Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 08:21, 17 October 2011

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.

Template:WP1.0

This article has not yet been rated on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Law Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. Religion: Falun Gong / New religious movements Mid‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Misplaced Pages's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion Mid This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is within the scope of Falun Gong work group, a work group which is currently considered to be inactive. This article is supported by New religious movements work group (assessed as High-importance). This article has been marked as needing immediate attention. Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details. China Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject China, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of China related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChinaWikipedia:WikiProject ChinaTemplate:WikiProject ChinaChina-related Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

In relation to qigong and its roots in Chinese culture

In 1992, Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong and along with teachings that touched upon a wide range of topics, from detailed exposition on qigong related phenomenon and cultivation practice to science and morality. In the next few years, Falun Gong quickly grew in popularity across China to become the most popular qigong practice in Chinese History. Falun Gong was welcomed into the state-controlled Scientific Qigong Research Association, which sponsored and helped to organize many of his activities between 1992 and 1994, including 54 large-scale lectures. In 1992 and 1993 he won government awards at the Beijing Oriental Health Expos, including the "Qigong Master most acclaimed by the Masses" and "The Award for Advancing Boundary Science."

According to academics, Falun Gong originally surfaced in the institutional field of alternative Chinese science, not religion. The debate between what can be called "naturalist" and "supernaturalist" schools of qigong theory has produced a considerable amount of literature. Xu Jian stated in The Journal of Asian Studies 58 (4 November 1999): "Situated both in scientific researches on qigong and in the prevailing nationalistic revival of traditional beliefs and values, this discursive struggle has articulated itself as an intellectual debate and enlisted on both sides a host of well-known writers and scientists — so much so that a veritable corpus of literature on qigong resulted. In it, two conflicting discourses became identifiable. Taking “discourse” in its contemporary sense as referring to forms of representation that generate specific cultural and historical fields of meaning, we can describe one such discourse as rational and scientific and the other as psychosomatic and metaphysical. Each strives to establish its own order of power and knowledge, its own “truth” about the “reality” of qigong, although they differ drastically in their explanation of many of its phenomena. The controversy centers on the question of whether and how qigong can induce “supranormal abilities” (teyi gongneng). The psychosomatic discourse emphasizes the inexplicable power of qigong and relishes its super-normal mechanisms or which causative factors which go beyond wht canbe explained by presentday scietific models, whereas the rational discourse strives to demystify many of its phenomena and to situate it strictly in the knowledge present day modern science." The Chinese government has generally tried to encourage qigong as a science and discourage religious or supernatural elements. However, the category of science in China tends to include things that are generally not considered scientific in the West, including qigong and traditional Chinese medicine.

David Aikman has written in American Spectator (March 2000): "Americans may believe that qigong belongs in a general category of socially neutral, New Age-style concepts that are merely subjective, not necessarily harmful, and incapable of scientific proof. But China's scientific community doesn't share this view. Experiments under controlled conditions established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the late 1970s and early 1980s concluded that qi, when emitted by a qigong expert, actually constitutes measurable infrared electromagnetic waves and causes chemical changes in static water through mental concentration. Qi, according to much of China's scientific establishment, for all intents existed."

Li Hongzhi states in Falun Buddha Fa Lectures in Europe:

"Since the time Dafa was made public, I have unveiled some inexplicable phenomena in qigong as well as things that hadn’t been explained in the qigong community. But this isn’t the reason why so many people are studying Dafa. It’s because our Fa can truly enable people to Consummate, truly save people, and allow you to truly ascend to high levels in the process of cultivation. Whether it’s your realm of mind or the physical quality of your body, the Fa truly enables you to reach the standards of different levels. It absolutely can assume this role."

