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Falun Gong's Challenge to China
"China is nervous because there are now more Falun Going practitioners than there are members of the Chinese Communist Party"
—Li Hongzhi, founder of Falun Gong.
In one of the most bizarre cases of political repression in modern history, the People's Republic of China has banned a spiritual practice built around traditional exercises and meditation. They say that Falun Gong has become a dangerous threat to the largest nation on Earth. In a return to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, they have burned thousands of Falun Gong books and literature. They have beaten and detained thousands of practitioners. They have issued an arrest warrant for Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi. They are sentencing some practitioners to long periods of incarceration at show trials. World leaders and human rights groups are speaking out.
Why is this happening? Is it because Falun Gong has attracted an estimated l00 million practitioners? What is Falun Gong's appeal? What is it that China fears?
This is their story. Largely Unheard. Until Now.
This timely non-fiction book presents the inside story of China's crackdown on Falun Gong, taking a stand against the most blatant and pervasive political book burning since the days of Hitler's rise to power. By offering Falun Gong's story in the context of the current crisis in China, it provides an important look at a dramatic underreported and unfolding story. In China, their point of view has been banned. It deserves to be heard worldwide.
"The picture doesn't add up. What I see here with these people and what they're doing, they seem very normal people. They're from all walks of life; and then on the other side you've got this picture that the Chinese government is painting, and the two just don't match."
-Adam Montanaro, Falun Gong practitioner (USA)
—Li Hongzhi, founder of Falun Gong.
In one of the most bizarre cases of political repression in modern history, the People's Republic of China has banned a spiritual practice built around traditional exercises and meditation. They say that Falun Gong has become a dangerous threat to the largest nation on Earth. In a return to the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, they have burned thousands of Falun Gong books and literature. They have beaten and detained thousands of practitioners. They have issued an arrest warrant for Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi. They are sentencing some practitioners to long periods of incarceration at show trials. World leaders and human rights groups are speaking out.
Why is this happening? Is it because Falun Gong has attracted an estimated l00 million practitioners? What is Falun Gong's appeal? What is it that China fears?
This is their story. Largely Unheard. Until Now.
This timely non-fiction book presents the inside story of China's crackdown on Falun Gong, taking a stand against the most blatant and pervasive political book burning since the days of Hitler's rise to power. By offering Falun Gong's story in the context of the current crisis in China, it provides an important look at a dramatic underreported and unfolding story. In China, their point of view has been banned. It deserves to be heard worldwide.
"The picture doesn't add up. What I see here with these people and what they're doing, they seem very normal people. They're from all walks of life; and then on the other side you've got this picture that the Chinese government is painting, and the two just don't match."
-Adam Montanaro, Falun Gong practitioner (USA)
225 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2000
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June 11, 2018From my interview with the author archived as selection 298 at archive.org.
[…] I wanna say excellent job on the book Falun Gong's Challenge to China .
Danny Schechter: Thank you
I really enjoyed reading it and its sort of opened up a whole new world to me because I hadn't really noticed the issue a lot beforehand, but then after that, I started seeing it in newspaper headlines and stuff. It maybe was there all along, but this is where it made it stick in my mind.
