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Falun Gong
The Falun Dafa emblem
Traditional Chinese	法輪功
Simplified Chinese	法轮功
Literal meaning	Practice of the Wheel of Law
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Fǎlún Gōng Yue: Cantonese Jyutping fat2 lun4 gung1
Falun Dafa
Traditional Chinese	法輪大法
Simplified Chinese	法轮大法
Literal meaning	Great Law of the Wheel of Law
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Fǎlún Dàfǎ Yue: Cantonese Jyutping fat2 lun4 daai6 fat2

Falun Gong (alternatively Falun Dafa) is a system of beliefs and practices founded in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992. It emerged at the end of China's "qigong boom", a period of growth and popularity of similar practices. Falun Gong differs from other qigong schools in its absence of daily rituals of worship, its greater emphasis on morality, and the theological nature of its teachings. Western academics have described Falun Gong as a "spiritual movement" based on the teachings of its founder, a "cultivation system" in the tradition of Chinese antiquity, and sometimes a new religious movement (NRM). Falun Gong places a heavy emphasis on morality in its central tenets – Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance (Chinese: 真、善、忍). Its teachings include concepts from qigong, Buddhist and Taoist traditions.

The movement grew rapidly in China between 1992 and 1999. Government sources indicated that there may have been as many as 70 million Falun Gong practitioners in the country by 1998. In the mid-1990s the proliferation of qigong practices generated attention from Chinese journalists, skeptics, and scientists; reports critical of qigong appeared in the Chinese media, some of which were aimed at Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners responded to critics through peaceful protests, attempting to address perceived unfair media treatment. In April 1999, after a protest in Tianjin which ended with beatings and arrests, some 10,000 practitioners gathered at Zhongnanhai, the residence compound of China's leaders, in silent protest, while representatives reportedly negotiated with CCP officials. This protest was illegal under Chinese law and was the largest gathering of protesters since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Their main request was "the assurance of a proper and lawful environment to pursue Falun Gong cultivation."

In July 1999, the Chinese government, under the Communist Party of China (CPC), banned Falun Gong and began a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign against the practice; in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization." Human rights groups report that Falun Gong practitioners in China are subject to a wide range of human rights abuses. Falun Gong practitioners continue to levy charges against the CPC, lobbying Western governments and handing out information about the ill-treatment of practitioners, highlighting arbitrary arrests and imprisonment, organ harvesting, forced labor, and torture at the hands of the Chinese security forces. Falun Gong practitioners have founded media outlets (the Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty Television) that publicize their cause and criticize the CPC, and the group has emerged as a prominent voice opposing the Party's rule in China.

Beliefs and practices

Falun Gong was introduced to the public by Li Hongzhi (李洪志) in Changchun, China, in 1992. The practice emerged towards the end of the “qigong boom,” a period which saw the proliferation of a wide variety of traditional “cultivation” practices involving meditation, slow-moving exercises or regulated breathing. Although Falun Gong is associated with the ‘’qigong’’ movement, it is distinct in that its teachings cover spiritual and metaphysical topics, placing emphasis on morality and virtue (‘’de’’). The practice identifies with the Buddhist School (‘’Fojia’’), but also draws on concepts and language found in Taoism and Confucianism. This has led some scholars to label the practice as a syncretic faith.

Falun Gong aspires to enable the practitioner to ascend spiritually through moral rectitude and the practice of a set of exercises and meditation. The three central tenets of the belief are 'Truthfulness' (眞, Zhēn), 'Compassion' (善, Shàn), and 'Forbearance' (忍, Rěn). Together these principles are regarded as the fundamental nature of the cosmos, and are held to be the highest manifestation of the Tao, or Buddhist Dharma. In Zhuan Falun (轉法輪), the foundational text published in late 1994, Li Hongzhi says that "As a practitioner, if you assimilate yourself to this characteristic, you are one that has attained the Tao."

Falun Gong’s teachings state that people are originally and innately good, but that they descended into a realm of delusion and suffering after developing selfishness. Practitioners of Falun Gong are therefore supposed to assimilate themselves to the qualities of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance by letting go of "attachments and desires," being kind, and suffering to repay karma, thus “returning to the original, true self." The ultimate goal of the practice is enlightenment, and release from the cycle of reincarnation, called samsara.

In addition to its moral philosophy, Falun Gong also consists of four standing, slow-moving exercises and one sitting meditation. These exercises are intended to open the body’s energy channels and circulation systems, and are a supplementary part of the practice. Falun Gong espouses the belief that through moral rectitude and cultivation, supplemented with the practice of exercises and meditation, a person can be healed of illnesses. The book ‘’Falun Gong’’ is an introductory text that discusses ‘’qigong’’ and provides illustrations and explanations of the exercises and meditation. The main body of teachings is articulated in the core book ‘’Zhuan Falun’’. According to the texts, Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) is a "complete system of mind-body cultivation practice" (修煉, xiūliàn).

As part of its emphasis on ethical behavior, Falun Gong’s teachings prescribe a strict personal morality for practitioners, which includes abstention from smoking, alcohol and drugs, gambling, premarital sex and homosexuality. These behaviors are said to generate negative karma, and are therefore viewed as counterproductive to the goals of the practice. Practitioners of Falun Gong are also forbidden to kill living things—including animals for the purpose of obtaining food—though it does not require the adoption of vegetarian diet. Some of Li's conservative moral statements have been a source of controversy for Falun Gong in progressive circles in the West. (See controversies).

