institutions, culture, and policies differ from this U.S. model.

In cases where local religious ecology is not in the market-like form, the diffusion of new religion needs to be analyzed through a lens beyond the voluntaristic perspective. Existing studies have pointed out that the success of foreign religious organizations needs the local government’s support. For example, Tzu Chi’s success in China is explained through the lens of how it fits the Chinese government’s stance on religion (Lalibérté, 2013). However, at the same time, we should not shift from the voluntaristic view too quickly to another extreme that emphasizes the importance of government preference. Instead, this article argues for a coevolutionary view. In the very first study on the diffusion of Tzu Chi to Singapore, the researcher’s focus was solely on one or two individuals (Tan, 2009). A similar view is also expressed in an ethnographic study on the diffusion of Tzu Chi to Malaysia (C. Huang, 2012, 2013). It is hard to deny the importance of migrants in the diffusion process, but overemphasizing this aspect conceals the complexities of the whole process. In Southeast Asian countries, religious affairs are closely tied to sensitive issues such as ethnic relationships, and religion is often the source of social conflicts (Kuah, 2009). Governments exercise tight control over religious issues (Lim, 2013; Tong, 2007). Under this circumstance, the voluntaristic perspective is insufficient in helping us understand the diffusion of new religion in these cases.

The insufficiency of the voluntaristic paradigm is further problematized by the lack of engagement between the general sociological literature on diffusion and the literature on innovation and new organizational forms. Scholars of diffusion tend to emphasize migration but ignore the fact that diffusion, at the same time, may bring new organizational forms to the host society. Similarly, scholars of new organizational forms usually pay more attention to the endogenic factors (e.g., networks) that generate innovation but overlook the importance of migration. In their recent work, John Padgett and Walter Powell (2013) attempt to integrate these two fields and offer a theoretical framework that explains the emergence of new organizations and organizational forms. They identify eight network genesis mechanisms (e.g., transposition of the existing networks, migration, diversity anchoring). The novelty (e.g., a new organization, a new way of conducting charity) emerges from the coevolution of social networks that generates what they call “autocatalysis”—a system that can begin to reproduce itself.

Padgett and Powell’s theory of the genesis of novelty offers us a theoretical tool to explain the different diffusion outcomes. Due to space constraints, I cannot fully explain their theory here but will offer a brief discussion on the four network genesis mechanisms most relevant to this article. First, Padgett and Powell argue that migration is an important network genesis mechanism. However, new things, ideas, and religion can be brought by migrants to a foreign place (e.g., missionary) or they can be brought by people back to their home town (e.g., study tour). I call the first type “passive diffusion” and the second type “active diffusion.” For example, Tzu Chi’s practices are brought to South East Asia not only by Taiwanese migrants but are also actively sought by the local people of Southeast Asian societies. Second, the mechanism of transposition and refunctioning indicates that new organizations are often the result of the transposition and refunctioning of the existing networks. In my case, the existence of similar functioning networks or organizations in the host society can help the diffusion of new religion because some of these existing organizations can become the carrier of the new one. Third, the mechanism of conflict-displacement means that new ideas and organizational forms emerge as a response to a common goal or threat. In the case of diffusion of new religion, the new organization emerges because this new religion helps to deal with a common threat. Fourth, the mechanism of anchoring diversity indicates that new organizations arise and succeed because they deal with the existing diversity in the population better.

My coevolutionary perspective does not reject the utility of the voluntaristic view but incorporates their insights on the immigrant agency into a broader theoretical framework. My analysis further pays attention to the crucial events, and the crucial roles of the Chinese social and economic elites in the four cases. Critical events have the power to reshape the existing social networks and the overseas Chinese elites’ reaction to certain social issues can make a new arrangement to the existing social networks. These new networks coevolve with the migration networks and generate the force that legitimizes the existence and the need for a new religious organization like Tzu Chi in these four countries. However, the different combinations of network dynamics also make the pattern of development in these four countries quite different. I will elaborate on these differences when I discuss each case.

Comparative Research Design

Studying the diffusion of new religion is methodologically challenging. Before a new religion gains the public attention, scholars, in general, do not know of their existence. Therefore, when researchers need to reconstruct the diffusion process, they typically rely on the recollection of individuals. This problem also arises in the study of the emergence of new organizations. To overcome this problem, scholars often use historical data such as organizational publications, newspaper reports, or government records to complement the interview data (Johnson & Powell 2015). This article is based on a comparative research design. Four Southeast Asian countries are selected—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and the Philippines. They are selected for the reason that the migrants began the religious and charity work around the same time (the late 1980s to early 1990s), but the development path is quite different. Tzu Chi has enjoyed a steady and smooth development in Malaysia, while its development in the other three countries is contingent on the happening of critical events.

