UNHCR
Emergency & Security Service
|
|
WRITENET Paper No.
/
PR CHINA: FALUN GONG:
ASSESSING ITS ORIGINS AND
PRESENT SITUATION
Barend J. ter Haar
Sinological Institute, University of Leiden
July 2002
WriteNet is a Network of
Researchers and Writers on
Human Rights, Forced
Migration, Ethnic and Political Conflict
WriteNet is the Resource Base
of Practical Management (UK)
E-mail: writenet@gn.apc.org
THIS PAPER WAS
PREPARED MAINLY ON THE BASIS OF PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION, ANALYSIS AND
COMMENT. ALL SOURCES ARE CITED. THE PAPER IS NOT, AND DOES NOT PURPORT TO BE,
EITHER EXHAUSTIVE WITH REGARD TO CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY SURVEYED, OR
CONCLUSIVE AS TO THE MERITS OF ANY PARTICULAR CLAIM TO REFUGEE STATUS OR
ASYLUM. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THE PAPER ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR AND ARE NOT
NECESSARILY THOSE OF WRITENET OR UNHCR.
ISSN 1020-8429
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 The Teacher and
His Teachings
3.2 The Teachings:
the Great Teachings of the Dharma Wheel
4 The Falun Gong
Movement Itself
5.2 State Attempts
to Legitimate the Persecution
5.3 Chinese Policies
towards (Semi-) Religious Groups
5.4 The Falun Gong
Response to Its Persecution
7 A Perspective
towards the Future
United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees
CP 2500, CH-1211 Geneva 2,
Switzerland
E-mail: HQES00@unhcr.ch
Web Site: http://www.unhcr.ch
The Falun
Gong was founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992 in the north-eastern Chinese city of
Changchun.[1]
It rapidly became a major popular movement, both in the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) itself and in Chinese communities elsewhere. It was also successful
on a small scale among Westerners. The movement explicitly denies that it is
religious in nature. However, Li’s teachings explain the cosmos and man’s place
in it in the same definitive way and with the same purpose of giving meaning
and direction that religious movements usually do. There is a foundation myth,
cosmology, elaborate ethical thinking and ritual (the Falun Gong exercises).
The Falun Gong builds on traditional religious ideas in a number of ways,
modifying them in the process. However, one major difference between the Falun
Gong and traditional religious activity
is that it does not include incense-burning in its practices, while this has
been a central part of religious practice in China for many centuries.
Following a
silent, 10,000 strong demonstration on 25 April 1999 outside the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) at Zhongnanhai in Beijing, the Falun Gong movement was declared dangerous
and prohibited. An intensive campaign of suppression followed, in the course of
which many members have been arrested and placed in camps or psychiatric
institutions, with several hundred people dying in the process.[2]
Already some years previously, in 1996, Li Hongzhi had left the PRC for the
United States. From there the movement has actively protested against the
persecution. Inside the PRC itself, the movement recently carried out a series
of hijackings of public television time, but otherwise those followers who have
escaped persecution have gone underground or become inactive. The movement was
not originally political in orientation, but clearly the ongoing persecution
has forced it to resist and to take a stance on issues that are defined as
political in the Chinese context. The way in which the Falun Gong has put up
public resistance inside and outside China makes it a very special phenomenon,
quite independent of the merits of its teachings and exercises.
There were
always charismatic teachers on the road in traditional China with messages of
healing and salvation. The size of their audiences depended on a teacher’s
contribution to defining and then solving their problems. These teachers
competed with local religious institutions (ranging from Buddhist and Daoist
monasteries to monks, priests and spirit mediums associated with temples or
shrines), as well as doctors, fortune-tellers, and so forth. Nobody was strong
enough to enforce one normative world view. The state itself did not have
sufficient means nor was it really interested in imposing its own world view,
provided these local sources of influence did not encroach upon the state’s
claims to legitimacy. Persecution was not systematic, but often followed
religiously inspired uprisings, and could extend to unrelated groups and
individuals as well.[3]
On a local
level, everybody could have recourse to any kind of solution, since there was
no prerequisite of being a member of the particular religious institution from
which one expected some form of assistance. Instead, one paid the specialist
with money or in kind (this was construed as a system of gifts) and one made
donations to the institution. Solutions offered by competing world views could
be accessed consecutively for one and the same problem by the same group of
persons. This is still the dominant approach today, although the exclusivist
claims of both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM, a modern reformulation of
Chinese medical traditions) and Western medicine have become very influential.
Choices between approaches are made in terms of efficacy, rather than doctrinal
or ideological affiliation (be it Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism or even
Communism). Categories such as the latter have actually been strongly
influenced by Western perceptions and are applied in an ideological way that
does not represent the lived experience of most people.
Unlike
earlier Chinese religious and philosophical traditions, the ideologists of the
PRC do lay claim to possessing the only true world view, which forms the
crucial basis for the legitimacy of Communist Party rule. Essential to this
normative world view are notions of objective truth and a material basis to all
forms of being, in accordance with Marxism-Leninism assisted by modern science.
Since 1976 there has, however, been greatly increased room for alternative
forms of religious expression, even though the normative world view has not
been relinquished Repression has not disappeared, and there are still regular
campaigns against local temples, festivals, ritual performances, different kinds
of specialists and new religious groups. Traditional religious institutions are
weak and are kept that way, e.g. by restrictions on their right to own property
and thus achieve financial independence, not least because they might otherwise
become the centre of alternative social networks.
The
communist state has promoted some alternative philosophies that share its
scientific and materialistic orientation and are free of what it perceives as
religious elements and more amenable to state control. The so-called Qigong
movements of the 1980s and 1990s, but also the Falun Gong itself, have become
possible as a result. In these movement there is always an inspirational
teacher who possesses powerful techniques (gong) that can draw in cosmic
substance/energy (qi), which can heal and provide wholeness to people’s
lives. Now that these, too, are developing world views and organizational
structures beyond state control they have become a threat that “needs to” be
dealt with.
The Falun
Gong is sufficiently coherent in its teachings, even as these evolve over time,
and its local networks of members cohesive enough, to speak of a movement.
Although it lacks formalized institutions, the use of the Internet and other
modern forms of communication creates extensive networks of followers.
Propaganda against the movement uses such pejorative terms as “cult” (in
Northern American discourse the common term for religious or life style
movements of which one morally, religiously or politically disapproves) and
“sect” (still the most common Western European term for such movements).
Neither term will be used in this analysis, even though they could
theoretically be redefined in a more neutral way.[4]
The Falun
Gong does not see itself as a religious movement, but as the transmission of
objective truth. The teacher occupies central stage as the only one who
possesses this truth and who can convey it to others. This fits the earliest
(pre-China) form of Buddhism, in which the historical Buddha was first and
foremost a teacher and role-model. In Chinese educational practice, whether
Confucian or Communist, the teacher is also highly respected. In post-1949
China, Mao Zedong himself was also construed as such as teacher. Teachers tend
not to be the actual organizers of a movement as such, a pattern that we also
find in the Falun Gong.
For a
number of years a biography circulated within the movement which created an
image of Li Hongzhi as a charismatic
figure much in the way of traditional hagiography. According to this biography
Li Hongzhi was born into a family of some education in a small township in
Jilin Province on 13 May 1951, a date which the biography goes on to identify
as the eighth day of the fourth month in the lunar calendar, which happens to
be the traditional Chinese festival for the birth of the Buddha. Li Hongzhi had
a precocious understanding of Truthfulness (zhen), Goodness (shan),
and Forbearance (ren), which were to become central moral values in
Falun Gong thought. He received extensive instruction from numerous masters,
which opened up his innate understanding of the cosmos and built up his
expertise in the exercises that can draw in cosmic substance/energy (qi).[5]
By 1989 (the year of the Tiananmen Square student and labourer protests in
Beijing) he had perfected his teachings, but postponed teaching in public until
1992.[6]
In his
writings, Li states that his teachings already existed since time immemorial
and that he has merely recovered them in this time of the decline of the
teachings (dharma in Buddhist doctrine, a term also adopted by the Falun
Gong).[7]
Both the biography and Li Hongzhi’s writings stress the potency and efficacy of
his teachings and practice above all other approaches, without claiming that
the latter are in themselves false. Li does not explicitly call himself a
Buddha, but all Falun Gong materials – including Li’s formal portrait, videos
of him performing the Falun Gong exercises, and pictures on the Internet -
suggest to the follower that he actually is on that enlightened level.[8]
Opponents
of the Falun Gong have made much of the hagiographic nature of Li Hongzhi’s
biography, arguing for instance, and probably truthfully, that he was born on 7
July 1952 and only much later altered the date on his birth certificate for
religious reasons. This kind of discussion is not very relevant towards
understanding the nature of this biography. Like Li Hongzhi’s writings, his
biography is intended as a demonstration of religious truth, not as an
objective historical source. We learn much more about the movement, when we
read such writings analytically on a par with similar texts in other religious
traditions, rather than as statements of scientific truth (this despite the
Falun Gong’s own claims that their teachings are, in fact, scientific).
According
to Li’s secular biography, he led an ordinary life until 1992. He came from a
family of officeworkers of minor
officials and received some secondary education near and in the
large city of Changchun. He grew up in the heavily industrialized north-east
(better known as Manchuria), but never himself worked in the industrial
complex. Instead, he held low-level positions in the army and police, followed
by an equally modest post in the state-run Cereals and Oil Company of
Changchun, until he left voluntarily in 1991.[9]
Judging from his teachings, his knowledge tends to come from secondary digests
of original materials, coupled with some exposure to Qigong and/or martial arts
practices. There is no indication that he ever practised as a lay believer of
established Buddhist or Daoist traditions or that he ever belonged to the new
religious groups of a previous era, which survived the Communist repression.
Given the
context of his jobs and the highly politicized era in which he grew up, we can
surmise that Li Hongzhi received basic literacy teaching, but that his
education like that of most of his contemporaries was of a very elementary
level. Through the Maoist mass-campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, he was taught
to see the world in terms of violent conflict, with highly polarized
definitions of friends and enemies and with violence seen as an appropriate the means
of dealing with enemies, a view he shared with many of his contemporaries as
well as with leading figures in the Chinese Communist Party. In dealing with
real-life enemies (such as criminals or political adversaries) or when
exorcising disease-causing demons, violence can become very real and concrete
and is not considered morally reprehensible.[10]
In his teachings, where he stresses morality and non-violence, Li Hongzhi
consciously reacts against this world view, but preserves its polemical
language.
In 1992 Li
Hongzhi started to teach his exercises and give lectures, at first in Changchun
itself and soon also in Beijing and across northern China. His lectures were
roughly edited by his followers and published. Even today, oral pronouncements
(in lectures or over the phone) are his preferred form of communication, to be
turned into written form by his closest followers.[11]
In this, Li Hongzhi follows the venerable model of the Buddha, Confucius, Laozi
and many other teachers.[12]
Curiously, he also has a predilection for producing religious poems, in which
he comes close to traditional forms of spirit writing.
