On 9th November, the 5th Fujian Forum of Haisi Buddhism and the 40th Anniversary of the founding of Fujian Buddhist College was held at Guanghua Temple in Putian, Fujian. Venerables, experts and scholars from mainland China and abroad, representatives of Buddhist colleges, as well as more than 1,000 alumni of the Fujian Buddhist College gathered at Guanghua Temple, held a blessing ceremony, and discussed the current status of "HaiSi" Buddhist exchanges and future visions.

NetDragon Digital Religion Department was invited to participate the event, and Mi Xiong, the head of the department, was the guest speaker of the sub-forum "Chineseisation of Buddhist Education and Healthy Inheritance", and shared the department's explorations and practices in the field of digital Buddhist education, including Buddhist Smart Classroom, Buddhist Resource Library, Fujian Religious Literacy Cloud Classroom, Meditation Curriculum System, Religion "Information Walls", Buddhist Journey Interactive Panel, Online Buddha Bathing & Lighting of Lamps, Buddhist VR Experience Games, Buddhist AR Glasses, Digital Robots (Teaching Assistants), Buddhist Meta-Universe, Buddhist AI Intelligent Speaker, and holographic image of Master Yuan Ying.

The application of these new technologies also brings new thinking to the sector. With the advancement from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, technological innovation brings about brand-new social relations, economic systems, and belief systems, which is a large-scale redistribution of resources, and faith is the basic core and underlying structure for the reorganisation of all these systems and the acquisition of a wider spatial and temporal identity.

The forum provided an opportunity to share and explore the healthy development of Buddhist education. Mi Xiong put forward several suggestions in digital Buddhist education: upgrading the digital Buddhist resource library, building a learning and exchange platform for major Buddhist colleges, offering Internet hardware and software and operation courses to cultivate high-quality Buddhist venerables, and creating digital virtual venerables and virtues of the past generations to realise the preservation and inheritance of Buddhist culture.

During the event, Mi Xiong led the department to visit the Chairman of the International United Nations Day of Vesak Committee and the President of the International Buddhist University Union, Most Ven. Prof. Dr. Phra Brahmpundit, who was invited to participate in the meeting, and practically discussed the subsequent deployment of the digitalisation of Buddhism in Thailand as well as the creation of the official online platform of the United Nations Day of Vesak.

At present, with the deepening of the "Belt and Road" and the vigorous promotion of "Haisi Buddhism", the cross-strait and regional Buddhist cultural exchanges are increasing, and the Religion Department of NetDragon hopes to take advantage of this new opportunity to work with the world's major Buddhist colleges and Buddhist organisations to build a more diversified, open and sustainable Buddhist digital ecosystem.