• Fo-T'u-Teng founds Buddhist order of nuns (317).
• Translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese by Kumarajiva (344-413) and Hui-yüan (344-416).

• Chinese pilgrim scholar Fa-hsien visits India (399-414).
• Amitabha (Amida) the Pure Land School (Ching t'u) emerges in China (402). • First Patriarch of Pure Land was T'an-Luan (476-542)
• Persecution of Buddhism under Emperor Wu or Shih-tusu (424-451).
• Restoration under the new Emperor, Wen-ch'eng-ti (454).
• T'ien Tai school founded by Hui-Wen (470-?) in South China.

7th century CE

• The Southern School of Ch'an or new Ch'an begins in earnest with Hui-neng (638-713) the Sixth Patriarch.

• The Persecution in 845, during the reign of Emperor Wu-tsung (841-7) an order came to the effect that all Buddhist establishments should be destroyed, initiating a decline in Chinese Buddhism.

• The invention of block printing by Chinese Buddhists. The oldest extant book printed is the Tun-hung book of 868 it contained excerpts from the Diamond Sutra .

• China during the Yuan Dynasty was under Mongolian rule and the influences of Tibetan Lamaism. It was during the Mogol Dynasty that the Buddhist-Taoist controversy was brought before Mangu Khan in 1255. The acrimonious debate, which had started over a 1000 years before was finally concluded in the Buddhist's favour by an edict of Kublai Khan in 1281.

• Movement toward unity among the schools developed under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)
• Master Chu-hung, (born 1535) united in his person the two leading trends in Ming Buddhism: harmonization of the different schools (specifically Cha'n and Pureland) and the inauguration of a lay Buddhist movement.

• The revolution of 1911 that toppled the Manchu Dynasty and established the Republic of China brought problems for the Buddhist Sangha. To combat these trends arose a remarkable monk, T'ai-hsu (1898-1947) who was able to rally his fellow religionists and to initiate a program of reform. On the national scale he organised a Chinese Buddhist Society in 1929.

• A revival of the Idealistic School was initiated by the publication in 1901of the Ch'eng-wei-shih-lun (Notes on the Completion of the Idealistic Doctrine) of K'uei-chi, long lost in China but brought back from Japan. The leader of this revival was the layman Ou-yang Chien, and the Institute of Inner Learning, which he organised in Naking (Nanjing) in 1922.

• Hsu Yun, Ch'an Master (1840-1959) 'Universally regarded as the most outstanding Buddhist of the Chinese Sangha in the modern era' (Richard Hunn). Dharma successor of all five Ch'an schools; main reformer in Chinese Buddhism revival (1900-50).

• Wong Mou-Lam translated the The Platform Sutra into English and founded the journal Chinese Buddhism (1930).

• (1898-1978) Upasaka Lu K'uan Yu (Charles Luk) Translator and Writer on Ch'an. Born in Canton. Lived in exile in Hong Kong.

• The official formation of the Chinese Buddhist Association by the government of the People's Republic of China on May 30th, 1953.

• The Cultural Revolution (1965-75) Buddhist temples and monasteries were sacked and the already weakened Sangha was further depleted. The excesses of this time have since been regretted, however, and a more liberal policy introduced.

• Ven. Cheng Yen founds Tzu Chi Compassion Relief Association (1966) and Tzu Chi Compassion Foundation (1980).