In 1992, he
also founded the Falun Xiulian Dafa Research Society in Beijing, which joined
the Qigong Research Society the following year. The movement built up
respectability and legitimacy by gathering all kinds of awards, certificates,
and written statements. This is common practice for all types of public
activity in China, whether by theatrical groups or museums, and even small
restaurants. New Falun Gong study groups were set up each time a nucleus of
followers came into being in a new location.
In 1994 the
Zhuanfalun [Turning the Dharma Wheel] was published, in the form of nine
lectures and in highly colloquial language. Li himself stopped teaching in
public in China itself soon after the publication of the book. Since then, this
book has become the core text of the movement, with translations in most modern
foreign languages. Later lectures outside China were also published and partly
translated into other languages. From 1999 Li’s public appearances became
extremely rare and new pronouncements were mainly made from a distance, though
since 2001 he has again begun to appear in public more frequently.[13]
The focus on written texts has allowed the concrete personal dimension of Li
Hongzhi to be written out of the teachings, with the persona of the teacher
becoming increasingly elevated and remote.[14]
The Great
Teachings of the Dharma Wheel (Falun Dafa) – as they are called within
the Falun Gong movement - have proved their appeal to Chinese of very different
levels of education, including not a few people with higher education degrees.[15]
Crucial to Li’s appeal is his assertion that his teachings are not based on
divine revelation, requiring the superstitious acceptance of an outside
authority, but that they are scientifically true (kexuede).[16]
This obviously undermines the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist state, which
derives its legitimacy from a world view that also sees itself as
scientifically true.
The
attractiveness of the claim to being scientifically true is obvious enough, but
the sensitivity of the Falun Gong to claims of being a religious movement is
also understandable. Throughout the twentieth century in China there have been
campaigns against “superstition” (temples, magical healing, possession etc.),
as well as against the book-oriented traditions of a Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic
or Christian background. By 1976 much of the former religious infrastructure
had been destroyed for ever and many thousands of people had died. Only part of
this infrastructure has come to life again.[17]
Like all of his contemporaries, Li Hongzhi himself was also subjected to
extensive propaganda concerning the “feudal” (fengjian) and
“superstitious” (mixin) nature of all religious culture. In urban China,
this is still the dominant way of looking at religion and it is not surprising
that this is also the attitude taken by Chinese Falun Gong followers, though
their self-definition as scientific has been challenged, for instance when the
Qigong Research Association in 1996 cancelled the Falun Gong’s membership.[18]
Thus, whilst according to Western norms and values, Li Hongzhi’s teachings and
practices could be called “religious” without any negative implications, the
term is coloured quite differently for his followers and for a Chinese
audience.
As in most
Chinese religious and philosophical traditions, Li Hongzhi sees everything and
everybody in the universe as interconnected. We are the universe/cosmos
(microcosm) and the universe/cosmos (macrocosm) is us. This cosmos can be
called the Great Ultimate (taiji, often written Tai Chi), which is
represented as a circle containing both Yin and Yang (in contrasting colours or
black and white, each with a dot of the other colour inside). The circular
movements of the Falun Gong exercises enact the Great Ultimate, allowing the
practitioner to draw in cosmic substance/energy (qi) (as also in Taiji
Quan, China’s famous “shadow boxing”).
Li Hongzhi
sees the Great Ultimate as a manifestation of the Dharma Wheel (or falun,
which gives the movement its name), which he represents symbolically with the wan-character
as the Buddhist equivalent of the micro/macrocosm.[19]
He himself places this Dharma Wheel in the lower abdomen of new followers, if
necessary from a great distance. The rotating movement is likened by Li to the
turning of the electrons in an atom, the planets around the sun, and the Milky
Way as a whole. Clockwise, the rotation takes in substance/energy (qi)
from outside; counter clockwise, it emits energy. It is fed both by the
influence of the teacher’s own powerful Dharma Wheel and by the proper practice
of the exercises, but only when and if accompanied by the cultivation of
certain moral values.[20]
The
above-mentioned substance/energy (qi) makes up the cosmos, according to
traditional Chinese concepts. It combines the aspects of matter and of energy.
Above this substance/energy (qi), Li Hongzhi has placed another kind of
energy, which he calls gong and defines as the result of true (i.e.
Falun Gong) cultivation. Given Li Hongzhi’s constant stress on moral
development, the traditional translation of “merit” would also fit in very
well, but Li gives it an almost materialistic connotation. Followers have to
raise their level of gong by means of a moral lifestyle and the
exercises.[21]
Our present
life is determined by the effects of our actions in previous lives, which we
carry with us through an endless chain of incarnations. These effects are
called karma (ye) and as long as we produce karma we
continue to be reborn. All karma is bad in traditional Buddhist thought
and according to Li Hongzhi as well. He depicts this karma as something
material (a black substance), which he can actually see. Getting rid of karma
will increase one’s de. This terms is left untranslated in all
non-Chinese versions of Li’s writings. While the conventional reading of de is
“potency, potential”, i.e. the ability to work good, Li, curiously, explains de
as a kind of matter (a white substance).[22]
Although Li therefore gives the notions of karma and de a
specific expression of his own, he certainly builds on existing ideas. Thus,
when he points out that karma is at the root of all our diseases, he is
quite consistent with Buddhist doctrine in arguing that therefore medical aid,
though by no means prohibited, is rather pointless, since it cannot affect
one’s accumulated karma.[23]
Crucial to Li Hongzhi’s teachings is his stress on moral attitude. The purpose of “cultivation” (the term used in English language Falun Gong literature roughly in the sense of “moral development” and which Li distinguishes from the lesser “practice”) is to lift one’s xinxing, which might be translated as “the nature of one’s heart” and is explained as the capacity to realize de in one’s life.[24] This moral capacity can be explained in its most simple form as the ability to express (and be guided by) the three core values of zhen “truthfulness” (traditionally zhen is translated as “true-ness”, whereas the usual term for Li’s interpretation would be cheng or sincerity), shan “benevolence” (traditionally shan is translated as charitableness, whereas the usual term for Li’s interpretation would be ren), and ren (written with a different character from the preceding word). This last term does not readily fit into a known Chinese context. We find it many times in the Bible, however, in the precise Falun Gong sense of “forbearance”,[25] and it was long prominent in
Communist
propaganda. Countless campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s tried to instil this
virtue in the minds of China’s adults and youths, such as Li Hongzhi himself.[26]
An
important way to lose karma (i.e. the bad black substance) and gain de
(i.e. the good white substance) is by practising “forbearance”. This raises
one’s xinxing or moral capacity. In fact, it is believed that by
practising “forbearance” in stressful situations in general or in personal
conflicts or by suffering persecution with equanimity it is possible to get rid
of a great deal of karma all at the same time and even absorb the de of
one’s persecutors.[27]
This somewhat resembles the notions of martyrdom in present-day Islam or
blood-baptism in early Christianity. In a more routine form, the practice of
“forbearance” appears to be very inspirational also in the various kinds of
stress situations that followers face in their workplaces and at home.
Li Hongzhi
places his teaching activities in the context of “the dharma-ending
period” or “the final period of Last Havoc”. This is actually a mainstream
Buddhist notion according to which the historical Buddha taught that following
his own entry into Nirvana (his extinguishing or “death”) his teachings would
decline in three stages of five hundred years. The last stage of “final dharma”
would be characterized by moral decay and the loss of any understanding of the
Buddha’s teachings. The idea was frequently used by Buddhist reformers in order
to argue for monastic or doctrinal reform, and/or strengthening lay routes to
salvation. It was definitely not intrinsically messianic or millenarian.[28]
In fact, we see no influence of traditional Chinese messianic teachings
whatsoever. More recently, the specific problems of the Falun Gong since
mid-1999 have given rise to a more pessimistic view of this time and age, but
there is no indication of concrete messianic or millenarian expectations.[29]
In fact, Li Hongzhi himself has recently specified that the disasters which he
predicted have already taken place or been averted.[30]
All in all,
Li Hongzhi provides a very materialistic interpretation of such concepts as gong
(the Buddhist “merit” becomes for Li “a higher form of energy”), ye
(the Buddhist karma becomes “bad, black substance”), de (the
Confucian “potency, potential” becomes “good, white substance”), or falun (both
fa, the Buddhist dharma) , and lun, the
Buddhist “wheel of transmigration” are originally abstract notions, unlike the
much more concrete Dharma Wheel, which is “placed” by Li Hongzhi in a person’s
body). This materialism certainly fits in with the emphasis in twentieth
century China of the material nature of the world, as propagated in Chinese
interpretations of Marxism and Qigong, as well as in of modern science. What makes Li’s
teachings distinct from the Qigong movement is his polemic attitude, his use of
written texts and propaganda, his extensive moral philosophy and the relative
lack of importance of the ritual healing and possession that are so crucial in
Qigong.
The actual
size and internal structure of the following of the Falun Gong were not
systematically studied before the persecution started in mid-1999. Claims of 2
million or 100 million (or anything in between) appear to be largely rhetorical.
Still, a former core following of some 2 to 10 million people is not
impossible.[31]
New religious movements generally have a very open approach to “membership”.
One comes to a meeting or takes part in an initiation ritual, after which one
is counted as a member, even though one never turns up again. There is often no
formal institutional structure. In network-cultures like China this is almost
always the case. The Falun Gong does not even have a formal initiation ritual
and everybody can join the movement’s public exercises at any time (or could,
as far as the Chinese mainland is concerned). Thus, the common statement by the
Chinese state that the Falun Gong movement had a “structure of thirty-nine main
‘stations’, 1,900 ‘guidance stations’, and 28,000 ‘exercise sites’” exaggerates
the degree of overall cohesion. From the top down, nothing was formalized
beyond the level of local networks. Being the head of a station did not mean
that one was the chairman of a real organization, but merely that one had
responsibility for a place of “cultivation”.[32]
However, the demonstrations of April 1999 and subsequent protests indicate that
quite rapid communications were possible, at least in the Tianjin and Beijing
regions. The best analytical approach to these “stations” and “sites”, however,
is not as a purely organizational structure, but as a distribution channel for
the teacher’s charisma, in other words as a network for channelling information
reflecting the teacher’s charisma out to all followers (rather than an exchange
of all kinds of information in all directions of the network, an essential
prerequisite for real institutions).
Falun Gong
followers have to spread the teachings and practices without making any
modifications. They are not permitted to earn a living out of their activities,
and the success of all proselytization is entirely due to the impact of the
teacher.[33]
In Chinese culture – and not just in the Communist system – rote learning is the
main form of education even on the highest level.[34]
In the Mahayana Buddhism current in China, the words that make up the teachings
(the sutras) equal the teacher himself (Buddha). Worshipping the word
physically and reproducing it as literally as possible was and is a major form
of Buddhist worship and a means of obtaining salvation. Thus, the Falun Gong
faithfulness to the words of their teacher reflects common Chinese norms,
rather than some kind of sectarian naivety.