Traditional Chinese cultural thought and modernity are two focuses of Li Hongzhi's teachings. Falun Gong echoes traditional Chinese beliefs that humans are connected to the universe through mind and body, and Li seeks to challenge "conventional mentalities," attempting to unveil myths of the universe, time-space, and the human body. The practice draws on East Asian mysticism and traditional Chinese medicine, criticizes the purportedly self-imposed limits of modern science, and views traditional Chinese science as an entirely different, yet equally valid knowledge system. According to Richard Madsen, Chinese scientists with doctorates from prestigious American universities who practice Falun Gong claim that modern physics (for example, superstring theory) and biology (specifically the pineal gland’s function) provide a scientific basis for their beliefs. From their point of view, “Falun Dafa is knowledge rather than religion, a new form of science rather than faith.”

Falun Gong practitioners have established a "resistance identity"—one that stands against prevailing pursuits of wealth, power, scientific rationality, and "the entire value system associated with the project of modernization." In China the practice represented an indigenous spiritual and moral tradition, a cultural revitalization movement, and drew a sharp contrast to "Marxism with Chinese characteristics.”

The Falun Gong teachings use numerous untranslated Chinese religious and philosophical terms, and make frequent allusion to characters and incidents in Chinese folk literature and concepts drawn from Chinese popular religion. This, coupled with the literal translation style of the texts, which imitate the tone and cadences of Li’s colloquial Chinese speech, make Falun Gong scriptures difficult to approach for Westerners.

Categorization

Falun Gong is a multifaceted discipline that means different things to different people, ranging from a set of physical exercises for the attainment of better health and a praxis of self-transformation, to a moral philosophy and a new knowledge system, according to Zhao Yuezhi, a communications professor. While Li discusses millennial themes, Falun Gong's organizational structure works against totalistic control, with no hierarchy in place to enforce orthodoxy and little or no emphasis on dogmatic discipline. There is no membership, and practitioners are free to participate as much or as little as they like; the only thing emphasized is the need for strict moral behavior, according to Craig Burgdoff, a professor of religious studies. He expresses concerns over Li Hongzhi's totalizing discourse, but says this is tempered by having found "practitioners to be engaged seriously in a highly disciplined spiritual and ethical practice."

The practice has been characterized as a ‘’qigong’’ system, a new religious movement, and as belonging to the Chinese tradition of cultivation practices. Ethan Gutmann describes Falun Gong as a Buddhist revival movement which draws on traditional Chinese philosophy, but also involves unmistakably modern themes. Penny writes: "There are aspects of Falun Gong doctrine that could have been understood by a cultivator in China 1000 years ago, and there are parts of the doctrine that could not have appeared in China before the late 1980s."

Richard Madsen writes that like most qigong practices, Falun Gong may appear religious because it does not make a clear distinction between physical and spiritual healing. Falun Dafa can be seen as part of a long tradition of Chinese folk Buddhism which often had a millenarian element that "this world was hopelessly corrupt and would come to an end."

Cheris Shun-ching Chan consider cults to be new religious movements that focus on the individual experience of the encounter with the sacred rather than collective worship, and writes that Falun Gong is neither a cult nor a sect, but a new religious movement with cult-like characteristics. Some scholars avoid the term "cult" altogether because "of the confusion between the historic meaning of the term and current pejorative use" These scholars prefer terms like "spiritual movement","new religious syncretism" or "new religious movement" to avoid the negative connotations of "cult" or to avoid mis-categorizing those which do not fit mainstream definitions.

Organization

Falun Gong embraces a minimal organizational structure, and does not have a rigid hierarchy, physical places of worship, or formal membership. In the absence of membership, Falun Gong practitioners can be anyone who choses to identify themselves as such, and practitioners are free to participate in the practice and follow its teachings as much or as little as they like.

Soon after its public introduction in China, The Falun Dafa Research Center (FDRC) was established under the oversight of the state-run China Qigong Research Association. Following Falun Gong’s withdrawal from the Qigong Association in March, 1996, the FDRC attempted to register with numerous other government agencies, but was unanimously rejected. Unable to operate within a state-sponsored framework, Falun Gong pursued a more decentralized and loose organizational structure from 1997, according to Porter. This took shape as a nationwide network of assistance centers organized into “main stations,” “guidance stations,” and meditation practice sites. Assistants were self-selecting volunteers who taught the exercises, organized events, and disseminated new writings from Li Hongzhi. A comparable network of volunteer “contact persons,” regional Falun Dafa Associations and university clubs now exists in over 100 countries (not including mainland China). Li Hongzhi’s teachings are now principally spread through the Internet.

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."

Chinese authorities portray Falun Gong as a tight, hierarchical and well-funded organization, able to mobilize millions of practitioners. James Tong writes that it was in the government's interest in the post-crackdown context to portray Falun Gong as 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 concluded that Party’s claims lacked “both internal and external substantiating evidence,” and that the despite the arrests and scrutiny, the authorities never “credibly countered Falun Gong rebuttals.”

Anthropologist Noah Porter writes that Falun Gong's structure in China was not hierarchical, and that it was able to grow in a restrictive society like the PRC because of its relatively small size and flexible communication methods.