Data used for this research come from multiple sources. First, I have conducted several field trips to collect data and interview with the founding members in each country. I also rely on publications about the stories of how the foreign branches have been established. For example, I have utilized a primary organizational publication—the Tzu Chi monthly newsletter (TCM). The first newsletter was published in July 1966 and edited by volunteers. Unlike the secondhand materials that tend to tell a coherent narrative, the newsletter only contains information about events. For example, it recorded the visit of a tour group composed of several Malaysians in August 1971 and a donation made by the Lee Foundation in Singapore to Tzu Chi in 1974. These records enable me to uncover the hidden parts of diffusion and circulation of people, materials, and ideas. Details and information about the development of each branch are gathered from the Tzu Chi Almanac and the branch websites. Table 1 is a summary of the latest information of Tzu Chi in the four countries. Figure 1 shows the growth of Tzu Chi’s commissioners (those who take at least 2-year training and get a certificate) in each country.

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Table 1.

The Status of Tzu Chi in the Four Countries.

	Malaysia	Singapore	Indonesia	Philippines
Commissioners	6,917	821	812	512
Branches	156	6	36	11
Voluntary medical staff	1,665	1,020	1,748	480
Recipients (free medical service)	25,591	45,020	24,036	11,850
Donors a (members)	1,000,000	>30,000	>50,000	>30,000

Note. Source: Tzu Chi Almanac 2018.

a

Data on the number of donors are from the branch website.

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Figure 1.

The growth of Tzu Chi’s commissioners in the four countries, 2005-2018.

Background of Tzu Chi: A Modern Chinese Buddhist Organization

Before presenting the analysis of each case, I will briefly discuss the background of Tzu Chi in this section. As one of the East Asian new religious organizations, Tzu Chi has become a globally known Buddhist and charity organization in the past three decades (Laliberté et al., 2011; Madsen, 2007). It now operates in more than 50 countries in various fields including disaster relief, medical humanitarian campaign, and education. It was funded by a young Buddhist nun, Cheng Yen, and several women on the east coast of Taiwan in 1966. At the beginning, it acted like a mutual-aid community organization that provided money and services to the poor and needy by pooling monthly cash donations from donors. By the end of the 1970sTzu Chu had been a successful charity organization, with thousands of people who became regular donors. During the 1980s, it encountered an explosive growth alongside democratization processes taking place in Taiwan. With the increase of resources, the organization expanded its service to medicine, education, global disaster relief, and environmentalism (Lee & Han, 2015).

The organization of Tzu Chi is often characterized as a charismatic type of organization centered around its leader Cheng Yen (C. Huang, 2009). However, as recent studies have revealed, the organization is not only based on a single individual’s will but more on the flexible and spontaneous organizational culture (Lee, 2017). Unlike the traditional patriarchal and hierarchical Chinese Buddhist organization, Tzu Chi’s members are mostly lay-volunteers who call themselves “commissioner.” In the early years, to be a commissioner did not require any training. As long as one can commit to solicit donations and lead charitable works regularly, she or he could be accepted quickly. Most of Tzu Chi’s commissioners are women, and till today, many of Tzu Chi’s leaders are women (Lee & Han, 2016).

In contrast to the traditional Buddhist organizations emphasizing the detachment from the secular issues, Tzu Chi advocates an active engagement with social affairs. Thus, commissioners are expected to undertake the obligation of taking care of those who are suffering. Because of the emphasis of Tzu Chi’s religious teaching on social engagement, it is often regarded as the model of the modern Chinese humanistic Buddhism or Buddhism in the human realm (Goossaert & Palmer, 2011). It is in this regard that scholars have viewed Tzu Chi as a type of “engaged Buddhism” (C. Huang, 2012). The diffusion of Tzu Chi to foreign countries first took place at the end of the 1980s. The United States and Canada, two of the major destinations of Taiwanese migrants, became the earliest places where Tzu Chi was diffused. Later, in the early 1990s, Tzu Chi was diffused to China and Southeast Asian countries. The following sections will explore the mechanisms that led to the divergent diffusion process and outcomes.

Diffusion as a Mutual-Strengthening Process: The Case of Malaysia

The first case in this article explores is Malaysia. Compared with the other three cases, the diffusion of Tzu Chi to Malaysia is arguably the most successful. This is shown in the sheer numbers of members, branches, and activities (see Table 1). According to Tzu Chi’s official description, the successful diffusion was initiated by several Taiwanese migrants. An example is Ms. Yeh, a female factory manager who worked in Penang in 1987. Ms. Yeh had been a member of Tzu Chi in Taiwan. Being a foreign manager of a local factory, she would have likely gained the trust of the local people. Thus, she began to transplant Tzu Chi’s charity work to Penang.