DS: Well you know, we live in a world where news and information, particularly from other countries, often doesn't register with people because it's very hard to connect to and to relate to it, to really have any sense of background or context to who these people are, and what they're doing. In this case, we’re talking about as many as a hundred million people, starting in China, who basically took up what is called qi gong exercises, and a whole belief system called Falun Gong. This thing started 8 years ago. It was the most rapidly growing, fastest growing, spiritual practice in all of China. It got practically no press attention in America whatsoever, until 10,000 of these people surrounded the Chinese Communist Party leadership compound one day to challenge the Communist party's repression of police actions that were arresting and harassing their people. They're basically saying, "Look, leave us alone. We’d like to be legalized and we'd like to go on with our spiritual practice. We're not against the government. We're not political." At first this happened in April of '99 the Chinese government didn't say anything, and [was] kind of shocked by what happened. It made headlines around the world and then it sort of disappeared again. Then in July, China decided to crack down on this group, on the Falun Gong, and to ban it. Not only did they ban it, but they basically prohibited any discussion of it. They burned over a million books, and they began arresting practitioners, the people who were practicing this Falun Gong spiritual practice, which is really deeply rooted in Chinese traditions. It's kind of a fusion of Taoism and Buddhism. It's kind of a system of how you self-improvement. We might even consider it something like New Age spiritual practices. But in China, this was perceived by the government as a threat to the government. Since then, 53 people have died, 50,000 people have been detained, hundreds of people are in labor camps, and are in mental hospitals and being treated really badly, which has led to the denunciation of China by the US government, other governments, for the deterioration of human rights. But because the United States wants to do business with China, trade with China, American companies got this new trade bill through. Nobody's doing anything about it. They're really not talking about it very much, and so, people read about it, like you, but they don't really connect to it. This doesn't sort of makes sense to them: “Who are these people? What is this about?” As a consequence, one of the biggest stories of our time is being missed, and that's why I ended up writing this book, Falun Gong's Challenge to China which is just out from Akashic books, because I think it's really important for people to know more about this. This is a very big force, and we've just seen what happened in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where people non-violently challenged the government, basically overthrew a decision by the government to not recognize the elections. Well, in China, you have a situation where there are no elections whatsoever. There's no democracy, yet you have a movement with a hundred million people, which is immense. Not only is it in China, but it is in 40 countries now, including the United States.
Danny, I’d like to have you elaborate on a couple of the points you made. This is an internet radio show, and we're really interested in the internet here, me personally. Something about that jumped out at me through your book. As you mentioned and it might seem kind of odd to our listeners that there's a sort of contrast here. This is something rooted in Chinese traditions, but the Chinese government themselves see it as a threat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the reason they seem to see it as a threat was the group's ability to be organized and to put on their demonstrations, as silent and as non-violent as they were. It seems that one of the tools that they were able to maintain this organization was their use of the internet for websites and email in order to keep people together.
DS: Right, right. This is a force that has mastered the new technology. Many of the Falun Gong practitioners, well in China, many of them are older women, people who are looking for the health benefits of this practice. Many people feel that they do these exercises, they're able to feel better, if not recover from various ailments and diseases. They have a faith in its healing power, but also, mentally they wanna become better people, and it has a whole philosophy to it. But in America, many people who are involved in it are actually, PhDs, graduate students, computer experts, specialists and what-have-you. There's a network of websites that they have used in many, many different languages, and in many countries. They try to get their message out because the media, the mass media, has been a very unreliable way of getting the message out because, by and large, even though they're reported upon, they're really quoted in my book, in Falun Gong's Challenge to China. A lot of interviews with the people of Falun Gong themselves, "What did they say? What did they say?" You really get to hear that. It's always quoting some expert or quoting some government official, but it's very really actually giving them a chance to be heard. This problem with media and I’ll get to them in a second is something that I’m very deeply concerned about. I'm editing a website myself, called www.mediachannel.org, and www.mediachannel.org has brought together 520 organizations from all around the world. It's the largest online media issues network in the world. What we're doing online is to try to talk about what's not being covered in the media, and how and why we're not getting the full story. One of the topics we have written about has been this coverage of Falun Gong. One of the things we've noted is that the internet has become a major tool in the organization of Falun Gong, just like in Yugoslavia, where the government there, Milosevic, had banned the radio