Opinions differ on whether or not Li made money from the practice in China, and if so, how much. Dai Qing (2000) states that by 1997, Li was receiving annual income in excess of ¥10 million, even arguing that "Li's income is more legitimate than those of corrupt government officials." However, during the period of Falun Gong’s greatest book sales in China, Li Hongzhi didn’t receive royalties because all publications were bootleg—the texts having been banned by the authorities in 1996 in an attempt to curb the practice’s growth.

Demography

Prior to 1999, widely cited government estimates put the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China at over 70 million adherents. After the government imposed a ban on the group, it adjusted its estimates to approximately 2 million. The number of Falun Gong adherents still practicing in China today is difficult to confirm, though some sources estimate that tens of millions continue to practice privately.

Demographic surveys conducted in China in 1998 found a population that was overwhelmingly female and elderly. Of 34,351 Falun Gong practitioners surveyed, 27% were male and 73% female. Only 38% were under 50 years old. Surveys in China found that between 23% - 40% of practitioners held university degrees, either at the college or graduate level. Although overwhelming elderly and female, Falun Gong attracted a range of individuals, from young college students to bureaucrats, intellectuals and Party officials.

Falun Gong is practiced by tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands outside China, with the largest communities found in Taiwan and North American cities with large Chinese populations, such as New York and Toronto. Demographic surveys by Palmer and Ownby in these communities found that 90% of practitioners are ethnic Chinese. The average age was approximately 42.Among survey respondents, 56% were female and 44% male; 80% were married. The surveys found the respondents to be highly educated: 9% held PhDs, 34% had Masters degrees, and 24% had a Bachelors degree. The most commonly reported reasons for being attracted to Falun Gong were intellectual content, cultivation exercises, and health benefits.

History inside China

Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong to the public in May 1992, in Changchun, Jilin Province. Early versions of Zhuan Falun stated that the system was tested extensively in the years prior to its introduction, and included a hagiographic spiritual biography of Li Hongzhi which was later withdrawn from circulation.

Li Hongzhi claims that he was taught ways of "cultivation practice" by several masters of the Dao and Buddhist traditions, including Quan Jue, the 10th Heir to the Great Law of the Buddha School, a Taoist master from age eight to twelve, and a master of the Great Way School with the Taoist alias of True Taoist from the Changbai Mountains. Falun Gong is the result of his reorganizing and writing down the teachings that were passed to him. In his religious biography, which draws on and is considered a contemporary rewriting of an ancient tradition, Li is claimed able to perform a variety of supernatural feats, including invisibility, levitation, and weather modification. For his day job Li worked as a grain clerk at the Changchun Cereals Company, and at one time played trumpet in the army.

Like many qigong masters at the time, Li toured major cities in China from 1992 to 1994 to teach the practice; he was granted a number of awards by Chinese governmental organizations. According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, neither Li nor Falun Gong were particularly controversial in the beginning; Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement," and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture (because it was an indigenous Chinese practice), and “promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society.” The movement enjoyed success and rapid growth.

Li made his lectures more widely accessible and affordable in later years, charging less than competing qigong systems for lectures, tapes, and books. On 4 January 1995, Zhuan Falun, the main book on Falun Gong, was published and became a best-seller in China. In the face of Falun Gong's rise in popularity, a large part of which was attributed to its low cost, competing qigong masters accused Li of unfair business practices. According to Schechter, the qigong society under which Li and other qigong masters belonged asked Li to hike his tuition, but Li refused. Li lived a life of deprivation in order to keep the costs low and let more people learn, and emphasised the need for the teachings to be free-of-charge, or as cheap as possible. By 1995, Falun Gong had differentiated itself from other qigong groups in its emphasis on morality, low cost, and health benefits; it rapidly spread via word-of-mouth. Its rapid growth within China was also related to family ties and community relationships, attracting a wide range of adherents from all walks of life – including numerous members of the Chinese Communist Party. In March, 1996, Falun Gong withdrew from the Qigong Association, after which time it operated outside the official sanction of the state. Li was then outside the circuit of personal relations and financial exchanges through which masters and their qigong organizations could find a place within the state system, and also the protections this afforded.

Criticism and response

The rapid rise and influence of Falun Gong received little journalistic attention until mid-1996. Chinese media were not supposed to report on qigong at all, but in 1994 and 1995, after some groups had grown very large, the tone began to shift in order to curb the growth of the groups. By 1996 attention turned to Falun Gong, a sign that China’s media and ideological establishment had begun considering Falun Gong’s influence on society. On 17 June 1996, a week after Zhuan Falun Volume II was listed the no.10 best selling at a Beijing book market, the Guangming Daily, an influential national newspaper, published a polemic against Falun Gong. The author wrote that the history of humanity is a "struggle between science and superstition," and called on Chinese publishers not to print "pseudo-scientific books of the swindlers." The article cited Zhuan Falun as an example of the rising number of publications riddled with "feudal superstition" (fengjian mixin) and "pseudoscience" (wei kexue). The article set off a wave of press criticism, with twenty major newspapers also issuing criticisms of Falun Gong. Soon after, on 24 July, the Central Propaganda Department banned all publication of Falun Gong books – though the ban was not enforced consistently. Li subsequently condoned the circulation of counterfeit and hand-copied versions of his books.