Andrew P. Kipnis is quoted as stating: "...to the Western layperson, qigong of all sorts may seem to be religious because it deals with spiritual matters. Because Li Hongzhi makes use of many concepts from Buddhism and Taoism in his writings, this may make Falun Gong seem even more like a religion to the outsider; bur Falun Gong grew initially into a space termed scientific , but was mostly insulated from the spaces formally acknowledged as institutionalized science in Western countries"

The term 'qigong' was coined in the early 1950s as an alternative label to past spiritual disciplines rooted Buddhism or Taoism, that promoted the belief in the supernatural, immortality and pursuit of spiritual transcendence. The new term was constructed to avoid danger of association with ancient spiritual practices which were labeled "superstitious" and persecuted during the Maoist era. In Communist China, where spirituality and religion are looked-down upon, the concept was "tolerated" because it carried with it no overt religious or spiritual elements; and millions flocked to it during China's spiritual vacuum of the 1980s and 1990s. Scholars argue that the immense popularity of qigong in China could, in part, lie in the fact that the public saw in it a way to improve and maintain health. According to Ownby, this rapidly became a social phenomenon of considerable importance.

Membership and finances

Sociologist Susan Palmer writes that, "...Falun Gong does not behave like other new religions. For one thing, its organization - if one can even call it that - is quite nebulous. There are no church buildings, rented spaces, no priests or administrators. At first I assumed this was defensive now, I'm beginning to think that what you see is exactly what you get - Master Li's teachings on the Net on the one hand and a global network of practitioners on the other. Traveling through North America, all I dug up was a handful of volunteer contact persons. The local membership (they vehemently reject that word) is whoever happens to show up at the park on a particular Saturday morning to do qigong."

Finances

In his thesis, Noah Porter takes up the issue of Falun Gong and finance in Mainland China. He quotes and responds to some of the allegations of the Chinese Communist Party that Li benefited financially from teaching the practice. Porter writes that when teaching seminars, there was an admission of 40 yuan per new practitioner and 20 yuan for repeat practitioners--with the repeat practitioners making up for 50-75% of the admissions. He goes on to say with respect to the CCP's claims: "...but the Chinese government figures for the profits of the seminars counted all attendees as paying the 40-yuan fee charged to newcomers. Also, the Chinese Qigong Research Society received 40% of admission receipts from July 1993 to September 1994. Falun Gong's first four training seminars took in a total of 20,000 yuan, which is only 10% of the 200,000 figure cited by the Chinese government. Finally, from that 20,000 yuan, they had several operating expenses..."

Ian Johnson points out that during the greatest period of Falun Gong book sales in China, Li Hongzhi never received any royalties because all publications were bootleg.

James Tong writes about the competing claims by Falun Gong and the Chinese government in 'The China Quarterly' journal, 2003. He writes that the government has attempted to portray Falun Gong as being financially savvy with a centralized administration system and a variety of mechanisms for deriving profit from the practice. He also looks over Falun Gong's claims of having no hierarchy, administration, membership or financial accounts, and that seminar admission was charged at a minimal rate. Tong writes that it was in the government's interest, in the post-crackdown context, to portray Falun Gong as being highly organised: "The more organized the Falun Gong could be shown to be, then the more justified the regime's repression in the name of social order was." He writes that the government's charges that Falun Gong made excessive profits, charged exorbitant fees, and that Li Hongzhi led a lavish lifestyle "...lack both internal and external substantiating evidence" and points out that that despite the arrests and scrutiny, the authorities "had disclosed no financial accounts that established the official charge and credibly countered Falun Gong rebuttals."

Li Hongzhi stipulates in his books Falun Gong and Zhuan Falun that practitioners should only voluntarily help others learn the exercises and that this could never be done for fame and money, and also stipulates that practitioners must not accept any fee, donation or gift in return for their voluntarily teaching the practice. According to Falun Gong, Li's insistence that the practice be offered free of charge caused a rift with the China Qigong Research Society, the state administrative body under which Falun Dafa was initially introduced. Li subsequently withdrew from the organization.

Falun Gong website often state on their pages that "All Falun Gong Activities Are Free of Charge and Run by Volunteers"

In an interview in Sydney on May 2, 1999, mentioning his financial status, Li said : "In mainland China I published so many books, but added together, they haven't exceeded twenty thousand Renminbi (equivalent to US $ 2,469). This is what the publishing company gave me. When publishing books in other countries of the world, you know there is a rule, which pays 5 or 6% royalties to the author, so each time I can only get a little bit, a few hundred, or a few thousand dollars."