The
slowness with which the persecution gained momentum from mid-1999 suggests that
the state was not working from a formalized Falun Gong organizational structure
with membership lists etc. or anything similar when attempting to locate
members. Instead the security apparatus is working from information gathered in
a wide variety of ways, such as house to house searches, arrests of those who
reveal their membership in public, informants, etc. Typically, it is networks,
rather than isolated individuals, that are apprehended.[35]
Some formal structure probably resulted from the movement’s short-lived
membership of the Qigong Research Association and may have survived after the
movement was thrown out of (or left) the association.[36]
Smaller networks have survived the persecution.[37]
There evidently also still is some communication with the Falun Gong centre in
New York, since the latter is kept informed of who has fallen victim to the
persecution and some propaganda materials (such as the videotape on the January
2001 suicides) seem to originate from abroad.[38]
Many
practitioners of the movement who were not in the police records by late 1999
will have gone over to other forms of Qigong practice or have opted out of such
activities altogether (at least for the time being), since a substantial number
of people came to the movement from other pursuits, both Qigong and lay
religious traditions, to which they may now have returned. Others have
continued to practise in hiding and some have joined those who are keeping up
some form of symbolic (through leaflets etc.) or even activist (hijacking cable
TV time) resistance. Among those arrested an unknown number have renounced
their original beliefs, but the value of this is evidently doubtful.[39]
Outside the PRC, the movement has survived in Hong Kong (despite increasingly
hard times) and so far in complete freedom on Taiwan. It is strong abroad,
among students and graduates of Chinese origin in Western universities and
colleges, especially in the natural sciences and technical disciplines. On the
other hand they are not strongly represented, at least in Europe, among
traditional immigrant groups from Fujian and Guangdong.[40]
Any attempt
to assess the size of the current following of the movement inside the PRC
would have to be based on a variety of partial sources. For instance, in April
1999 the movement was able to mobilize 2,000 or so followers for a sit-in in
Tianjin and estimated 10,000 for a demonstration in Beijing (more on these
events below). These would have come from these two cities themselves and
nearby townships connected by bus services (no independent research exists on
this topic), though it is unlikely that all Falun Gong followers in these two areas
were present. Some might have had to work, in spite of the demonstrations
taking place at the weekend; others might have been too frightened to take
part. However, these two events did demonstrate very eloquently the movement’s
ability and willingness to mobilize its followers.[41]
There are
no independent sources for the number of people who have been arrested,
detained in one way or another, or died. Falun Gong sources give the following
information (as of July 2002):[42]
Numbers affected |
Treatment |
100,000 |
Arrested
or detained |
500 |
Sentenced
to prison terms |
1,000 |
Sent to
mental hospitals |
20,000 |
Sent to
labour camps without trials |
430 |
Died as
the direct or indirect result of torture |
Interestingly,
these numbers are much lower than any estimate of the size of the Falun Gong
following. However, leaving aside the vague figure of 100,000 for arrests, the
numbers do very roughly match the number of people who were involved in
demonstrations, small-scale protests and the like (together with other people
in their networks). At any rate, even these figures suggest that many followers
have either reneged or decided to hide their Falun Gong affiliation. I see no
reason to doubt the size of these numbers as rough estimates. We face the same
problem of absence of precise statistical information with respect to the
number of victims of earlier political campaigns (many hundreds of thousands)
or to the judicial system in general. Even a more critical analysis of the
number of deaths still comes to several hundreds.
The rough
geographical distribution of the membership seems to be clear. The two
demonstrations and subsequent Falun Gong protests and state persecutions all
indicate that the movement was represented to some considerable extent in the
big cities of northern and western China (including Beijing, Tianjin, and
Chongqing), as well as across all northern provinces. When we look at a sample
of the people who have died in the course of the suppression campaign, we find
that the majority of the victims come from the north (Hebei 13, Heilongjiang
29, Jilin 22, Liaoning 28, Shandong 48), whereas 11 victims are reported for
Sichuan and considerably less for each of the extremely populous and urbanized
provinces which border the Yangzi river or the equally populous and urbanized
Guangdong and Fujian provinces.[43]
All the hijackings of cable television time (which, unlike hijacking of
satellites, requires local presence) also took place in Heilongjiang, Jilin,
Liaoning, Shandong and Chongqing (Sichuan).
There are
several sources of information that provide more than cursory evidence on the
social and educational make-up of Falun Gong followers inside the PRC before
April 1999. One is an analysis by medically trained authors, most likely
favourable to the Falun Gong, on the medical benefits of Falun “cultivation”
experienced by 355 persons in Beijing in 1996.[44]
They have analyzed the professions and level of education of their sample as
follows:[45]
Occupation |
Worker |
Peasant |
Office Cadre |
SM&T* |
JVE& SE** |
House-wife |
Retired
People |
Student |
Number of
People |
39 |
1 |
67 |
72 |
22 |
5 |
145 |
4 |
% |
11.0 |
0.3 |
18.9 |
20.3 |
6.2 |
1.4 |
41.1 |
1.1 |
*SM&T: Scientific Medical Worker &
Teacher ** JVE&SE: Joint-venture
Employee & Self-employed
From this
skewed sample, it is hard to draw definitive conclusions, but we are certainly
not dealing with the disempowered here. These are the sort of people whom
medical specialists are likely to encounter in their professional work,
including a suspiciously high number of direct colleagues. In addition, the
number of people from the capitalist sector, office cadres (administrators) and
retired people is quite high. Among the retired people, the same range of
former professions is found, with 88 out of 145 formerly office cadres,
scientific and technical personnel, medical workers and teachers, making up
60.7% of the retired group. These certainly were not merely marginal or poor
people. A large majority were middle aged or over: 204 persons (57.5%) were
between 40 and 59 at the time, 99 persons were 60 or above (27.8%). They were
well educated with 247 persons (69.5%) having at least graduated from senior
high school or even from universities. Finally, well over two thirds of the
sample (255) were female.[46]
The absence of peasants and people with a truly rural background (rather than
smaller townships) is well-attested in all types of sources on Falun Gong
followers. On the other hand the Falun Gong following from the earliest
beginning included members of the
security apparatus (both army and police) and of the Chinese Communist Party,
which contributed much to the successful spread of the movement.[47]
The reasons
for taking part in Falun Gong activities are extremely varied, but one reason
is conspicuously absent, which is political motivation. Even when the date 1989
does appear in statements it is never in connection with the events of the
Beijing Spring or its suppression. Instead a wide variety of personal reasons
are mentioned, and followers draw on Li Hongzhi’s teachings – such as the
extremely crucial notion of “forbearance” – to provide them with “wholeness”
(which might include healing, but also a sense of discipline and purpose) and
belonging. Many have suffered personal and emotional difficulties; others tell
proudly how they had been moved to returning money they had found, paying for a
ticket they had omitted to pay for etc. Healing as such is not a large part of
the story; acquiring a new sense of moral values is much more important. In
this process reading the Turning of the Dharma Wheel and (in the early
days) hearing Li Hongzhi speak played an important role.[48]
We find the same type of motivation in reports of people who have continued to
practise after April 1999.[49]
In these accounts, and quite unlike the picture presented by anti-Falun Gong
propaganda, the question of appropriate behaviour in all kinds of situations
really takes central stage.
After the
persecution started in the middle of 1999, Falun groups certainly continued to
function at least for some time. For instance, a recent newspaper article on a
Shaanxi trial combined with Falun Gong’s own internal news indicates that local
followers had brought some 53 people together there as late as October 2001.
Before that occasion the organizers had already met repeatedly, to prepare the
printing of Falun Gong materials etc. The meeting was broken up by police and
all the participants arrested. One of the women died in custody as a result of force-feeding, others were
sent to camps or formally tried.[50]
A close reading of the government’s propaganda site in conjunction with the
Falun Gong’s own inside reporting (often quicker and more informative)
indicates that the movement has by no means disappeared. Like many other
religious groups the Falun Gong movement may well succeed in continuing an
underground existence for decades to come.
The Falun
Gong is not the first, nor the only group to be persecuted in the PRC. It is
not likely to be the last one either. The record of religious and political
persecution in the PRC dates back to its very founding. Today, too, other
Qigong groups and new religious movements are being actively suppressed.
Torture and psychological and social pressure are essential elements in this
suppression.[51]
Unconfirmed numbers of people have died as a result, whether directly in
custody or through committing suicide after breaking down. Many more have ended
up in reform camps, prisons or mental institutions.
In 1996,
the Falun Gong movement withdrew from (or was expelled from) the Qigong
Research Association, and the Turning the Dharma Wheel was prohibited.[52]
Li Hongzhi also left the country in 1996 and was given asylum in 1997 in the
United States. Since the movement had already changed its propaganda methods
from personal meetings to publishing books, having a presence on the Internet
and networking, Li’s personal presence was no longer crucial. The movement
evidently did not lose momentum due to the absence of its teacher. Obviously,
this is also a distinct advantage in the present situation.
In 1999,
the Falun Gong was criticized in a Tianjin university journal (19 April 2002),
as dangerous to the health of the population. The author He Zuoxiu, himself a
prominent physicist, had long been attacking Qigong movements, including the
Falun Gong, as false science. He also made a direct connection between the
teachings and the mental instability of some student-followers. What he
overlooked is that students everywhere are under enormous pressure, as part of
the growing-up process, because they are living in different environments far
from home, and due to the enormous expectations put upon them by their
families. Suicide rates at this age are relatively high. The author was a known
opponent of Qigong movements and the Falun Gong, and had been the target of a movement demonstration
by the movement only a
year before, at the Beijing television studios. This time the movement first
organized a sit-in on the university campus in Tianjin to protest against the
publication of He Zuoxiu’s
article, followed by and subsequently the famous silent
demonstration in Beijing on 25 April to underline their point: they wanted
equal media attention in order to respond to these criticisms.[53]
Human rights issues only came much later, after the persecution had started and
under the influence of Chinese followers living in the United States. In itself
this introduction of human rights issues (drawing on United Nations standards)
is an important new development in the history of protest in Chinese culture.