The events were an important challenge to Falun Gong, which practitioners did not take lightly. Thousands of Falun Gong followers wrote to Guangming Daily and to the CQRS to complain against the measures, claiming that they violated Hu Yaobang's 1982 'Triple No' directive. Li made statements that practitioners’ response to criticism showed their hearts and "would separate the false disciples from the true ones", also indicating that publicly defending the practice was a righteous act and an essential aspect of Dafa cultivation. Until this juncture, Falun Gong had successfully negotiated the space between science and native tradition in the public representation of its teachings, avoiding any suggestion of superstition.

Falun Gong was not the only target of the domestic media criticism, nor the only group to protest, but theirs was the most mobilised and steadfast response. Many of Falun Gong's attempts for positive, or non-negative media portrayal were successful, resulting in the retraction of several newspaper stories critical of Falun Gong. This contributed to practitioners' belief that the media claims against them were false or exaggerated, and that their stance was justified. Falun Gong books remained officially proscribed, however.

In June 1998, Tianjin professor He Zuoxiu, brother-in-law of security tsar Luo Gan and an outspoken critic of qigong, appeared on a talk show on Beijing Television and openly disparaged qigong groups, making particular mention of Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners responded with peaceful protests, which was considered audacious under the circumstances, and lobbying of the station. The reporter responsible for the program was reportedly fired, and a program favorable to Falun Gong was aired several days later. Falun Gong practitioners also mounted demonstrations at 14 other media outlets. The Beijing Television incident resulted in directives from authorities to cease publishing content critical of Falun Gong to "ensure stability" in the lead-up to the ten-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Tianjin and Zhongnanhai protests

By the late 1990s, the Communist Party’s relationship to the growing Falun Gong movement had become increasingly tense. Reports of discrimination and surveillance by the Public Security Bureau were escalating, and Falun Gong adherents were routinely organizing sit-in demonstrations responding to media articles they deemed to be unfair.

In April 1999, physicist He Zuoxiu, published an article critical of Falun Gong in Tianjin Normal University's Youth Reader magazine. The article cast qigong, and Falun Gong in particular, as superstitious and potentially dangerous. Falun Gong practitioners responded by picketing the offices of the newspaper requesting a retraction of the article.

Unlike past instances in which Falun Gong protests were successful, on April 22 the Tianjin demonstration was broken up by the arrival of three hundred riot police. Some of the practitioners were beaten, and forty-five arrested. Other Falun Gong practitioners were told that if they wished to appeal further, they needed to take the issue up with the Public Security Bureau and go to Beijing to appeal

The Falun Gong community quickly mobilized a response, and on the morning of April 25, upwards of 10,000 practitioners gathered near the central appeals office to demand an end to the escalating harassment against the spiritual practice, and request the release of the Tianjin practitioners. It was Falun Gong practitioners' attempt to seek redress from the leadership of the country by going to them and, "albeit very quietly and politely, making it clear that they would not be treated so shabbily." Security officers had been expecting them, and corralled the practitioners onto Fuyou Street in front of the Zhongnanhai government compound. They sat or read quietly on the sidewalks surrounding the Zhongnanhai.

As the Falun Gong crowd grew outside Zhongnanhai, President Jiang Zemin received a phone call from Luo Gan informing him of Falun Gong’s presence outside the compound. Jiang was reportedly angered by the audacity of the demonstration—the largest since the Tiananmen Square protests ten years earlier.

Five Falun Gong representatives met with Premier Zhu Rongji to negotiate a resolution. The Falun Gong representatives were assured that the regime supported physical exercises for health improvements and did not consider the Falun Gong to be anti-government. Upon reaching this resolution, the crowd of Falun Gong protesters dispersed.

President Jiang Zemin reportedly criticized Premier Zhu for being “too soft” in his handling of the situation. That evening, Jiang composed a letter indicating his desire to see Falun Gong “defeated.” Jiang is held by Falun Gong to be personally responsible for this decision: Peerman cited reasons such as suspected personal jealousy of Li Hongzhi; Saich points to Jiang’s anger at Falun Gong's widespread appeal, and ideological struggle as causes for the crackdown that followed. Willy Wo-Lap Lam suggests Jiang’s decision to suppress Falun Gong was related to a desire to consolidate his power within the Politburo.

Porter writes that He Zuoxiu’s article in Tianjin may have been designed to provoke Falun Gong. Porter, along with Gutmann and Zhao, highlight the familial relationship between He and Luo Gan to suggest that the two may have been colluding to bait Falun Gong into protesting at Tianjin, and then at Zhongnanhai, in order to concoct a pretext for suppression: “Things could not have worked out better for the two if they had planned it — which, it appears, they just might have." Luo Gan had been a long-time opponent of Falun Gong, and a World Journal report suggested that certain high-level Party officials wanted to crack down on the practice for years, but lacked sufficient pretext until the protest at Zhongnanhai. After the Zhongnanhai demonstration, Luo Gan was appointed to lead the effort to suppress Falun Gong.

The ban

On 20 July 1999, the Chinese government declared the Research Society of Falun Dafa and the Falun Gong organization under its control to be outlawed for having been "engaged in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability." Xinhua further declared that Falun Gong was a highly organised political group "opposed to the Communist Party of China and the central government, preaches idealism, theism and feudal superstition." Xinhua also affirmed that "the so-called 'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by Li has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve." It was declared “illegal” to practice Falun Gong, possess books, or display slogans indicative of the teachings.