station or tried to drive it off the air. Those people went online, and were able to broadcast into the former Yugoslavia, through the internet. Falun Gong is doing the same thing. In my book Falun Gong's Challenge to China there's a whole chapter about how they do this, how they used the web, which is fascinating. Not just the web, but also beepers, and all kinds of communication devices to stay one step ahead of the Chinese police and the Chinese Intelligence apparatus, which is very paranoid about them. So, the web’s become a major tool for democratization all over the world. In China, it's increasingly being heard. In fact, the New York Times reported today that after these events in Belgrade, various chat groups and chat discussions online, in China, Chinese sites, in Chinese, there are people commenting on what happened in Serbia and saying, “We need that here too”. The internet is bringing together, despite attempts to ban it, repress it, filter it, hack it, limit it, it's bringing together a global audience of people who are concerned about free expressions, concerned about communicating their ideas and values. Falun Gong is doing this, and I found out this fascinating phenomenon by and large, it hasn't been reported on in the media, but in my book, I do devote quite a bit of time to discuss this, and also, to how China has responded. China itself has a website. One of the things I have in the book is a whole list of all the sites that you could check out, pro-Falun Gong, anti-Falun Gong, third-party sites that can tell you more about the argument, because there's an online media war going on here. There's an electronic war and, in addition to the political war, one of the things China has been doing has been hacking these sites and also the email boxes of some of these people. Some of the so-called disruption of service, attacks that we saw on Yahoo and other things, Chinese had been doing this against the Falun Gong sites. One guy told me that one day, suddenly his email box filled up with 2500 messages in a minute, basically overcoming and overwhelming his site. Finally, they tracked it down to an undisclosed, web service in China, but they couldn't get the Chinese to stop. They have to actually close the email box and open a new one for this person. So, China has been using this type of approach and, by and large, has nothing reported on.
[…] I wanna say excellent job on the book Falun Gong's Challenge to China .
Danny Schechter: Thank you
I really enjoyed reading it and its sort of opened up a whole new world to me because I hadn't really noticed the issue a lot beforehand, but then after that, I started seeing it in newspaper headlines and stuff. It maybe was there all along, but this is where it made it stick in my mind.
DS: Well you know, we live in a world where news and information, particularly from other countries, often doesn't register with people because it's very hard to connect to and to relate to it, to really have any sense of background or context to who these people are, and what they're doing. In this case, we’re talking about as many as a hundred million people, starting in China, who basically took up what is called qi gong exercises, and a whole belief system called Falun Gong. This thing started 8 years ago. It was the most rapidly growing, fastest growing, spiritual practice in all of China. It got practically no press attention in America whatsoever, until 10,000 of these people surrounded the Chinese Communist Party leadership compound one day to challenge the Communist party's repression of police actions that were arresting and harassing their people. They're basically saying, "Look, leave us alone. We’d like to be legalized and we'd like to go on with our spiritual practice. We're not against the government. We're not political." At first this happened in April of '99 the Chinese government didn't say anything, and [was] kind of shocked by what happened. It made headlines around the world and then it sort of disappeared again. Then in July, China decided to crack down on this group, on the Falun Gong, and to ban it. Not only did they ban it, but they basically prohibited any discussion of it. They burned over a million books, and they began arresting practitioners, the people who were practicing this Falun Gong spiritual practice, which is really deeply rooted in Chinese traditions. It's kind of a fusion of Taoism and Buddhism. It's kind of a system of how you self-improvement. We might even consider it something like New Age spiritual practices. But in China, this was perceived by the government as a threat to the government. Since then, 53 people have died, 50,000 people have been detained, hundreds of people are in labor camps, and are in mental hospitals and being treated really badly, which has led to the denunciation of China by the US government, other governments, for the deterioration of human rights. But because the United States wants to do business with China, trade with China, American companies got this new trade bill through. Nobody's doing anything about it. They're really not talking about it very much, and so, people read about it, like you, but they don't really connect to it. This doesn't sort of makes sense to them: “Who are these people? What is this about?” As a consequence, one of the biggest stories of our time is being missed, and that's why I ended up writing this book, Falun Gong's Challenge to China which is just out from Akashic books, because I think it's really important for people to know more about this. This is a very big force, and we've just seen what happened in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where people non-violently challenged the government, basically overthrew a decision by the government to not recognize the elections. Well, in China, you have a situation where there are no elections whatsoever. There's no democracy, yet you have a movement with a hundred million people, which is immense. Not only is it in China, but it is in 40 countries now, including the United States.