However, in a country where Islam is the legally institutionalized religion, the challenge for the diffusion of new religions is not easy. The voluntary behavior of these migrants received support from the existing social networks represented by the ethnic Chinese Buddhist organizations. Before the work of these migrants, some of the Chinese Buddhist organizations had already established a relationship with Buddhist organizations in Taiwan and had known of the new social engagement that Tzu Chi advocated. Cizong, a young Malaysian monk and the abode of a temple in Kuala Lumpur, had organized regularly overseas visits to Taiwan and Hong Kong. In 1972, he and his team had already visited Tzu Chi to see how they conducted charity work. Apparently, Cizong was quite impressed by Tzu Chi’s work. After he returned to Malaysia, under the guise of helping the sister group in Taiwan, he began to initiate similar fundraising campaigns in Malaysia. This was unusual in the diffusion of new religion since the initiator was from another religious organization. The spontaneous fundraising activities from the local Malaysian Buddhists even attracted the attention of Malaysian’s largest Chinese newspaper Sin Chew Daily to do a report about why many Malaysian Chinese were eager to support Tzu Chi, a foreign organization (TCM, Vol. 296, 1991).

The new Taiwanese migrants who came to Malaysia by the end of the 1980s collaborated with these existing Malaysian Chinese Buddhist networks that helped them to spread Tzu Chi’s name in the local Chinese communities. Then, the collaboration led them to engage more with the non-Chinese and non-Buddhist networks. The nonexclusive nature of Buddhism and the focus on social issues instead of religious conversion makes Tzu Chi easier to collaborate with than other religious organizations. This was evidenced in how Tzu Chi’s medical humanitarian work often collaborated with Muslim communities in rural areas, and their leadership was composed of native Malaysian Chinese or native Malays. The emergence of this new collaboration seemed to be quite successful in handling the tension between different ethnic groups. Thus, Tzu Chi’s practice was quickly adopted by other local factories and had attracted more local participants who wanted to transplant Tzu Chi practices. In this process, no one had been converted to Tzu Chi. Rather, as the transposition mechanism suggests, those powerful local networks have been transposed to be a carrier of Tzu Chi. Thus, it was the collaboration between local communities, and migrants rather than the single migrants’ effort that brought about the successful diffusion. Because the Malaysian branch of Tzu Chi is built on these densely connected local networks, it has proven that its enormous mobilization capacity during crises cannot be discounted. For example, in the Malaysian Airline MH370 incident, the Malaysian branch partnered with the Malaysian and Chinese governments to offer thousands of volunteers and services (Lee & Han, 2017).

Conflict Displacement and Inclusion: The Case of Indonesia

In terms of the membership and branch establishment, the case of Indonesia is only second to Malaysia. However, the diffusion process took on a very different pattern compared with the case of Malaysia. In contrast to the gradual mutually strengthened process in Malaysia, the diffusion in Indonesia was more of a sudden outburst and centered on a small local elites’ network. Similar to other cases, a few Taiwanese migrants who migrated to Indonesia in the 1990s wanted to bring Tzu Chi’s charity work to Indonesia. However, they soon encountered several difficulties. First, unlike Malaysia where the Chinese accounted for one third of the total population, it was hard to spread a new religion in a society where the dominant religion was Islam and where the Chinese only accounted for less than 5% of the population; Second, there is a prevalent anti-Chinese attitude in Indonesian society. Anti-Chinese campaigns have been staged several times in the past. These factors made the diffusion of Tzu Chi to Indonesia seem difficult.

However, the anti-Chinese riots in May 1998 changed the situation dramatically. The riots lasted for several weeks and caused the death of thousands of ethnic Chinese. This tragedy stimulated a reflection among the powerful ethnic Chinese elites who wanted to search for innovative ways to handle the ethnic tension. This includes the powerful ethnic Chinese business tycoon Eka Tjipta Widjaja (Huang Yicong in Chinese), who is the founder of Sinar Mas Groups and one of the richest persons in Indonesia, as well as his son Franklin Widjaja (Huang Rongnian in Chinese), and several other powerful Indonesian Chinese business elites. Mr. Huang was introduced by a Taiwanese businessmen’s wife, Ms. Liu to Tzu Chi, as a potential way to ease the ethnic problem. He led a group of Indonesian entrepreneurs, mostly ethnic Chinese, on a visit to Taiwan in summer 1998. Tzu Chi’s staff tailormade a boot camp to teach these billionaires about the shortcomings and limitations of traditional charity works. Merely giving material goods will not ease the problem; rather a more active engagement with deeper social issues can do more was the message. After returning from Taiwan, using his business conglomerate’s superior resources, the Indonesian branch of Tzu Chi was quickly established, and his son Franklin, not only became a commissioner but also headed the Indonesian Tzu Chi’s operations (TCM, Vol. 386, 1999).