By now the
Falun Gong had been proselytizing successfully for a number of years; they had
built up a considerable following, including among members of the
Chinese Communist Party and people
from within
the security as well as army networks. T; their leader had been sent out of
the country; and they were no longer formally recognized as a Qigong
organization. There had been criticisms and attacks from within Qigong and
Buddhist circles, as well as among natural scientists (though some of these
criticisms appear to have been suppressed at the time under state influence). They had
suffered a certain amount of friction with local authorities.[54]
Yet, until then the movement itself had made every endeavour to stay out of
politics and evidently with some success (and possibly thanks to protection by
party members at various levels of power).[55]
Given the
state’s inertia until the Beijing demonstration, it is most likely that only
the particular sequence of events in April 1999 created the dynamic that
generated the persecution.[56]
Similar to the Beijing Spring in 1989, miscommunication led to protest, leading
to further miscommunication and protest, eventually resulting in violent
suppression.[57]
The sit-in protest in Tianjin following the publication of an article and then
the demonstration at Zhongnanhai in Beijing on 25 April 1999 were intended, in
the perception of the Falun Gong, as attempts to seek redress against unjust
criticisms. Public protest and violent conflicts on a local level are a
surprisingly common feature in China today.[58]
The China Labour Bulletin and Western newspapers frequently record
industrial and rural conflicts, involving large groups of people, demonstrative
suicides, blockades, etc.[59]
Widespread are also public
protests by China’s pensioners, a group which is particularly well-represented among the participants in the
Falun Gong’s own protests in April 1999 and the following months.[60] When seen in that light and given the desperate situation of many
Chinese living in the urban regions from which the Falun Gong movement draws
its following, the organization of a sit-in or a silent demonstration is by no
means unusual. Many of the Falun Gong leaders actually originated from the
industrial regions of north-eastern China, which have seen a wave of such
protests over the last few years. To them, their protest may have seemed quite
similar to labour and
pension protests and for all we know this may be where they took their
cue. The real difference, of course, is that these latter labour protests are
incidental and focused on the concrete livelihood of individual groups, whereas
the Falun Gong movement defended (and still defends) the abstract right of
religious freedom and its own view of itself. Still, it did so in a peaceful
manner and few would have predicted the kind of suppression that was to follow
from the summer of 1999 onwards.
The Falun
Gong and similar movements are persecuted on the grounds of being “feudal” and
“superstitious”, posing a threat to people’s health and to the state. Attacks
are directed at the cosmological (scientific) claims made by or on behalf of Li
Hongzhi himself or the threat which Li’s ideas purportedly pose to public
health. Much attention is also devoted to character assassination, which makes
sense from a propaganda perspective, but is always a two-edged sword.[61]
Nonetheless, apart from the scale of the peaceful demonstration on 25 April
1999, little had changed within the Falun Gong and most of these objections
were put forward only retrospectively (in addition to being rather unspecific).
In a centralized, single party political system like the PRC, however, any
sizeable movement which does not limit its activities to a concrete single
event, whether an independent union, a lifestyle movement or a religious group,
poses a significant threat. The Beijing demonstration is very likely to have
been the first time that the central leadership became aware of the, to them,
alarming size of the movement. It was clear that the Falun Gong did not bow to
state pressure in the way such movements were supposed to do. In the absence of
documentary evidence, however, we can only speculate on the concrete process of
decision-making that led to the harsh treatment of the Falun Gong.[62]
Ironically,
the very success of the Falun Gong movement’s protests from 1999 onwards has
shown the Chinese communist leaders to be right, at least from their own
power-oriented perspective. After all, the Falun Gong is the first movement
since 1949 which has succeeded in sustaining some form of public protest to
persecution inside China itself. After the persecution started the movement also
succeeded in building a highly visible international campaign surrounding the
theme of human rights. Despite the persecution, the movement also still
maintains its own communication channels with the mainland, whether to obtain
information on persecuted followers or to keep in touch with people who are
carrying out public protests. This public demonstration of the system’s lack of
total control is clearly perceived as a threat by the central leadership. In
the Chinese context, this movement is therefore political, not in the
conventional Western sense of the word (since it does not seem to strive for
political power), but in the sense that it wants certain rights that the
communist state is not prepared to give to them (or to any other religious
group). The central role of former party cadres in the core network around Li
Hongzhi makes it likely that they would have been aware their actions would be
seen as “political”, although I also suspect that they may have thought that
they would continue to escape sanctions, since they had done so successfully
until the Beijing demonstration of April 1999.
Some
objections against the Falun Gong can be fairly easily understood, without
suggesting that they would be justification for persecution. For instance the state’s
claim that the movement’s teachings pose a substantial threat to public health
was a major line of objection among intellectual opponents of the movement
before April 1999. The potential conflict between the freedom of religious
practice and other obligations is of course also prevalent in other countries –
with examples such as religiously motivated resistance by parents to
inoculation campaigns for their children, or insistence on the right to refuse
medical aid. In addition, it is clear that classical medical approaches cannot
solve all problems of health and hopelessly fail in the face of death. Nor does
medicine help in the case of most of the other issues for which people draw on
religious approaches, including the Falun Gong teachings. Thus, disagreement
with the Falun Gong point of view that diseases are caused by one’s karma
(and cannot be truly healed by medicine) is understandable, but reducing the
movement to its approach to health also overlooks its much broader appeal.
Li Hongzhi
legitimates his view of the universe and man’s place in it by drawing on
science, history and UFO-logy. He uses the specific Chinese term kexue,
which translates as “science”, but is used in China in the wider sense of any
verifiable knowledge. Qigong movements in general claimed to be scientifically
true and Li’s is no exception. It is this claim (which has even been the
subject of scientifically looking investigations) combined with the absence of
worship or ritual which made Qigong movements attractive to the Chinese
communist state, but also to urban people who had for decades been taught that
“religion” is bad. The exercises and the practitioner’s focusing on a
photograph of the teacher are usually not perceived to be “ritual”. Such
movements offer answers to the widely felt need for emotional support and help
in rebuilding one’s life, including health, as well as much else, at relatively
low cost (unlike professional medical or psychological help).[63]
The label “scientific” rather than “religious” was in itself attractive to
many, while at the same time annoying many intellectuals. It comes as no
surprise therefore that intellectuals, or even just dissidents, living outside
China have not come to the support of the Falun Gong as a human rights issue.
For them, Western notions of science are often crucial to their philosophical
and political points of view, and the Falun Gong claims pose a direct
challenge.[64]
Comparisons
have been made by Western observers between the Falun Gong and religiously
inspired rebellions of the past. Indeed, religion can be a powerful motor for
human action and the Falun Gong is no exception to this rule. Nonetheless, I do
not find many traces of a truly messianic movement. The notion of a “dharma-ending
period” (mofa) underlines the need for powerful and effective teachings, such as the one
presented by Li Hongzhi. The teacher does not claim that the end of time is
really upon us, but only warns that we need to deal with the moral decay of our
times or suffer the consequences. However, the link between the Falun Gong and
past religiously inspired rebellions is not very prominent in communist
propaganda. This should not surprise us, for these rebellions were long
depicted as positive moments in Chinese history, since they were supposedly
carried out by the dispossessed against the traditional elites and the imperial
system. Since the present political system claims to have inherited the task of
representing the dispossessed from these earlier rebellions, it cannot afford
to make too many links between such rebellions in the past and the Falun Gong
in the present.
A much more
important reason for suppressing the Falun Gong movement may well be the latter’s its fight
for a moral renewal. After all, the Chinese communist claim to being a higher
ethical force than any pre-existing Chinese philosophical or religious
tradition was always an
essential element of its claim for legitimacy. The Falun Gong movement itself
probably derived its own focus on moral renewal from the many intensely
moralistic campaigns of the late 1950s and the 1960s, as well as the sense that
after 1978 Chinese society had increasingly lost its moral direction. By the
early 1990s any communist claims to possessing the moral high ground would have
sounded hollow and other movements were taking over, the Falun Gong among them.
In a way, the Falun Gong was usurping the role of moral guide that the CCP had
been claiming for itself throughout its history. There can be no doubt that
this is threatening to the Communist Party centre, although it is hard to see
what they might be able to put in its place. At this point we should keep in
mind that China is presently facing enormous social and economic problems,
despite all economic growth. State-owned industries have already broken down or
soon will, with many labourers left without support. Similarly, the army has
retired large parts of its officer corps and these have tended to stay in the
cities, looking for meaningful roles to play. There is no welfare system to
help them and networking is the only answer. The Falun Gong provides such
networks, as well as real answers to people’s sense of misery and moral
emptiness. From the Communist Party’s point of view, then, the Falun Gong and
similar movements do pose a significant threat to its authority.
The PRC has
inherited traditional elite and statist ways of looking at religious phenomena,
including new religious movements. Crucial here is the common practice of
labelling all kinds of religious groups and ritual (or magical) practices
“heretical teachings”, which then in itself becomes sufficient cause to
persecute them. In the process additional negative characteristics are ascribed
to these so-called “heretic teachings”, which have tended to stay the same over
the centuries. These are for instance a propensity for rebelliousness, causing
social disruption, holding clandestine meetings, extorting money, etc.[65]
Since both followers and opponents of movements that are labelled in this way
effectively share the underlying assumptions, this may lead to paradoxical
situations. Thus, the awareness of criticism of the moneymaking aspect of the
movement (using early evidence concerning Li Hongzhi, when he was still active
in China itself) has led to an explicit injunction to all Falun Gong followers
against using their knowledge to make money. Publicly, Li Hongzhi himself also
no longer makes money, even though we can be sure that he is financially
supported by his followers.[66]
It is overlooked that no movement, not even a religious one, can do without
funds to keep it going. In China as elsewhere, religious activities are also
often a professional activity and involve making money.[67]
The
labelling of groups or persons of which one disapproves has far-reaching
consequences in China also because of a specific characteristic of the judicial
process (although by no means uniquely Chinese), namely the crucial importance
of the confession for reaching a guilty verdict. Without a confession no case
can be closed, despite all other forms of evidence. Once the prosecution (i.e.
the state) is certain of someone’s guilt, then all forms of physical and
psychological pressure are allowed. The focus of the investigative process will
not be on finding reliable evidence, but rather on confirming a priori
applied labels. The judicial process itself is merely the public demonstration
that the suspects are indeed guilty and therefore an intrinsic part of the
punishment, rather than a open-ended trial; instead rather it constitutes
the first elements of a long process in which the state attempts to convert the
“guilty” party back to its norms and values.[68]
The
accusation that the Falun Gong is a threat to public health is a good example
of the way in which the labelling process works, ignoring that the movement
actually has a much broader moral agenda, of which health is only one
dimension, and ignoring also that the Falun Gong view can be legitimated quite
well within Buddhist doctrine. The evidence is presented in a very one-sided
manner and no critical investigation whatsoever is carried out. All “cases” are
extremely weak on context and medical detail, making it impossible to carry out
a counter-investigation.
The PRC,
and until recently also the Republic of China (Taiwan), have prohibited many
new religious groups, as well as trying to control that part of religious
culture which it did permit. The PRC in particular has a long and bloody record
of persecution, oppression and state control dating back to 1949. Nonetheless,
local cadres these days are quite likely to tolerate the activities of local
leaders who organize religious activities, since these provide a much-needed
focus for the community. In return for such tolerance or even cooperation,
cadres might receive support during elections or in other contexts. Thus, the
situation is no longer only black and white. Generally, purely localized forms
of religious expression associated with permanent institutions (such as temple
cults or monasteries) get more leeway (freedom is not quite the appropriate
term here), than the activities of individual teachers or supra-regional
movements (including Christian ones). The latter are still being persecuted,
with the death penalty as the ultimate and frequently applied sanction.[69]
In the
meantime, the situation on Taiwan has changed in a very fundamental way. At
first the Republic of China (both in its days on the Chinese mainland and in
its first decades on Taiwan) also tried to control Chinese religion, although
never in the all-out destructive way that we have seen on the Chinese mainland.