In response, Li Hongzhi declared that Falun Gong did not have any particular organization, nor any political objectives.

Yuezhi Zhao argues that a number of factors contributed to the souring of relations between Falun Gong and the Chinese state and media. These included infighting between China’s qigong establishment and Falun Gong, speculation over blackmailing and lobbying by Li’s qigong opponents and "scientists-cum-ideologues with political motives and affiliations with competing central Party leaders," which caused the shift in the state’s position, and the struggles from mid-1996 to mid-1999 between Falun Gong, the mainstream media, and the Chinese power elite over the status and treatment of the movement. While Falun Gong had some elite support, it was fundamentally at odds with official ideology, and there were individuals within the scientific, ideological, and political establishments predisposed to attacking Falun Gong in the media.

Suppression

On July 20, 1999, security forces abducted and detained thousands of Falun Gong leaders. Two days later on July 22, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs outlawed the Falun Dafa Research Society as an illegal organization, and the Ministry of Public Security declared it a crime to practice Falun Gong in groups, to possess Falun Gong’s teachings, to display Falun Gong banners or symbols, or to protest the ban. The ensuing campaign aimed to “eradicate” the group through a combination of propaganda, imprisonment, and coercive thought reform of adherents, sometimes resulting in deaths. In October 1999, four months after the ban, legislation was created to outlaw "heterodox religions" and applied to Falun Gong retroactively.

The U.S. State Department cites estimates that up to half of China’s reeducation-through-labor camp population is Falun Gong adherents. Falun Gong practitioners were among those most harshly persecuted by the Chinese government in 2008, according to Amnesty International.

According to Johnson, the campaign against Falun Gong extends to many aspects of society, including the media apparatus, police force, military, education system, and workplaces. An extra-constitutional body, the "6-10 Office" was created to "oversee the terror campaign." Human Rights Watch (2002) noted that families and workplaces were urged to cooperate with the government.

According to Human Rights Watch, China's leaders and ruling elite were far from unified in their support for the crackdown; though James Tong suggests there was no real resistance from the Politburo. In February 2001, in an attempt to show unity, the Communist Party held a Central Work Conference and discussed Falun Gong. Under Jiang's leadership, the crackdown on Falun Gong became part of the Chinese political ethos of "upholding stability" – much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen in 1989. Jiang's message was echoed at the 2001 National People's Congress, where Premier Zhu Rongji made special mention of Falun Gong in his outline of China's Tenth Five-Year Plan, saying "we must continue our campaign against the Falun Gong cult," effectively tying Falun Gong's eradication to China's economic progress.

Media campaign

Leung remarked that the effort was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspapers, radio and internet. Within the first month of the crackdown, 300–400 articles attacking Falun Gong appeared in each of the main state-run papers, while primetime television replayed alleged exposés on the group, with no divergent views aired in the media. The “massive propaganda campaign” focused on allegations that Falun Gong jeopardized social stability, was deceiving and dangerous, was “anti-science” and threatened progress, and argued that Falun Gong’s moral philosophy was incompatible with a Marxist social ethic.

Since October 1999, three months after the suppression began, the Chinese government classified Falun Gong as a xiejiao, (heretical religion, sometimes rendered as 'evil cult') and anti-Falun Gong propaganda activities dominated the Chinese media during that time as the government justifed its actions, arguing that Falun Gong practice was dangerous, and damages people's physical and mental health like the Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo. This strategy was vital in the government’s logic, because such reference to cults was supposed to justify the government's actions. According to China scholars Daniel Wright and Joseph Fewsmith, for several months after Falun Gong was outlawed, China Central Television's evening news contained little but anti-Falun Gong rhetoric in which academics, alleged former followers, and ordinary citizens spoke about how "the cult" cheats its followers, separates families, damages health, and hurts social stability. The government operation was "a study in all-out demonization," they write. Falun Gong was compared to "a rat crossing the street that everyone shouts out to squash" by Beijing Daily; other officials said it would be a "long-term, complex and serious" struggle to "eradicate" Falun Gong.

David Ownby and Ian Johnson have argued that the Chinese state gave the cultic appellation to Falun Gong by borrowing arguments from Margaret Singer and the West's anti-cult movement to blunt the appeal of Falun Gong. According to John Powers and Meg Y. M. Lee, because the Falun Gong was categorized in the popular perception as an "apolitical, qigong exercise club," it was not seen as a threat to the government. The most critical strategy in the Falun Gong suppression campaign, therefore, was to convince people to reclassify the Falun Gong into a number of "negatively charged religious labels," like “evil cult,” “sect,” or “superstition.” The group’s non-violent and relatively silent protests were reclassified as creating “social disturbances.” In this process of reclassification and relabelling, the government was attempting to tap into a "deep reservoir of negative feelings related to the historical role of quasi-religious cults as a destabilising force in Chinese political history."

State propaganda then used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism. The People's Daily asserted on 27 July 1999, that it "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism." A polarized depiction was created where the scientific worldview was legitimized as "moral and truthful," while the Falun Gong discourse was "evil and deceptive."