1. ^ "Falungong as a Cultural Revitalization Movement: An Historian Looks at Contemporary China." Professor David Ownby, Department of History, University of Montreal, , accessed 31/12/07
2. The Past, Present and Future of Falun Gong, A lecture by Harold White Fellow, Benjamin Penny, at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2001, , accessed 31/12/07
3. American Spectator, March 2000, Vol. 33, Issue 2
4. Porter 2003, pp. 38-39. Available online:
5. Porter 2003, p 197
6. Johnson, Ian. Wild Grass: three stories of change in modern China. Pantheon books. 2004. pp 23-229
7. James Tong, "An Organizational Analysis of the Falun Gong: Structure, Communications, Financing", The China Quarterly, 2002, 636-660: p 636
8. Tong 2002, p 638
9. Tong 2002, p 657
10. Learning the Practice, , accessed 21 July 2007
11. Li Hongzhi, Lecture in Sydney, 1999, , accessed 21 July 2007

Lawsuit accuses Cisco of aiding Chinese repression of Falon gong

Here is something I think should be added to the page

From CNET:

Cisco Systems designed a surveillance system to help the Chinese government track and ultimately suppress members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a lawsuit the group filed against the network equipment maker.

Link to read the rest of the CNET story

Mattsky (talk) 12:32, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - very interesting. Falun Gong has a record of filing lawsuits outside China to seek redress for alleged torture and wrongful imprisonment, though to my knowledge this is the first against a U.S. company. I have a list of things I had volunteered to do on this page, and I can add this to that list (unless someone wants to get to it first). In your view, should the allegations be folded in under the section on persecution, or should the lawsuit itself be noted in the section on Falun Gong outside China? Homunculus (duihua) 04:36, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This should not be just an allegation with 2 lines in the article. This is really a big case from a history and hi-tech standpoint. We really need editors with a law background on this one. Problem is that this is not even at the point of Group1 vs. Group2 yet with a court date. Benjwong (talk) 02:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be fair to have a short description of the case in the article, presenting it just as has been done in the NYTimes, WSJ, Reuters, etc. This would include mention of Cisco's denial that it administers or customizes networks in China. Some of the evidence on which the case is based is also drawn from Ethan Gutmann's book Losing the New China, and we could refer to that. But otherwise I agree with you. When the discovery process begins, and more evidence is made public, it may be fitting to even have a separate article on the topic. If we can find an editor who is familiar with the alien torts claims act, that would be helpful. On a related note, a handful of other Chinese dissidents have filed their own case against Cisco with funding from the Laogai foundation, apparently hoping to piggyback on this one. So yea, it might very well merit its own article at some point. Homunculus (duihua) 02:17, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

We really don't need editors with a law background, actually, just editors who can access the material from reliable sources relating to the subject. I have found at least a few RS's so far on the subject, and personally believe that the subject probably deserves an article of its own, provided notability can be established, which shouldn't be a problem. I tend to believe in general that there is a reasonable basis for quite a few more articles on the subject of Falun Gong than exist to date, and would welcome seeing anyone make an effort to find sources for them. I am in the process of reviewing available literature myself, and might have a few suggestions. John Carter (talk) 16:18, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Discussion regarding status of Falun Gong content on wikipedia

I have started a discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Religion/Falun Gong work group#Status about the existing status of our content related to Falun Gong on wikipedia. I would very much welcome the input of any and all interested parties. Thank you for your attention. John Carter (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Sources

It seems to me that, maybe, we have not paid a great deal of attention to some of the more recent works on this subject. Revenge of the Forbidden City was a fairly well received book a few years ago about the Chinese reaction to FG, and the more recent Cultural Economy of Falun Gong, which has only been out a month or two and hasn't yet gotten a lot of reviews, is probably also very useful. Also, I note that Ownby and Palmer have both written and helped collect some articles for publication in Nova Religio, which seems to be the journal which has been selected for the publication of writings on the subject of FG as a movement in general. They would certainly be reasonable to be included. I can't e-mail books to anyone, but, if they were to want any articles, including the Nova Religio articles, and can't get them, I could e-mail those articles out. John Carter (talk) 21:11, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe a few of these are already found in the article, including some Nova Religio pieces. Correct me if I'm wrong. Revenge of the Forbidden City is cited at length in the section on the conversion campaign. Tong not being an expert on Falun Gong as a religion (except, perhaps, its organization), I suspect his research will be more useful on the persecution page. But I would suggest being aware of the limitations of his research, which ended in 2005 and relied overwhelmingly on primary source, official literature (and zero field work, it would seem, or even interviews with former detainees and the like). I have not read Xiao Ming's book, but if you happen to have a pdf, send it my way. In my last round of edits to this page, I made a pretty feable attempt to incorporate some of the more recent scholarly and journalistic literature, including Vivienne Shue's excellent contribution to State and Society in 21st Century China. It's a worthwhile endeavor, but on the other hand, I worry already (as previously expressed) than the page already contains more scholarly exegesis than is useful to an average reader, so it needs to be balanced against the needs of brevity and clarity.Homunculus (duihua) 00:52, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