New religious groups were formally prohibited and its members might find their
public careers obstructed, but they could otherwise function well as long as
they did not draw attention to themselves. There were also attempts to regulate
temple activities, but local politicians also started to use such activities to
gain a following. Already before the abolition of martial law in 1987, the
environment was such that an ethnographical investigation could be launched to
establish to what extent new religious groups (especially the long persecuted
Unity Way or yiguan dao, still prohibited in the PRC) should continue to
be prohibited. The conclusion was that there was no need for such measures.
With the abolition of martial law, all new religious groups were legalized –
including some groups that had been outlawed for centuries.[70]
The Falun Gong has simply added to this spectrum, encountering no hindrance
from the state on Taiwan and causing no problems whatsoever.[71]
In Hong Kong, observers consider the degree of freedom that can be maintained
by the Falun Gong to be a good indication of the degree to which this region
can maintain its overall political autonomy.
The fact
that, for the first time in PRC history, a group is putting up protracted
resistance against persecution has surprised many Chinese and outside
observers. The movement has been very careful only to use peaceful means of
resistance (largely sit-ins, pamphlets, videos, the Internet). The Beijing
demonstration of April 1999 was motivated by the perceived unfairness of
representations of the movement in public media, but unusual as it was, it was
entirely passive. The public demonstrations by smaller numbers of followers,
propaganda and hijackings of television time are still not violent acts.
The small
group close to Li Hongzhi in the United States, with Gail Rachlin and Zhang
Erping as its most publicly visible representatives, has been exceedingly
successful in lobbying to get (and keep) the Falun Gong on the international
agenda as a case of human rights abuse. This struggle in turn provides those
that have stayed inside the movement with a very clear sense of identity. Many
Chinese visitors to and residents in other countries than the PRC avail
themselves of the Internet to check out alternative views on the Falun Gong,
including the movement’s own websites. They talk with Falun Gong adherents and
among themselves, carrying out much more nuanced discussions than is possible
in China itself. This generates an alternative discourse and a certain level of
alternative understanding that filters back into China, certainly to the larger
urban centres. Given the large amount of international traffic by Chinese, this
form of communication and feedback should not be underestimated.
The
movement inside China has not yet withered away completely, but we have no
reliable knowledge of its present size. At first, Falun Gong members actively
protested at the persecution on a central level (especially by appearing on
Tiananmen Square), but also locally. Most of these people were arrested and have
suffered severely. As already indicated above, “forbearance” (ren)
during stressful situations of all kinds was a crucial religious innovation contribution of Li
Hongzhi’s. It also means that when one is persecuted, passively and publicly
protesting its unjustness can be a means of drawing in the de (good
white substance) of the opponents and getting rid of one’s karma (the
bad black substance). Nonetheless, no such protest seems to be taking place
now. This suggests that the inner circle of followers is now either in prison
or dead, or too afraid to speak out. Outside China, there is a strong core in
the United States and there are smaller groups all over the globe, consisting
of mainland Chinese (usually well-educated, prosperous and of northern Chinese
origin) and Westerners in search of truth.[72]
A much
contested event is the collective suicide of seven Falun Gong followers on 23
January 2001, on Tiananmen Square. It has become one of the most important
propaganda items on the Chinese state’s side, used to prove that the Falun Gong
teachings delude people and are therefore dangerous.[73]
This is actually the same argument as the April 1999 article in the Tianjin
university journal. First of all, we should note that there is a respected
tradition of self-harm in Chinese Buddhism (including self-mutilation and
immolation). Furthermore, suicide is a traditional means of protest, whether in
labour conflicts or family disputes.[74]
On the other hand, there can be little doubt that the Falun Gong is right in
pointing out that at least part of the events, and most certainly its public
representation in the media and on the Internet, has been manipulated by the
Chinese state.[75]
Most
recently, Falun Gong followers have succeeded in tapping into cable networks
and satellite broadcasts for varying periods of time, in order to refute state
propaganda. Confirmed reports of hijackings of public television time are
available from Chongqing (Sichuan) on 1 January 2002 (cable television),
Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning in March 2002 (all cable television), and
from all over China in June 2002.[76]
The earlier broadcasts included a video arguing that the supposed Falun Gong
suicides of January 2001 were really state manipulations. It is uncontested
that the hijacking of cable-television was the result of actions by Falun Gong
followers. This has not yet been confirmed for the technically much more
sophisticated and expensive hijacking of satellite broadcasting.
The PRC is
embarrassed by the ongoing protests. It has compiled extensive lists of all
suspected Falun Gong followers inside the PRC itself, including their
relatives. The persecution is carried out on the basis of such lists and we can
be certain that many Falun Gong followers and/or activists outside China are
also recorded on such lists. When people do return, a seemingly lenient policy
is followed, which is already well-attested for Chinese students, scholars and
the like who had protested at the time of the Beijing Spring in 1989 (with the
exception of its leaders). After some time, many of them returned (or wanted
to), but on arriving at a port of entry they are taken aside, interviewed and
made to sign statements that they will not be involved in political activity
(including any kind of critical activity which the state might at any given
point define as “political”). Hence, they live under a permanent cloud and are
likely to be subject to further pressure at any time. The famous poet Bei Dao
has refused to return under these conditions.[77]
The Chinese
authorities have also compiled lists of suspected Falun Gong adherents or human
rights activists living in the West (including many Westerners). The existence
of these lists became quite clear during the recent visit of President Jiang
Zemin of the PRC to Europe (including Iceland and Germany), when they were used
by Western companies and authorities to prevent potential protestors from
entering Iceland (a large scale protest, by local standards, still took place)
or from coming too close during Jiang’s visit to Berlin. Hong Kong now also
prevents people on such lists from entering.[78]
The opening
up of the Chinese economic system since 1978 has led to a vastly increased
geographic mobility, first internally, but now spilling over to the rest of the
world, in classical chain migration style. Migration in general may take several
forms, whether legal in the form of family reunion, permanent or temporary jobs
and higher education, or illegal (independently or, more commonly, with the
assistance of professional traffickers), and finally as refugees or through
seeking asylum.[79]
There are
two ways in which Falun Gong followers might end up outside China, most likely
in Western countries with pre-existing Chinese communities. One is through the
established routes of human trafficking between China and Europe, Australia and
Northern America. Alternatively they may arrive on temporary visa, for instance
as tourists, business people, students or researchers. Both categories might
apply for asylum.
As pointed
out above, the Falun Gong has been quite successful in building a following
among Chinese students and professionals abroad, usually those with a technical
or science background. Such individuals are already abroad and do not
immediately require special status for religious reasons. When their visa or
short term residence permits run out, they may apply for asylum.[80]
Since the Chinese security apparatus has compiled extensive records on Falun
Gong followers and activists, they may well face heavy pressure and possibly
punishment upon their return. They may choose to accept this fate in line with
the Falun Gong teaching of “forbearance” or they may try to stay in the West.
It is unlikely that this will involve large numbers of people, and it will also mainly be
limited to people with high levels of education. The dangers facing Falun Gong
practitioners returning to China are much greater than those affecting for
instance the Beijing Spring dissidents, in view of the much more brutal
persecution suffered by the Falun Gong. At the same time those who still
consider themselves Falun Gong followers are less likely to agree to sign
statements that they have given up their adherence to the teachings.
Leaving the
country through human trafficking is not impossible: leading dissidents
succeeded in getting out in the aftermath of the suppression of the Beijing
Spring of 1989 and individual Falun Gong followers have also been able to leave
the country in various ways.[81]
However, larger groups of people would have to move through the regular
trafficking channels, but and international
channels exist only for people from specific migration regions in southern
China. In these regions we find a “culture of migration”, in which migration is
considered a superior way of achieving something in life for oneself and the
larger kinship unit. Once established, the strength of this culture is such
that mere government policies or changing socio-economic circumstances are not
enough to alter it.[82]
These migration regions are southern Zhejiang (the hinterland of the Wenzhou
port), northern Fujian (Fuzhou/Fuqing) and Cantonese and Hakka speaking
communities in Hong Kong and the Pearl River delta. In the United States,
Guangdong was historically the main province of origin of migrants until the
1980s, but this has since changed to northern Fujian. Illegal immigrants,
transported along complicated and expensive trafficking networks, come mainly
from northern Fujian (going to Europe and North America) and southern Zhejiang
(going to Europe). People with the same regional and cultural background who
are already in the country serve as a support network; some of them may be
directly involved in the trafficking itself.[83]
For people
who do not stem from these classical migration regions, leaving the country is
much harder. The existing routes for human trafficking require passports and
other documents that are only obtainable with the cooperation of local
officials. In the classical migration regions such cooperation will be
forthcoming, since officials know that expatriates tend to reinvest in their
home region, whether by sending home remittances for relatives or by setting up
commercial and industrial enterprises.[84]
The officials are also paid for their services. Leaving China is, however, an
expensive matter that requires heavy investment of money, which is usually
provided by relatives and must be paid back. To leave in secret is therefore
quite impossible. Given that the Falun Gong movement is weak in these classical
migration regions, this is not an option realistically open to any significant
number of followers.
In case that Falun
Gong followers who come from outside these classical migration regions try to leave the country through human
trafficking routes, they
automatically draw
considerable suspicion to themselves. They first have to obtain documents from local officials
in their own regions
of provenance who do
not normally play a role in these networks and who will be suspicious of their
motives. The same applies to the necessary financial assistance by relatives. At a time that the
movement has been declared a number one threat to the Chinese state, leaving
for explicit or suspected religious reasons is a very risky adventure.
Officials and relatives have much to gain by simply turning such people in.
Another
issue is when migrants to Europe and North America apply for right of residence
based on a claim of actual or feared persecution, which is then assessed by the
relevant authorities. Common grounds cited include the one child policy in
China or membership of persecuted religious groups (Christian or otherwise).
Claims of persecution on the grounds of membership of the Falun Gong have
certainly already been used in this connection, but how often can not be
quantified.[85]
It is widely acknowledged that such applications are often unjustified.[86]
When asylum is not granted, such migrants usually disappear into the illegal
circuit, since they have normally had to invest heavily in order to get to a
Western country to begin with and this investment has to be recovered. They
usually come from the classical migration regions, indicating that we are
dealing here with a general form of migration, rather than purely politically
motivated migration. Whatever the reasons for applying for asylum, the
applicants will not want to return.[87]
The direct
future of the Falun Gong movement is impossible to predict. What may happen is
that its following changes, at least inside China itself. People who want to be
part of legal mainstream society may drop out (or have dropped out already).
Only people who are already somewhat marginal to Chinese society are likely to
stay in. Outside China, the movement continues to be successful among students,
researchers and businessmen from the PRC. Whether labour protest inside China
might link up with local Falun Gong networks is a matter for speculation, but
the dissident movement outside China certainly has shown little interest in
defending the overall right of religious freedom that is also involved here,
and there is not much visible cooperation.