In contrast to the diffusion process in the other three cases, the Indonesian case shows that the diffusion could take place very fast through the work of the powerful local elites. In Indonesia, the search for a solution to conflicts and fostering greater inclusion tied Tzu Chi and a group of ethnic Chinese Indonesian business tycoons together. The power of this alliance is demonstrated in the Kali Angke project. Kali Angke (literally Red Creek river) is a river near Jakarta, where thousands of impoverished people were crowded. A flood in 2002 made the living condition of these ghettos unbearable. After careful planning, Tzu Chi Indonesia led by Franklin Huang summoned a group of influential Indonesia entrepreneurs to implement an unprecedented project that aimed to comprehensively transform these ghettos. The project included the building of several new villages, the provision of jobs, education, and medical services (see TCM, Vol. 425, 2002, for the earliest report on this project).

The diffusion of Tzu Chi in Indonesia took place in a top-down rather than the bottom-up manner exhibited in the case of Malaysia. The top-down process has given Tzu Chi Indonesia enormous power. Besides the aforementioned Kali Angke project, in the 2004 South Asia Tsunami, Tzu Chi Indonesia was able to become one of the humanitarian groups that sent thousands of volunteers to Aceh, North Sumatra. By benefitting from the support of the overseas Chinese tycoons, it was able to build a state-of-the-art Tzu Chi hospital near Jakarta.

The Dilemma of Stability: The Case of Singapore

My third case is Singapore. Intuitively, Singapore should have had the best condition for the diffusion of Tzu Chi. First, as a small city-state, Singapore is known as an immigrant society with a dominant Chinese population. The diffusion of Tzu Chi would not meet similar anti-Chinese sentiments found in the other three countries. Second, Singapore has a rich tradition of Chinese Buddhism brought in by Chinese immigrants (Chia, 2009; Tan, 2009). This should help the diffusion of Tzu Chi’s work. However, the diffusion of Tzu Chi to Singapore is surprisingly slow. The main factor for this slow diffusion process can be ironically explained by the state’s tight control over religious issues and the stability of Singaporean society.

Singapore was the first country that established a long-standing relationship with Buddhist organizations in China and Taiwan. The 1949 Communist revolution in China and the later religious cleaning forced many renowned Chinese monks to leave China for Southeast Asia. Among these famous monks, several of them had a close relationship with Tzu Chi. Yen-Pei, a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, was invited by the Singaporean Buddhists to found the Leng Foong Prajna temple in the 1960s. Yen-Pei was a much-respected monk in Singapore who pioneered the Buddhist welfare in Singapore. Realizing Tzu Chi’s need for financial support for their relief work, Yen Pei had approached the Lee Foundation, Singapore’s most famous charity foundation, to donate to Tzu Chi since 1972. In addition to Yen-Pei, the only Buddhist nunnery, Baoguang Temple, was founded by a nun who got her ordination and religious education in Taiwan.

Given these positive factors, we may expect that the diffusion would be very smooth. However, Tzu Chi’s diffusion into Singapore was hindered by the Singapore government’s stringent regulations. Because Tzu Chi’s work requires an active engagement with social issues (e.g., poor relief), the activities were not always held in private space. However, in Singapore, there are several regulations that prevent public gathering and solicitation. According to the reports I found, the public and the government also held a suspicious attitude toward volunteer work in hospitals and other institutes such as caring centers (TCM, Vol. 317, 1993). The government considered that religious voluntarism should be kept in the private area and public gatherings are not allowed by the government. This situation lasted until Tzu Chi proved itself through medical humanitarian work (e.g., the first overseas bone marrow transplantation) and disaster relief. In addition, it was reported that because the Singapore government was good at solving social issues, there were fewer poor people compared with the other three cases. Therefore, there were not many activities those immigrant Tzu Chi members could carry out in the 1990s.

The increase of social inequality since the late 1990s with the financial crisis had serious impact on the economy, and there was a change in the diffusion of Tzu Chi. The increase in the urban poor, the increasing burden of medical expenses, and ageing population who needed caring services offered new opportunities. Singapore Tzu Chi utilized the abundant human resources in the country to establish a local hub of its Tzu Chi International Medical Association that dispatched doctors for free medical services. Benefitting from its geographical location, the Singapore government views itself as the regional hub of Southeast Asia and encourages this collaboration. For example, it was reported that the Singaporean military helped the relief work of Tzu Chi in Meulaboh by offering transportation services (TCM, Vol. 459, 2005).