On the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001, seven people attempted to set themselves ablaze on Tiananmen Square. The official Chinese press agency, Xinhua News Agency, and other state media asserted that the self-immolators were practitioners while the Falun Dafa Information Center disputed this, on the grounds that the movement's teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing, and further alleged that the event was a cruel but clever piece of stunt-work. The incident received international news coverage, and video footage of the burnings were broadcast later inside China by China Central Television (CCTV). Images of a 12 year old girl, Liu Siying, burning and interviews with the other participants in which they stated their belief that self-immolation would lead them to paradise were shown. Falun Gong-related commentators pointed out that the main participants' account of the incident and other aspects of the participants' behavior were inconsistent with the teachings of Falun Dafa. Washington Post journalist Phillip Pan wrote that the two self-immolators who died were not actually Falun Gong practitioners. Time reported that prior to the self-immolation incident, many Chinese had felt that Falun Gong posed no real threat, and that the state's crackdown had gone too far. After the event, however, China's media campaign against Falun Gong gained significant traction.

Conversion program

According to James Tong, the regime aimed at both coercive dissolution of the Falun Gong denomination and "transformation" of the practitioners. By 2000 the Party upped its campaign by sentencing "recidivist" practitioners to "re-education through labor", in an effort to have them renounce their beliefs and "transform" their thoughts. Terms were also arbitrarily extended by police, while some practitioners had ambiguous charges levied against them, such as "disrupting social order," "endangering national security," or "subverting the socialist system." According to Bejesky, the majority of long-term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system instead of the criminal justice system. Upon completion of their re-education sentences, those practitioners who refused to recant were then incarcerated in "legal education centers" set up by provincial authorities to "transform minds".

Much of the conversion program relied on Mao-style techniques of indoctrination and thought reform, where Falun Gong practitioners were organized to view anti-Falun Gong television programs and enroll in Marxism and materialism study sessions. Traditional Marxism and materialism were the core content of the sessions.

The government-sponsored image of the conversion process emphasises psychological persuasion and a variety of "soft-sell" techniques; this is the "ideal norm" in regime reports, according to Tong. Falun Gong reports, on the other hand, depict "disturbing and sinister" forms of coercion against practitioners who fail to renounce their beliefs. 14,474 cases are classified by different methods of torture, according to Tong (Falun Gong agencies document over 63,000 individual cases of torture). Among them are cases of severe beatings; psychological torment, corporal punishment and forced intense, heavy-burden hard labor and stress positions; solitary confinement in squalid conditions; "heat treatment" including burning and freezing; electric shocks delivered to sensitive parts of the body that may result in nausea, convulsions, or fainting; "devastative" forced feeding; sticking bamboo strips into fingernails; deprivation of food, sleep, and use of toilet; rape and gang rape; asphyxiation; and threat, extortion, and termination of employment and student status.

The cases appear verifiable, and the great majority identify (1) the individual practitioner, often with age, occupation, and residence; (2) the time and location that the alleged abuse took place, down to the level of the district, township, village, and often the specific jail institution; and (3) the names and ranks of the alleged perpetrators. Many such reports include lists of the names of witnesses and descriptions of injuries, Tong says. The publication of "persistent abusive, often brutal behavior by named individuals with their official title, place, and time of torture" suggests that there is no official will to cease and desist such activities.

Response inside China

Falun Gong’s response to the suppression in China began in July 1999 with appeals to local, provincial and central petitioning offices in Beijing. It soon progressed to larger demonstrations on Tiananmen Square, in which hundreds of Falun Gong adherents traveled to the Square daily to practice Falun Gong exercises or raise banners in defense of the practice. These demonstrations were invariably broken up by security forces, and the practitioners involved were arrested, sometimes violently, and detained. By 25 April 2000, within one year after the demonstration at Zhongnanhai, a total of more than 30,000 practitioners were arrested there, and seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration in the Square on 1 January 2001. Public protests continued well into 2001. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Ian Johnson noted that “Falun Gong faithful have mustered what is arguably the most sustained challenge to authority in 50 years of Communist rule.”

By late 2001, demonstrations in Tiananmen Square had become less frequent, and the practice was driven deeper underground. As public protest fell out of favor, practitioners established underground “material sites” which would produce literature and DVDs to counter the portrayal of Falun Gong in the official media. Practitioners then distribute these materials, often door-to-door. Falun Gong sources estimated in 2009 that over 200,000 such sites exists across China today. The production, possession, or distribution of these materials is frequently grounds for security agents to incarcerate or sentence Falun Gong adherents.

In 2002, Falun Gong activists in China hijacked television broadcasts, replacing regular state-run programming with their own content. Among the more notable instances occurred in March 2002, when Falun Gong practitioners in Changchun intercepted eight cable television networks in Jilin Province, and for nearly an hour, televised a program titled “Self-Immolation or a Staged Act?”. All six of the Falun Gong practitioners involved were captured and tortured to death.

Falun Gong outside China

Falun Gong volunteer instructors and Falun Dafa Associations are currently found in over 100 countries outside China, with the most active communities in the United States and Canada. Falun Gong adherents overseas have responded to the suppression in China through regular demonstrations, parades, and through the creation of media outlets, performing arts companies, and censorship-circumvention software mainly intended to reach Mainland Chinese audiences.

Falun Gong was first taught at the Chinese consulate in New York as part of the Party's "cultural propaganda to the West," alongside Chinese silk craft and cooking. The consulate at that time also set up Falun Gong clubs at MIT and Columbia University which are active to this day. Starting in 1995, Li himself taught the practice outside of China, chairing a series of conferences in Sweden and at the Chinese embassy in Paris, upon invitation by China's ambassador to France. Li taught in Australia and North America in August and October of 1996, respectively.