In the same
way it is unclear what the Chinese state will do. In the short term, Jiang
Zeming
and other leading party and government officials have invested too much of
their credibility in the successful suppression of the Falun Gong and similar
movements to allow them to become more conciliatory. Much will depend on
internal power struggles, the outcome of which is hard to predict from the
outside. Much also depends on the degree of international pressure, although
this is not an issue where the Chinese state is likely to be offering
compromise. Ideology is essential to maintaining legitimacy, at the very least
within the leadership itself, and therefore not negotiable.
Whether the
Falun Gong movement will be able to sustain the international momentum of its
human rights campaign or will fade away into oblivion is yet another open
question. Its campaign did survive the events of 11 September and the ensuing
focus of the Western world, especially the United States, on “terrorism” and on
the Middle East. As long as these problems and international perception of them
continue in the present form, this will be to the advantage of the Chinese
government. The movement will find it difficult to remain on the international
agenda.
The daring
propaganda struggle of the Falun Gong in China during the last few months
raises not a few questions and has changed the movement from one that could
claim to be apolitical to a strongly political one. But let us not forget that
religious movements all over the world have tended to involve themselves in
politics, and there are numerous examples of political parties with a strong
religious orientation. However, the Falun Gong movement is not political in
that way: it does not aim to change the political system and it does not aim to
impose its own values on all of the population. It “merely” wants the freedom
it needs to sustain itself and to practise its teachings. In a different type
of society, which tolerated the full spectrum of religious or spiritual
movements, the Falun Gong movement would probably function without much ado and
would then have to compete with many other groups and movements.
The current
level of persecution will undoubtedly generate asylum requests from Falun Gong
adherents who are already abroad on short term visas or residence permits.
Since the Chinese security apparatus has built extensive files on people
suspected of a link with the Falun Gong and such people are usually treated
very harshly, people with some kind of Falun Gong connection do have a
justified fear for their well-being after returning to the PRC. A steady stream
of refugees is not to be expected, however. This is not because the persecution
is not brutal enough, but simply because the particular mechanics of human
trafficking in China do not allow large numbers of people outside traditional
migration regions to leave the country easily.
Amnesty International, The Crackdown on Falun Gong and other “Heretical Organizations”, London, 23 March 2000
Associated Press, Leicester, J., TV Hijackings, E-mail Attacks: China’s Government, Falun Gong Battle for a Hazy Concept, Truth, 8 April 2002
Barnett, D., The Coming Conflict over Asylum: Does America Need a New Asylum Policy?, Washington: Center for Immigration Studies, March 2002, http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back102.pdf [accessed 25 June 2002]
Benn, J. A., Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as an Apocryphal Practice in Chinese Buddhism, History of Religions, Vol. 37, No 4, 1998, pp 295-322
Bruseker, G., Falun Gong: A Modern Chinese Folk Buddhist Movement in Crisis, unpublished MA thesis [University of Alberta], http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/bruseker.rtf
Burke, Kelly, Cute Toy Rabbits Belie Ordeal of Chinese Labour Camps, Sidney Morning Herald, 28 December 2001, http://old.smh.com.au/news/0112/28/national/national19.html, [accessed 21 July 2002]
Buruma, I., Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001
Callick, R., Out of China to Outer Melbourne, The Australian Financial Review, 21 June 2002
Canada, Immigration and Refugee Board, China: Internal Migration and the Floating Population, Ottawa, 1998, http://www.irb.gc.ca [accessed 15 June 2002]
_________ , China: Political Dissent – An Update, Ottawa, June 1995, http://www.irb.gc.ca [accessed 24 June 2002]
China Daily, 8 August 1999, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/e-falun/cult/417.htm [accessed 2 July 2002]
Chinese Satellite TV Hijacked by Falun Gong Cult, People’s Daily, 9 July 2002, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200207/08/eng20020708_99347.shtml [accessed 16 July 2002]
Dutton, M.R., Policing and Punishment in China: From the Patriarchy to “the People”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992
Falun Dafa Information Center, Falun Gong Practitioner Sun Guilan from Baoji City, Shaanxi Province Tortured to Death for Attending a Cultivation Experience Sharing Meeting, 20 May 2002, http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=5667 [accessed 2 July 2002]
Falun Dafa Information Centre, List of Deaths, http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/deathcases/index.asp [accessed 20 June 2002]
Falun Gong Breaks onto China’s Airwaves, BBC News, 7 March 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk [accessed July 2002]
Haar, B.J. ter, China’s Inner Demons:
The Political Impact of the Demonological Paradigm, in Woei Lien Chong (ed.), China’s
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao
Counternarratives, London:
Boulder
CO: Rowman & Littlefield, fc 2002
_________ ,
Violence in Chinese Culture, http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/violence.htm.
_________ , Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity, Leiden: Brill, 1998
_________ , The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History, Leiden: Brill, 1992
_________ , Local Religious Culture from 1644 until circa 1840 (unpublished ms.)
Huashangbao, 28 June 2002, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/zxxx/2020701/02.htm [accessed 2 July 2002]
Human Rights Watch, Dangerous Meditation: China’s Campaign against Falun Gong, New York, January 2002
_________ , China: State Control of Religion, New York, 1997
_________ , Detained in China and
Tibet: A Directory of Political and Religious Prisoners, New York, 1994
Hurst, William and Kevin J.
O’Brien, China’s
Contentious Pensioners, China Quarterly, No 170, 2002, pp. 345-360
Ji Jianlin, Committed Suicide in the Chinese Rural Areas, Updates on Global Mental and Social Health: Newsletter of the World Mental Health Project, Vol. 3, No 1 June 1999, http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/wmhp/updates/news0301/suic0301.htm [accessed 17 July 2002]
Johnson, I., A Portrait of the Unreformed Side of China: The Falun Dafa Protests, New York: Wall Street Journal, 2002
_________ , China’s Rigid Policies on Religion Helped Falun Dafa for Years, The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2000
Ko-lin Chin, Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999
Koser, K., The Return and Reintegration of Rejected Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, May 2001, http://www.iom.int//DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/mrs_4_2001.pdf [accessed July 2002]
Labour Disputes and Actions [list of Articles of Previous Years], China Labour Bulletin, http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article_listings.adp?category_id=3 [accessed 17 June 2002]
Landsberger, S.R., Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages, http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/index.html [accessed July 2002]
Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, http://www.falundafa.org [accessed 18 June 2002]
Li Hongzhi
qiren, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/jybl/02.htm [accessed 19 July 2002]
Li Hongzhi
yu ‘Falungong’ zuzhi, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/jybl/05.htm [accessed 19 July
2002]
Martin, D., The 1995 Asylum Reforms: A Historic and Global Perspective, Washington: Center for Immigration Studies, May 2000, http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back500.pdf [accessed 25 June 2002]
Munro, R., Judicial Psychiatry in China and Its Political Abuses, Colombia Journal of Asian Law, Vol. 14, No 1, 2001
Naquin, S., The Transmission of White Lotus Sectarianism in Late Imperial China, in Johnson, D., Nathan, A. J., Rawski E. S. (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, pp. 255-91
Ownby, D., A History of Falun Gong: The Religious and Social Context, paper presented at Conference on the Falun Gong, Montreal, May 2002
Penny, B., The Life and Times of Li Hongzhi: Falun Gong and Religious Biography, China Quarterly, fc 2002
_________ , The Body of Li Hongzhi, in The Body of Master Li, The Australian Association for the Study of Religions, fc 2002
_________ , Falun Gong, Prophecy and Apocalypse, East Asian History, fc 2002
_________ , Qigong, Daoism and Science: Some Contexts for the Qigong Boom, in Lee, M. and Syrokomla-Stefanowska, A.D. (eds.), Modernisation of the Chinese Past, Sydney: Wild Peony, 1993, pp. 166-79
Perry, E.J., Collective Violence in China, 1880-1980, Theory and Society, Vol. 13, No 3, 1984, pp 427-54
Perry, E.J. , Rural Violence in Socialist China, China Quarterly, No 103, 1985, pp. 414-40
Pieke, F.N., Recent Trends in Chinese Migration to Europe: Fujianese Migration in Perspective, Geneva, International Organization for Migration, 2002, http://www.iom.int//DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/mrs_6_2002.pdf [accessed July 2002]
Pieke, F.N. and Mallee, H. (eds.), Internal and International Migration: Chinese Migration, London: Curzon, 1999
Poisonous Deceit, Deep Six Publishing, 2002, http://www.deep6-publishing.org
Rahn, P., The Chemistry of a Conflict: The Chinese Government and the Falun Gong, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 14, No.4, fc Winter 2002
Reporters Without Borders, Severe Crackdown in Defence of the State Monopoly on Information, 21 May 2002, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1386 [accessed 16 July 2002
Restive Rural China, Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/issues/ruralchina/ [accessed 17 June 2002]
Reuters, Falun Gong Taps into TV again in China, 26 June 2002, http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=worldnews&StoryID=1135607 [accessed 1 July 2002]
Saari, J. L., Legacies of Childhood: Growing up Chinese in a Time of Crisis, 1890-1920, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990
Sing Lee and Kleinman, A., Suicide as Resistance in Chinese Society, in Perry, E. J. and Selden, M. (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 221-40
Skeldon, R., Myths and Realities of Chinese Irregular Migration, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2002, http://www.iom.int/iomwebsite/Publication/ServletSearchPublication?event=detail&id=456 [accessed July 2002]
Song Guanyu, Tiandao gouchen: Yiguan dao diaocha baogao, Taibei: privately published, 1984
United Kingdom, Country Information and Policy Unit, Revolution of the Wheel: The Falun Gong in China and in Exile, London: Immigration and Nationality Directorate, April 2002, http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/default.asp?pageid=2806 [accessed July 2002
The Weekend Australian, 16 March 2002
Tong, James, An Organizational Analysis of the Falun Gong: Structure, Communications, Financing, China Quarterly, No.171, 2002, pp. 636-660
Ye Hao, Falungong zhenxiang – cankao ziliao huibian, http://www.minghui.ca [accessed 20 May 2000, but not found on the present Minghui site]
Zhang Liang (comp.), Nathan, A. J. and Link, P. (eds), The Tiananmen Papers, London: Little, Brown, 2001
Zhang Rongjia [Beijing Medical Universtiy] and Xiao Jun [Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine], A Report on the Effect of Falun Gong in Curing Diseases and Keeping Fit Based on a Survey of 355 Cultivators of Falun Gong at Certain Sites in Beijing, China (Preliminary Study), 1996, http://www.falundafa.ca/world/health/survey96.htm [accessed 20 June 2002]
Zhang Weiqing and Qiao Gong, Falun gong chuangshiren Li Hongzhi pingzhuan, Taibei: Chengbang wenhua shiye, 1999
The Falun Gong and the propaganda-battles that surround it are very much
an Internet affair. For this report I have attempted to recheck and update all
weblinks. It is, however, possible, that links will change in the future. I was
also unable to find certain materials on new versions of Falun Gong websites,
but all substantial materials have been downloaded by me for archival
preservation. The following are key websites specifically focusing on the Falun
Gong:
§
www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/falun.htm (scholarly website by Barend J. ter
Haar on the Falun Gong movement, including frequently updated bibliographies
and weblinks)
§
www.faluninfo.net (the Falun Gong’s main English language newssite on
the persecution of the movement in China)
§
www.falundafa.org (the Falun Gong’s own website for spreading the
teachings and practices of Li Hongzhi)
§
www.mingjing.org.cn (the main People’s Republic of China website against
the Falun Gong)
[1] The term Falun Gong (the practice of the Dharma Wheel) stresses the exercises and is in common, general use. The term Falun Dafa (the Great Teachings of the Dharma Wheel) focuses on the teachings at the centre of the movement. It is the term which the movement itself prefers to use. Both terms are used without pejorative connotations.