Fragmented Diffusion: The Case of Philippines

The last case is Philippines. Philippines differs from the previous two cases in its religious ecology and ethnic composition. The dominant religion in the Philippines is Catholicism. Ethnic Chinese account for around the same portion of the total population (1.3%) as compared with Indonesia (1.2%). Compared with the case of Malaysia and Indonesia, although the diffusion of Tzu Chi took place even earlier than these two countries, its development in the Philippines is best described as a fragmented process in which different social networks often undertook the role of diffuser independently without any close collaboration.

Similar to Malaysia, the Chinese Buddhist networks in the Philippines had been the earliest diffuser of Tzu Chi. Between 1970 and 1990, the Chinese Buddhist temples in the Philippines frequently sent people to Taiwan and invited monks to serve important positions in their temples and organizations. There also grew a group of supporters composed of local Chinese businessmen and renowned persons in the local ethnic Chinese communities in the Philippines. However, differing from the Malaysia case, these networks often saw short life spans. The networks were centered in several cities (e.g., Manila or Cebu), but they lacked horizontal connections. After the main leaders had vacated their positions, these networks quickly disappeared. Therefore, when the Taiwanese migrants affiliated with Tzu Chi arrived in the early 1990s, they found that they had to establish their organization mostly on their own without the prevalent existing social networks with which they could collaborate. Thus, they chose a strategy similar to Indonesia, and that was to find local supporters from the elite ethnic Chinese business community.

Discussion and Conclusion

Through revealing these forgotten interactions between Taiwan’s largest new religious organization and four South East Asian countries, this article aims to build a coevolutionary framework to explain the diffusion patterns of Tzu Chi in the four cases. The coevolutionary framework helps us overcome the shortcoming of the voluntaristic aspect that emphasizes the immigrants’ agency. Without denying these pioneers’ efforts, we should abandon the view that these Southeast Asian societies are merely passive recipients of new religions like Tzu Chi. I have shown that local ethnic elites and existing religious networks have played no less important roles than migrants in the diffusion process. They have been important supporters to the movement since the 1970s and have built relationships with the movement. Some of these established networks coevolved with the movement (e.g., Malaysia), but some did not (Philippines). The reason why some networks survived while others did not requires further research.

Using the theory of the emergence of new organizational forms to the study of diffusion of religion demonstrates that we should not only focus on who initiates the diffusion but also on how diffusion is persisted and sustained in the local society. The success of new religion in a foreign land requires suitable network genesis mechanisms to continue to reproduce itself. In these four cases, I find that the mechanisms of migration, transposition, anchoring diversity, and conflict displacement are the key four network genesis mechanisms. Migration appears in the four cases. However, in cases like Malaysia and Indonesia, both passive and active diffusion possess equal importance. Existing studies of the diffusion often focused on the effect of the passive diffusion such as examining the strategies used by missionary but pay less attention to the active diffusion. This study finds that the local people’s active seeking for new ideas and solutions, also plays a significant role. Transposition, the active transformation of existing networks or organizations, can be seen most clearly in the case of Malaysia and to a lesser extent in Indonesia. The local religious organizations or ethnic groups transformed from their original purpose to be the carrier of the new religion. Conflict displacement is seen most clearly in Indonesia, where the local leaders view Tzu Chi’s charity as a way to solve the anti-Chinese culture. This mechanism is also found in the Philippines. Anchoring diversity means a new form emerges from the inclusion of heterogeneous elements and it is clearly seen in the case of Malaysia.

Successful diffusion can be made through a series of effective mechanisms that strengthen each other. However, it can also be made through a single mechanism like the conflict-displacement mechanism as in the case of Indonesia where an event becomes the common threat that unifies the interests. These network genesis mechanisms are contingent on critical events including the anti-Chinese riot in Indonesia in 1998, and the Southeast Asian Tsunami in 2004. This article revealed the important role of these two critical events, namely, how they offered opportunities for a foreign religion like Tzu Chi to be accepted by the local elites.

In the organization studies of network coevolution, it has been argued that not only do organizations coevolve, but the new arrangement of network structure will also reshape the people within the network: “In the short run, actors create relations; in the long run, relations create actor” (Padgett & Powell, 2013, p. 2). Future research should study the relationship between the different patterns of diffusion and the characteristics of Tzu Chi’s followers and practices in each country. It is also worth examining the impact on Tzu Chi’s domestic activities brought by its overseas operations.