When Small States Practice Buddhist Diplomacy

As strategic competition between China and India intensifies, Buddhism has become an increasingly visible instrument of foreign policy. China has positioned itself as a center of Mahayana Buddhist civilization, sponsoring international Buddhist forums, restoring sacred sites, and weaving Buddhist heritage into its Belt and Road Initiative. India, the birthplace of Buddhism, has promoted its own Buddhist heritage by expanding pilgrimage circuits and lending sacred relics abroad.

The focus on China and India obscures a quieter, yet equally significant, story. Buddhist diplomacy is being practiced not only by Asia’s largest powers, but also by two of its smallest states: Bhutan and Singapore.

The cases of Bhutan and Singapore demonstrate how small states can pursue Buddhist diplomacy under different conditions. Their limited geopolitical weight and lack of great power status have encouraged them to cultivate influence through cultural networks and regional cooperation.

Bhutan, the world’s only official Vajrayana Buddhist kingdom, is a small, landlocked Himalayan state that has placed Buddhist values at the heart of both its domestic governance and its engagement with the world.

This approach owes much to the vision of the Fourth King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who developed Gross National Happiness not simply as an alternative measure of development, but as a strategy for reconciling modernization with the preservation of Bhutan’s Buddhist culture and national identity. For a small state situated between India and China, this fusion of Buddhist values and development also served a strategic purpose, turning cultural distinctiveness into a means of safeguarding sovereignty while giving Bhutan an international profile far beyond its size.

The current king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, has had to navigate the structural constraints of Bhutan’s position between two much larger powers, preserving its longstanding ties with India while cautiously managing a consequential relationship with China, with which Bhutan still has no formal diplomatic relations. Against this backdrop, cultivating close relations with Thailand, Southeast Asia’s leading Theravāda Buddhist monarchy, provides Bhutan with a valuable partnership beyond its immediate geopolitical neighborhood.

Bhutan’s relations with Thailand have been reinforced through a series of recent high-level royal exchanges, including King Vajiralongkorn’s historic state visit to Bhutan in April 2025, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck’s receipt of an honorary doctorate from Chulalongkorn University in December 2025, and his attendance at the funeral rites of Princess Bajrakitiyabha in June 2026. In these exchanges, Buddhism serves as a shared cultural and symbolic language through which the two Buddhist monarchies deepen their bilateral relations.

The ongoing Gelephu Mindfulness City project extends Bhutan’s Buddhist diplomacy into the economic realm, transforming mindfulness, sustainability, and well-being from ethical principles into a distinctive national brand for attracting global investment and talent. In doing so, however, Gelephu exposes a central tension in Bhutan’s development strategy: Buddhist values that caution against excessive materialism are being strategically mobilized to facilitate the country’s deeper integration into global capitalism.

Unlike Bhutan, Singapore is a secular, multireligious republic with no official religion. Singapore therefore does not ground its diplomacy in Buddhist kingship or religious identity. Instead, it has cultivated a role as an intermediary, using Buddhist heritage to facilitate dialogue among governments, religious communities, scholars, and cultural institutions. This reflects Singapore’s broader diplomatic strategy as a small state: rather than competing directly with larger powers, it has sought to enhance its relevance by positioning itself as a connector among them.

Some of Singapore’s most effective Buddhist diplomacy has taken the form of people-to-people diplomacy, exemplified by the late Venerable Hong Choon, whose extensive ties with Thailand earned him the title of Supreme Chinese Monk from King Bhumibol Adulyadej and enabled him to host Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn during her visit to Singapore. He simultaneously cultivated extensive networks in China, making repeated visits and building relationships with senior Buddhist and political leaders throughout the 1980s, before Singapore and China established diplomatic relations in 1990.

During his tenure as Singapore’s foreign minister, George Yeo represented another dimension of this story. He championed the revival of Nalanda University as part of an “Asian Renaissance” that sought to recover Asia’s shared civilizational heritage as a basis for contemporary regional cooperation. A Catholic deeply engaged with Asian philosophies, Yeo demonstrated how Buddhism can transcend religious affiliation to become a diplomatic resource, enabling a small, multireligious state like Singapore to position itself as a connector among Asia’s larger powers while advancing regional dialogue and educational cooperation.

Singapore’s museums have likewise emerged as important actors in Buddhist diplomacy, using exhibitions of Buddhist material culture not only to strengthen institutional partnerships across Asia but also to position Singapore as a site for the interpretation and circulation of the region’s shared heritage. The upcoming Dunhuang exhibition at the Asian Civilizations Museum, organized in collaboration with the Dunhuang Academy in China, is a case in point, illustrating how Buddhist art can move beyond aesthetic appreciation to become a medium of cultural diplomacy that fosters regional relationships and advances Singapore’s role as a cultural connector in Asia.

As China and India continue to compete for influence across Asia, Bhutan and Singapore reveal how Buddhist diplomacy can operate in strikingly different small-state settings. 

In Bhutan, a Buddhist kingdom, Buddhism is embedded in the monarchy, national identity, and statecraft; in secular and multireligious Singapore, it functions instead as one among several cultural resources available for building regional connections. 

This contrast suggests that small-state Buddhist diplomacy has no single model: its effectiveness lies precisely in its capacity to adapt Buddhist actors, material culture, and networks to different political and cultural contexts while advancing national interests.