Falun Gong’s growth outside China largely corresponded to the migration of students from Mainland China to the West in the early- to mid-1990s, and in North America and Europe, the practice was taught mainly on university campuses. It is organized by regional Falun Dafa Associations and contact persons who volunteer to teach the practice.

Falun Gong practitioners have set up international media organizations to gain wider exposure for their cause and challenge narratives of the Chinese state-run media. These include The Epoch Times newspaper, New Tang Dynasty Television, and Sound of Hope radio station. According to Zhao, through The Epoch Times it can be discerned how Falun Gong is building a "de facto media alliance" with China’s democracy movements in exile, as demonstrated by its frequent printing of articles by prominent overseas Chinese critics of the Chinese government. In 2007, Falun Gong adherents in the United States formed Shen Yun Performing Arts, a dance and music company that tours internationally. Falun Gong software developers in the United States are also responsible for the creation of several popular censorship-circumvention tools employed by internet users in China.

Reception

Western governments and human rights organizations have expressed condemnation for the suppression in China and greeted Falun Gong with qualified sympathy. Since 1999 Members of the United States Congress have made public pronouncements and introduced several resolutions in support of Falun Gong. Most recently, House Resolution 605 called for "an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners," said that Chinese authorities have devoted extensive time and resources over the past decade to distribute "false propaganda" about the practice worldwide, and expressed sympathy to persecuted Falun Gong practitioners and their families.

From 1999–2001, Western media reports on Falun Gong—and in particular, the mistreatment of practitioners—were frequent, if mixed. By the latter half of 2001, however, the volume of media reports declined precipitously, and by 2002, major news organizations like the New York Times and Washington Post had almost completely ceased their coverage of Falun Gong from China. In a study of media discourse on Falun Gong, researcher Leeshai Lemish found that Western news organizations also became less balanced, and more likely to uncritically present the narratives of the Communist Party, rather than those of Falun Gong or human rights groups. In 2004 and 2005, practitioners founded a newspaper called The Epoch Times and a television station called New Tang Dynasty; David Ownby says that practitioners had become "somewhat paranoid" of being ill-treated by journalists over the last decade, "so they decided to publish a newspaper by themselves" to publicize their cause.

The Chinese Communist Party has attempted to mute support for Falun Gong practitioners among politicians, journalists, and academics overseas. This has included visits to newspaper officers by diplomats to “extol the virtues of Communist China and the evils of Falun Gong,” linking support for Falun Gong with “jeopardizing trade relations,” and sending letters to local politicians telling them to withdraw support for the practice. Pressure on Western institutions also takes more subtle forms, including academic self-censorship, whereby research on Falun Gong could result in a denial of visa for fieldwork in China; or exclusion and discrimination from business and community groups who have connections with China and fear angering the Communist Party. Media organizations and human rights groups also self-censor on the topic, given the Chinese governments vehement attitude toward the practice, and the potential repercussions that may follow for making overt representations on Falun Gong’s behalf.

Alongside these tactics, the "cult" label applied to Falun Gong by the Chinese authorities never entirely went away in the minds of some Westerners, according to Ownby, and the stigma still plays a role in wary public perceptions of Falun Gong.

Ethan Gutmann, a journalist reporting on China since the early 1990s, has attempted to explain the apparent dearth of public sympathy for Falun Gong as stemming, in part, from the group’s shortcomings in public relations. Unlike the democracy activists or Tibetans, who have found a comfortable place in Western perceptions, “Falun Gong marched to a distinctly Chinese drum,” Gutmann writes. Moreover, practitioners’ attempts at getting their message across carried some of the uncouthness of Communist party culture, including a perception that practitioners tended to exaggerate, create “torture tableaux straight out of a Cultural Revolution opera,” or “spout slogans rather than facts.” This is coupled with a general doubtfulness in the West of persecuted refugees.

Falun Gong also lacks robust backing from the American constituencies that usually support defence of religious freedom: liberals are wary of Falun Gong’s conservative sexual morality, while Christian conservatives don’t accord the practice the same space as persecuted Christians. The American political center does not want to push the human rights issue so hard that it would disrupt commercial and political engagement with China. Thus, Falun Gong practitioners have largely had to rely on their own resources.

Adam Frank writes that in reporting on the Falun Gong, the Western tradition of casting the Chinese as "exotic" took dominance, and that "the facts were generally correct, but the normalcy that millions of Chinese practitioners associated with the practice had all but disappeared."

After Singapore cracked down on the movement due to President Hu Jianto's visit to Singapore in 2009, some of followers of Falun Gong fled to Indonesia. Chinese pressure on practitioners in Indonesia would likely be less substantial than on those in Singapore. By January of 2011, Falun Gong groups have become active in more than 15 of the 33 provinces in Indonesia, including dozens of small but close communities in Jakarta and Bali.

Controversies

Among the most persistent controversies surrounding Falun Gong is its characterization by the Chinese government as “xiejiao”—a “heterodox organization,” “evil religion,” or “evil cult.” The view that Falun Gong is a cult, widely used as part of Chinese state propaganda against the practice and adopted by some members of the anti-cult movement, is mostly rejected by mainstream scholarship.