[2] The reality of this campaign is beyond doubt. Falun Gong itself provides extensive documentation, e.g. on their website, http://www.faluninfo.net/ [accessed July 2002]. In addition both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have provided well-documented reports. See Human Rights Watch, Dangerous Meditation: China’s Campaign against Falun Gong, New York, January 2002; Amnesty International, The Crackdown on Falun Gong and other “Heretical Organizations”, London, 23 March 2000. Journalists like Ian Johnson of Wall Street Journal and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, John Leicester of Associated Press and many others have independently and against great odds demonstrated that this campaign really does take place. See e.g. Johnson, I., A Portrait of the Unreformed Side of China: The Falun Dafa Protests, New York: Wall Street Journal, 2002. Another case, well-documented in interviews by Western journalists, is that of Zeng Zheng (Jennifer), referred to in note 80 below.
[3] Ownby, D., A History of Falun Gong: The Religious and Social Context, paper presented at Conference on the Falun Gong, Montreal, May 2002. For the following paragraphs see for instance Naquin, S., The Transmission of White Lotus Sectarianism in Late Imperial China, in Johnson, D., Nathan, A. J., Rawski E. S. (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, pp. 255-91, and Haar, B.J. ter, Local Religious Culture from 1644 until circa 1840 (unpublished ms.). The analysis provided here is of course a simplification.
[4] Full analysis and annotations are impossible here. Amnesty International’s The Crackdown on Falun Gong, p. 1, note 1, has chosen to ignore this problem, but does not use the term “cult”. More on these terminological issues can be found on Barend J. ter Haar’s website, http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/falun.htm, and in Haar, B.J. ter, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History, Leiden: Brill, 1992
[5] Detailed analyses of the biography have been made Benjamin Penny, in Penny, B., The Life and Times of Li Hongzhi: Falun Gong and Religious Biography, China Quarterly, fc 2002, and Penny, B., The Body of Li Hongzhi, in The Body of Master Li, The Australian Association for the Study of Religions, fc 2002. In the first article, he points out that the original biography was written by a journalist and then edited for Falun Gong usage. After 1999, it disappeared from the Falun Gong websites and from their reprints of Li Hongzhi’s Zhuanfalun, of which it was an appendix. The present author downloaded the biography on 4 June 2000.
[6] This coincidence is not made explicit in any Falun Gong or analytical writings known to the present author.
[7] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture One, Section: Qigong shi shiqian gongfa. For this report I have used a Chinese pdf-version downloaded from http://www.falundafa.org on 18 June 2002. There is also a convenient web-version in English, which can be easily searched on given topics.
[8] Penny, B. The Body of Li Hongzhi
[9] Zhang Weiqing and Qiao Gong, Falun gong chuangshiren Li Hongzhi pingzhuan, Taibei: Chengbang wenhua shiye, 1999, pp. 340-5; See also a document emanating from Chinese security circles, Li Hongzhi qiren, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/jybl/02.htm [accessed 19 July 2002]
[10] Haar, B.J. ter, China’s Inner Demons: The Political Impact of the Demonological Paradigm, in Woei Lien Chong (ed.), China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution: Master Narratives and Post-Mao Counternarratives, Boulder CO: Rowman & Littlefield, fc 2002, a revised version of a 1996-1997 article. Patsy Rahn has taken up these ideas and developed them much further in Rahn, P., The Chemistry of a Conflict: The Chinese Government and the Falun Gong, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 14, No.4, fc Winter 2002
[11] Not surprisingly, there is a strong concern about control over the contents of the teachings. See Zhang and Qiao, pp. 58-9 for a good example. The disappearance of the Li Hongzhi biography from the websites and Zhuanfalun reprints is another example.
[12] These days he communicates through the Internet site, which is obviously maintained by his close followers. Western spokespersons are Gail Rachlin and Zhang Erping.
[13] The best survey of events (which can also be found elsewhere in slightly different forms) is provided in Bruseker, G., Falun Gong: A Modern Chinese Folk Buddhist Movement in Crisis, unpublished thesis [University of Alberta], http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/bruseker.rtf
[14] Penny, Life and Times...; David Ownby, personal communication, 8 July 2002. Li Hongzhi’s increased visibility is also apparent from the main website, http://www.falundafa.org.
[15] The main work by Li Hongzhi containing his teachings is the aforementioned Zhuanfalun, which is available in many editions and translations, although crucial connotations are certainly lost in the non-Chinese versions. It can also be downloaded from all Falun Gong sites. Here I only present a selection of key concepts in the light of my understanding as an academic student of Chinese religious culture.
[16] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture One (sections Qigong jiushi xiulian and Qigong shi shiqian gongfa); his activities as described in the Falun Gong biography (on which see note 5 above).
[17] See Human Rights Watch, Detained in China and Tibet: A Directory of Political and Religious Prisoners, New York, 1994; Human Rights Watch, China: State Control of Religion, New York, 1997. For further references, see http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/chinPRCbib.html
[18] The sensitivity of Qigong movements in general, as illustrated by their denunciation of the Falun Gong in 1996, is motivated by the same considerations. See Zhang and Qiao, pp. 69-72, 96-109. More background information on Qigong in Penny, B. Qigong, Daoism and Science: Some Contexts for the Qigong Boom, in Lee, M. and Syrokomla-Stefanowska, A.D. (eds.), Modernisation of the Chinese Past, Sydney: Wild Peony, 1993, pp. 166-79. See also http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/chinPRCbib.html.
[19] This is a Buddhist symbol, which Westerners tend to interpret as an inverted swastika, but which actually has absolutely none of the Western associations with the Nazi-symbol.
[20] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Three (sections Falun dafa xueyuan zemmayang chuangong and Falun dafa de tedian). All references to the Zhuanfalun are selective. Usually, one topic is treated in more than one location.
[21] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture One (section Qigong weishemma bu changgong) and Lecture Three (section Laoshi gei xueyuan yixie shemma)
[22] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture One (section Qigong weishemma bu changgong)
[23] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Seven (sections Zhibing wenti and Yiyuan zhibing yu qigong zhibing)
[24] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture One (section Qigong weishemma bu changgong)
[25] This has been checked with the use of an on-line concordance to a Chinese bible, available at http://www2.ccim.org/~bible/ [accessed July 2002]
[26] For an illustrated introduction to this notion, through Chinese poster art, see Landsberger, S.R., Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages, http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/index.html [accessed July 2002]
[27] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Four (sections Shiyude and Yeli de zhuanhua)
[28] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Three (section Falun dafa de tedian)
[29] Penny, B., Falun Gong, Prophecy and Apocalypse, East Asian History, 2002, fc.
[30] Li Hongzhi, statement dated 19 May 2002, http://www.falundafa.org/book/chibig5/chm/jw.chm [accessed 24 June 2002]
[31] See Bruseker, pp. 49-59, for data available as of early 2000. See also Human Rights Watch, Dangerous Meditation... and Amnesty International, The Crackdown on Falun Gong, p. 23
[32] Li Hongzhi yu ‘Falungong’ zuzhi, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/jybl/05.htm [accessed 19 July 2002]. This text does not provide real analysis or evaluation. A recent and detailed analysis is James Tong, An Organizational Analysis of the Falun Gong: Structure, Communications, Financing, China Quarterly, No.171, 2002, pp. 636-660. He takes a political and social science approach, rather than the religious studies approach used by the present author, but is equally sceptical about claims of a strong centralized structure.
[33] Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Three (section Falun dafa xueyuan zemmayang chuangong); Zhang and Qiao, pp. 79-80, 83-5
[34] One critic who was writing before the persecution of the movement started sees this as the reason why so many highly educated scientists and managers (who were party members) also joined. See Zhang and Qiao, pp. 93-4. Although focusing on an earlier period, the most readble introduction to this problem is Saari, J. L., Legacies of Childhood: Growing up Chinese in a Time of Crisis, 1890-1920, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990
[35] Based on materials gathered by the Falun Gong itself, http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/deathcases/index.asp [accessed July 2002], but confirmed by persecution sources on http://www.mingjing.org.cn/ [accessed July 2002]
[36] Ye Hao, Falungong zhenxiang – cankao ziliao huibian, http://www.minghui.ca [accessed 20 May 2000, but not found on the present Minghui site]
[37] This is evident from the reporting by John Leicester and Ian Johnson, quoted above.
[38] See e.g. Falun Gong Breaks onto China’s Airwaves, BBC News, 7 March 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk [accessed July 2002]
[39] See Johnson, A Portrait of the Unreformed Side of China..., especially reports dated 20 and 25 April, 8 and 10 May, 25 August, 2 and 9 October, 22 November, 13 and 26 December, all 2001
[40] Personal observations and impressionistic testimony by various anonymous Chinese sources. Also, David Ownby, statements at a workshop on the Falun Gong in Amsterdam, May 2001
[41] Government sources stress the ability of the Falun Gong to gather large numbers of people for demonstrations, which – unlike Western observers – they regard as illegal. China Daily, 8 August 1999, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/e-falun/cult/417.htm [accessed 2 July 2002]
[42] See http://www.faluninfo.net/faq.asp [accessed 19 July 2002]. The numbers on the Chinese Faluninfo website are higher due to more up-to-date information. Unconfirmed deaths may push the number higher still, according to the Falun Gong.
[43] Falun Dafa Information Centre, List of Deaths, http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/deathcases/index.asp [accessed 20 June 2002]. These data, which are obviously essentially indicative, do match other qualitative information from the Falun Gong itself as well as from the Chinese state, in which the same provinces occur time and time again.
[44] Zhang Rongjia [Beijing Medical Universtiy] and Xiao Jun [Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine], A Report on the Effect of Falun Gong in Curing Diseases and Keeping Fit Based on a Survey of 355 Cultivators of Falun Gong at Certain Sites in Beijing, China (Preliminary Study), 1996, http://www.falundafa.ca/world/health/survey96.htm [accessed 20 June 2002]. Also used by Bruseker
[45] Zhang Rongjia and Xiao Jun, Table 2. I have left their categories unaltered.