Danny, I’d like to have you elaborate on a couple of the points you made. This is an internet radio show, and we're really interested in the internet here, me personally. Something about that jumped out at me through your book. As you mentioned and it might seem kind of odd to our listeners that there's a sort of contrast here. This is something rooted in Chinese traditions, but the Chinese government themselves see it as a threat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but part of the reason they seem to see it as a threat was the group's ability to be organized and to put on their demonstrations, as silent and as non-violent as they were. It seems that one of the tools that they were able to maintain this organization was their use of the internet for websites and email in order to keep people together.
DS: Right, right. This is a force that has mastered the new technology. Many of the Falun Gong practitioners, well in China, many of them are older women, people who are looking for the health benefits of this practice. Many people feel that they do these exercises, they're able to feel better, if not recover from various ailments and diseases. They have a faith in its healing power, but also, mentally they wanna become better people, and it has a whole philosophy to it. But in America, many people who are involved in it are actually, PhDs, graduate students, computer experts, specialists and what-have-you. There's a network of websites that they have used in many, many different languages, and in many countries. They try to get their message out because the media, the mass media, has been a very unreliable way of getting the message out because, by and large, even though they're reported upon, they're really quoted in my book, in Falun Gong's Challenge to China. A lot of interviews with the people of Falun Gong themselves, "What did they say? What did they say?" You really get to hear that. It's always quoting some expert or quoting some government official, but it's very really actually giving them a chance to be heard. This problem with media and I’ll get to them in a second is something that I’m very deeply concerned about. I'm editing a website myself, called www.mediachannel.org, and www.mediachannel.org has brought together 520 organizations from all around the world. It's the largest online media issues network in the world. What we're doing online is to try to talk about what's not being covered in the media, and how and why we're not getting the full story. One of the topics we have written about has been this coverage of Falun Gong. One of the things we've noted is that the internet has become a major tool in the organization of Falun Gong, just like in Yugoslavia, where the government there, Milosevic, had banned the radio station or tried to drive it off the air. Those people went online, and were able to broadcast into the former Yugoslavia, through the internet. Falun Gong is doing the same thing. In my book Falun Gong's Challenge to China there's a whole chapter about how they do this, how they used the web, which is fascinating. Not just the web, but also beepers, and all kinds of communication devices to stay one step ahead of the Chinese police and the Chinese Intelligence apparatus, which is very paranoid about them. So, the web’s become a major tool for democratization all over the world. In China, it's increasingly being heard. In fact, the New York Times reported today that after these events in Belgrade, various chat groups and chat discussions online, in China, Chinese sites, in Chinese, there are people commenting on what happened in Serbia and saying, “We need that here too”. The internet is bringing together, despite attempts to ban it, repress it, filter it, hack it, limit it, it's bringing together a global audience of people who are concerned about free expressions, concerned about communicating their ideas and values. Falun Gong is doing this, and I found out this fascinating phenomenon by and large, it hasn't been reported on in the media, but in my book, I do devote quite a bit of time to discuss this, and also, to how China has responded. China itself has a website. One of the things I have in the book is a whole list of all the sites that you could check out, pro-Falun Gong, anti-Falun Gong, third-party sites that can tell you more about the argument, because there's an online media war going on here. There's an electronic war and, in addition to the political war, one of the things China has been doing has been hacking these sites and also the email boxes of some of these people. Some of the so-called disruption of service, attacks that we saw on Yahoo and other things, Chinese had been doing this against the Falun Gong sites. One guy told me that one day, suddenly his email box filled up with 2500 messages in a minute, basically overcoming and overwhelming his site. Finally, they tracked it down to an undisclosed, web service in China, but they couldn't get the Chinese to stop. They have to actually close the email box and open a new one for this person. So, China has been using this type of approach and, by and large, has nothing reported on.
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