The Chinese Buddhist Association, concerned with Buddhist apostates taking up Falun Gong practice, were the first to term Falun Gong xiejiao in 1996. A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching," but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English. Western media initially adopted this language after the Chinese government's media reports, but soon began using less loaded terms.

Falun Gong’s conservative moral teachings have also attracted some controversy in progressive circles in the West. For instance, in 2001 a nomination of Li Hongzhi for the Nobel Peace Prize by San Francisco legislators was withdrawn in light of Falun Gong’s teachings on homosexuality as immoral. The Falun Dafa Information Center states that Falun Gong welcomes gays, lesbians, and bisexuals to the practice, that they are not accorded special treatment, and that while Falun Gong teaches that certain practices "generate more karma", this does not equate to a position statement, social stance, or regulation.

David Ownby writes that interpreting Li Hongzhi's teachings presents numerous challenges because many of the things he says appear "somewhat puzzling." Startling assertions found in Li's writings, according to Ownby, include that there is a "small fluorescent screen like a television" positioned in the forehead that permits the initiated to possess the power of total recall; that animals can possess human beings in order to exploit humans' greater spiritual and supernormal capacities; and that the spiritual salvation of children of interracial marriages is problematic because, in the afterlife, the paradises are divided by race.

Opinions among scholars differ as to whether Falun Gong contains an apocalyptic message, and if so what the consequences of that are. Li maintains that mankind has been destroyed 81 times, and, according to some interpretations, that another round of destruction may be imminent. At least one follower suggested there would be "some sudden change that will be good for good people, but bad for bad people." Richard Gunde, Assistant Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA, argues that Falun Gong is unlike western cults that fixate on death and Armageddon, but merely promises its followers a long and healthy life. "Falun Gong has a simple, innocuous ethical message," Gunde says, "and its leader, Li Hongzhi, despite his unusual, if not bizarre, statements, is in many ways simple and low key." At the local level Li's fantastic claims seem to be of little theological importance, since Falun Gong practice does not require unquestioning acceptance of all of Li's teachings, and there is no overt emphasis on dogmatically enforcing orthodoxy, according to Craig Burgdoff.

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154. Substantiation may be found in: Ownby 2008, p. vii and elsewhere; Madsen 2000; Chan 2004; Richardson & Edelman 2004; Hill et al 2001, pp. 34–35, etc.
155. Kipnis, Andrew B. 2001, The Flourishing of Religion in Post-Mao China and the Anthropological Category of Religion, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, 12:1, 32–46 Anthropology, Australian National University
156. Ellis, David H. "Falun Gong tries to join Chinatown Independence parade". Downtown Eexpress.
157. Ontaria Consultants on Religious Tolerance. "INTRODUCTION TO FALUN GONG & FALUN DAFA Its terminology, symbol, texts, beliefs, web sites, & books". religioustolerance.org. Retrieved 6 January 2010.
158. Lubman, Sarah retrieved 14 June 2006
159. Falun Dafa Information Center, "Misconceptions: "Intolerant"?", 16 June 2008
160. Ownby 2008, p. 89
161. Smith, Craig S. (30 April 2000). "Rooting Out Falun Gong; China Makes War on Mysticism". New York Times.
162. Gunde, Richard. Culture and customs of China. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 215

Further reading

• David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China (Oxford University Press, 2008) ISBN 978-0-19-532905-6
• Kai-Ti Chou (2008), Contemporary Religious Movements in Taiwan: Rhetorics of Persuasion (Edwin Mellen Press) pp. 133–188. ISBN 0-7734-5241-9
• Maria Hsia Chang, Falun Gong: The End of Days (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-300-10227-5
• Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong (Law Wheel qigong) (1993)
• Li Hongzhi, Zhuan Falun (English translation 2000)
• Danny Schechter, Falun Gong's Challenge to China (Akashic Books, 2000) hardback ISBN 1-888451-13-0, paperback ISBN 1-888451-27-0
• Palmer, David A. (2007). Qigong fever: body, science, and utopia in China. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231140665.

External links

Sites run by Falun Gong practitioners

• FalunDafa.org, introducing Falun Gong and the exercises.
• FalunInfo.net, with detailed reports and press releases.
• Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, focusing on human rights reports.
• Clearwisdom.net, intended mainly for practitioners, but has daily reports and news.

Sites run by the Chinese government

• Chinese Health Qigong Association – Government sponsored Qigong association
• Condemn Falun Gong Cult, a series of anti-Falun Gong articles of the state-run Xinhua news agency
• China Association For Cultic Studies, Government sponsored anti-FLG presentation and recent news articles

Other critical sites

• The Rick A. Ross Institute's archives, vast collection of articles criticizing Falun Gong (including large numbers of Chinese government sources)
• Falungong Part 1: From Sport to Suicide, Francesco Sisci, Asia Times, 27 January 2001

Other sites on the issue

• Articles by Ian Johnson (Pulitzer Prize winner), Wall Street Journal (2001)
• Falun Gong: Cult or Culture?, Produced by Chris Bullock, Radio National, 22 April 2001
• press archives, Center for Studies on New Religions
• Spiritual Society or Evil Cult?
• Falun Gong portal, TIME
• Apologetics Index : Falun Gong, Falun Dafa, Falungong

• Use dmy dates from September 2010
• Falun Gong
• Culture of the People's Republic of China
• New religious movements
• Religion in the People's Republic of China
• Society of the People's Republic of China
• Meditation
• Qigong