[46] Idem, Tables 1 and 3
[47] Other data gathered by Bruseker, pp. 54-9, confirms these conclusions. In a collection of personal experiences of the teachings by some hundred followers, entitled Lun xiulian dafa bufen dalu xueyuan xiulian xinde tihui, Beijing, 1996 (mimeograph), medical staff and cadres are much less prominent, but we do find people with menial jobs, students and researchers, and some cadres, as well as retired people. The descriptions of people who have died under the persecution or testimonies on the Falun Gong website also indicate the wide socio-educational distribution of the Falun Gong following within China itself.
[48] The Lun xiulian dafa... is full of detailed information, which is confirmed by other material on the Falun Gong websites.
[49] See e.g. Johnson, A Portrait of the Unreformed Side of China..., Associated Press, Leicester, J., TV Hijackings, E-mail Attacks: China’s Government, Falun Gong Battle for a Hazy Concept, Truth, 8 April 2002
[50] Falun Dafa Information Center, Falun Gong Practitioner Sun Guilan from Baoji City, Shaanxi Province Tortured to Death for Attending a Cultivation Experience Sharing Meeting, 20 May 2002, http://www.faluninfo.net/displayAnArticle.asp?ID=5667 [accessed 2 July 2002]; Huashangbao, 28 June 2002, http://www.mingjing.org.cn/zxxx/2020701/02.htm [accessed 2 July 2002]
[51] The following reports together demonstrate this beyond any doubt. There are outside evaluations, such as Amnesty International, The Crackdown on Falun Gong...; Munro, R., Judicial Psychiatry in China and Its Political Abuses, Colombia Journal of Asian Law, Vol. 14, No 1, 2001; Human Rights Watch, Dangerous Meditation... In addition there is the wealth of documentation produced by the Falun Gong itself and available on http://www.faluninfo.net, both in the form of reports and of individual evidence.
[52] Bruseker, pp. 67-9 speculates on the reasons for these events. See also Zhang and Qiao, pp. 96-104. The usefulness for the Falun Gong of continued membership and the fact that Li Hongzhi left for the United States subsequently suggest to me that it is more likely that the movement’s membership was cancelled unilaterally.
[53] Zhang and Qiao, pp. 185-199. There have been more local Falun Gong demonstrations of this type, see list at http://211.99.196.218/fanduixiejiao/eng/10/10109.htm [accessed 16 July 2002]. This is a propaganda site, but not necessarily unreliable in its facts. Falun Gong websites uniformly stress that He Zuoxiu is also the brother-in-law of the head of the security apparatus Luo Gan, who is said to have instigated the entire persecution through He Zuoxiu. Although this link is interesting, it does not conform to the timing of events, since He had been writing against Qigong movements for many years already.
[54] Oral communications from Chinese intellectuals. Johnson, I., China’s Rigid Policies on Religion Helped Falun Dafa for Years, The Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2000; Zhang and Qiao, pp. 189-191
[55] Bruseker, pp. 72 ff; Zhang and Qiao, pp. 69ff
[56] This should not be misread as implying that the persecution was therefore justified. Even a violent demonstration would not justify this kind of suppression.
[57] Bruseker, pp. 73-83
[58] Perry, E.J., Collective Violence in China, 1880-1980, Theory and Society, Vol. 13, No 3, 1984, pp 427-54; Perry, E.J. , Rural Violence in Socialist China, China Quarterly, No 103, 1985, pp. 414-40
[59] Labour Disputes and Actions [list of Articles of Previous Years], China Labour Bulletin, http://iso.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article_listings.adp?category_id=3 [accessed 17 June 2002]. See also articles listed under the heading Restive Rural China, Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/world/issues/ruralchina/ [accessed 17 June 2002]
[60] Hurst, William and Kevin J. O’Brien, China’s Contentious Pensioners, China Quarterly No. 170, 2002, pp. 345-360 provide an excellent survey, including full references to the larger literature on public protest in contemporary China.
[61] The recent anonymous e-book Poisonous Deceit, Deep Six Publishing, 2002, http://www.deep6-publishing.org, does the sameby attacking Jiang Zemin. The Falun Gong websites also focus on Jiang Zemin, but this book is particularly vehement.
[62] But compare Zhang Liang (comp.), Nathan, A. J. and Link, P. (eds), The Tiananmen Papers, London: Little, Brown, 2001. Poisonous Deceit, if and when reliable in terms of facts, also suggests that not everybody thinks the same way.
[63] See note 18 above for references.
[64] Buruma, I., Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001, provides a readable introduction to their political and/or (often Christian) religious views.
[65] Haar, The White Lotus Teachings, [passim].
[66] For criticism of moneymaking activities expressed since the start of the persecution, see http://www.mingjing.org.cn/jybl/05.htm [accessed July 2002]. For the Falun Gong view, see Li Hongzhi, Zhuanfalun, Lecture Three (section Falun dafa xueyuan zemmayang chuangong). See also the discussion in Zhang and Qiao, pp. 105-9
[67] Haar, B. J. ter, Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads: Creating an Identity, Leiden: Brill, 1998
[68] Dutton, M.R., Policing and Punishment in China: From the Patriarchy to “the People”, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. The author discusses many aspects of crime, punishment and control, including whether there are continuities between past and present Chinese attitudes and practice.
[69] See references in note 17.
[70] Song Guanyu, Tiandao gouchen: Yiguan dao diaocha baogao, Taibei: privately published, 1984. Personal observations throughout the 1990s.
[71] See for instance their website, based in Taiwan, which lists 794 locations where public exercises are held regularly, http://www.falundafa.org.tw/falunintaiwan/place.htm [accessed 24 June 2002]. Taiwanese intellectuals have expressed their pride in this newly-won tolerance in private communications to the present author.
[72] Comments on Northern America by David Ownby at the May 2001 Falun Gong workshop in Amsterdam; the present author has made similar observations in Germany and the Netherlands.
[73] As seen on the anti-Falun Gong website, http://www.mingjing.org.cn, and in other forms of propaganda
[74] On self-immolation, see Benn, J. A., Where Text Meets Flesh: Burning the Body as an Apocryphal Practice in Chinese Buddhism, History of Religions, Vol. 37, No 4, 1998, pp 295-322; for further references see the present author’s online bibliography, Violence in Chinese Culture, http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/violence.htm. On suicide out of protest or desperation in China today, see for instance the list of articles in China Labour Bulletin (see above, fn 59), which contains several references to suicides; also Ji Jianlin, Committed Suicide in the Chinese Rural Areas, Updates on Global Mental and Social Health: Newsletter of the World Mental Health Project, Vol. 3, No 1 June 1999, http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/wmhp/updates/news0301/suic0301.htm [accessed 17 July 2002]; and finally Sing Lee and Kleinman, A., Suicide as Resistance in Chinese Society, in Perry, E. J. and Selden, M. (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 221-40
[75] See the Falun Dafa website for an analysis of (part of) the evidence, http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/tiananmen/immolation.asp [accessed July 2002]
[76] Reporters Without Borders, Severe Crackdown in Defence of the State Monopoly on Information, 21 May 2002, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1386 [accessed 16 July 2002; Reuters, Falun Gong Taps into TV again in China, 26 June 2002, http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=worldnews&StoryID=1135607 [accessed 1 July 2002]; Chinese Satellite TV Hijacked by Falun Gong Cult, People’s Daily, 9 July 2002, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200207/08/eng20020708_99347.shtml [accessed 16 July 2002]
[77] Personal communications from fellow scholars. A very convenient, older summary is Canada, Immigration and Refugee Board, China: Political Dissent – An Update, Ottawa, June 1995, http://www.irb.gc.ca [accessed 24 June 2002]
[78] On the Chinese version of the Falun Dafa Information Center’s website, extensive information on this issue can be found, mostly as a result of the Iceland visit of President Jiang Zemin. See, http://chinese.faluninfo.net/gb/index.htm. It was also reported in the Western media.
[79] An excellent starting point is Pieke, F.N. and Mallee, H. (eds.), Internal and International Migration: Chinese Migration, London: Curzon, 1999, particularly for Chinese migration to Europe. For the United States a good starting point is Ko-lin Chin, Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999. Convenient online resources are the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board’s report China: Internal Migration and the Floating Population, Ottawa, 1998, http://www.irb.gc.ca [accessed 15 June 2002] and the more concise Pieke, F.N., Recent Trends in Chinese Migration to Europe: Fujianese Migration in Perspective, Geneva, International Organization for Migration, 2002, http://www.iom.int//DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/mrs_6_2002.pdf [accessed July 2002]
[80] This happened in 1989 and is for instance reported for Australia in the case of Falun Gong followers. Personal communication by fellow scholars.
[81] An important case is that of Zeng Zheng (Jennifer), who holds a MA in geochemistry from Beijing University and is a CCP member (though undoubtedly expelled since then). She verified, for Falun Gong prisoners, a practice otherwise widely known and with a long history in China, namely the use of prisoners as unpaid labour in the export industry (in her case making dolls for Nestlé). She has been interviewed in numerous Australian media; see e.g. Burke, Kelly, Cute Toy Rabbits Belie Ordeal of Chinese Labour Camps, Sidney Morning Herald, 28 December 2001, http://old.smh.com.au/news/0112/28/national/national19.html, [accessed 21 July 2002]. More information in The Weekend Australian, 16 March 2002, and Callick, R., Out of China to Outer Melbourne, The Australian Financial Review, 21 June 2002
[82] This analysis draws on Pieke, Recent Trends... , pp. 32-3
[83] Pieke, Recent Trends... and Skeldon, R., Myths and Realities of Chinese Irregular Migration, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2002, http://www.iom.int/iomwebsite/Publication/ServletSearchPublication?event=detail&id=456 [accessed July 2002]
[84] Pieke, Recent Trends... , p. 23.
[85] Immigration sources in Canada, UK and the Netherlands. The best source is still [Nic Carlyle for the] Country Information and Policy Unit, Revolution of the Wheel: The Falun Gong in China and in Exile, London: Immigration and Nationality Directorate, April 2002, http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/default.asp?pageid=2806 [accessed July 2002], especially sections 3a (Migration Issues) and 3b (Asylum Cases)
[86] Barnett, D., The Coming Conflict over Asylum: Does America Need a New Asylum Policy?, Washington: Center for Immigration Studies, March 2002, http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back102.pdf [accessed 25 June 2002]; Martin, D., The 1995 Asylum Reforms: A Historic and Global Perspective, Washington: Center for Immigration Studies, May 2000, http://www.cis.org/articles/2002/back500.pdf [accessed 25 June 2002]
[87] Pieke, Recent Trends..., p. 26. On returning asylum seekers, see Koser, K., The Return and Reintegration of Rejected Asylum Seekers and Irregular Migrants, Geneva: International Organization for Migration, May 2001, http://www.iom.int//DOCUMENTS/PUBLICATION/EN/mrs_4_2001.pdf [accessed July 2002].