He and Luo, two years later.

I see that the issue with He and Luo is still basically unresolved. Did we just run out of steam like every other instance and let it be? See: Talk:Falun_Gong/Archive_37#RFC_on_connections_between_Luo_and_He, and my arguments prior to my departure from Falun Gong articles: Talk:Falun_Gong/Archive_34#Gutmann_deletions.3F. Colipon+(Talk) 03:22, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Rationale for my edit on the Controversies section

1) PCCP's statement about non-scholarly anti-cult activists like Rick Ross is undue weight next to the opinions of numerous credible scholars. 2) The references were also messed up and misplaced in his earlier edit. 3) He included material that was taken out of context, like Palmer's quote about the "absolute centralization" of money, organization, and healing. The quote was explaining that local practice sites are not allowed to take money; it's not about Falun Gong being tightly organized. 4) He added in Craig Smith's quote saying that Falun Gong believes mixed-race people are the "spawn" of the dharma-ending period. The primary sources (i.e. Falun Gong's teachings, the sole corpus of teachings that determines what Falun Gong "believes") do not include such allegations. ✔ Olaf Stephanos ✍ 07:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your edit (or at least the one part that I was paying attention to). On the one hand we have a reliable secondary source, the New York Times, in an article about Falun Gong saying that Li Hongzhi "said interracial children are the spawn of the Dharma Ending Period, a Buddhist phrase that refers to an era of moral degeneration. In an interview last year, he said each race has its own paradise, and he later told followers in Australia that, "The yellow people, the white people, and the black people have corresponding races in heaven." As a result, he said, interracial children have no place in heaven without his intervention." and on the other we have a Misplaced Pages editor talking about what primary sources say as the basis for the removal of the WP:V compliant material. Please could you explain how the removal of the material is consistemt with policy ? Thanks. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not trying to reject the idea of including what Li Hongzhi has said about the the mixed-race issue; I'm talking about the opinionated, inflammatory wording in that article. There are no reliable academic sources contesting the idea that Li Hongzhi's lectures are the sole criterion for determining what Falun Gong "teaches". In fact, many sources explicitly state just the opposite. In this case, the primary sources are in no way ambiguous nor can they be dismissed when we evaluate what has definitively been said. Using another source is just like playing Chinese whispers—the further we get from the source, the less likely we are able to preserve the original meaning without distortion.

This is perfectly consistent with Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines, including the verifiability of sources. "The accuracy of quoted material is paramount and the accuracy of quotations from living persons is especially sensitive. To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted. If this is not possible, then the text may be taken from a reliable secondary source (ideally one that includes a citation to the original). No matter where you take the quoted text from, it is important to make clear the actual source of the text, as it appears in the article. Partisan secondary sources should be viewed with suspicion as they may misquote or quote out of context. In such cases, look for neutral corroboration from another source." Craig Smith is very partisan; all his articles by this era had become propaganda pieces for the CCP. Given that his account is contentious (ie. the "spawn" thing, and the idea that people of mixed race are doomed without Li's intervention), we should seek an additional source on it. And since no other sources make these same claims, it shouldn't be included.

✔ Olaf Stephanos ✍ 08:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages controversial topics
• All unassessed articles
• B-Class law articles
• Low-importance law articles
• WikiProject Law articles
• B-Class Religion articles
• Mid-importance Religion articles
• B-Class New religious movements articles
• High-importance New religious movements articles
• New religious movements articles
• Religion articles needing attention
• WikiProject Religion articles
• B-Class China-related articles
• Top-importance China-related articles
• B-Class China-related articles of Top-importance
• WikiProject China articles