Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 188
the West, has suddenly disappeared. In its place is the glory of a great and splendid
China! ‗Chinese gongfu is truly something special!‘30
The qigong movement and its many masters offered instant help, certainty, goodness,
power and greatness. As long as they were registered and remained a qigong group that did
not present contradictions to the tenants of the CCP, the government stood aside. It was
always willing, however, to step in if it seemed necessary.31 With the development of these
new large, charismatic qigong movements however, came the specter of the sectarian
threat as they began to offer more than health benefits and to adopt the ‗offending features‘
of previous sectarian groups.
Language
To think that my person would mingle with this vulgar, stinking flesh, with
these slaves, dogs, and goblins and act the part of one of these evil rebels.
These villainous imposters of today spout heresies and destroy the orthodox
writings.
The above quote is by Kou Qianzhi, a fifth-century Chinese aristocrat who had the Daoist
title of Celestial Master.32 He had been ‗visited twice by the god Laozi‘ and had the power to
‗exercise control over the religious affairs of the dynasty‘. Here he is complaining about all
those ‗frauds‘ who claim to be Li Hong (the messianic name of Laozi) as he tries to clean up
the Daoist practices at the popular level. This intense language of labeling the ‗other‘ seems
to accompany the paradigm of ruling power versus sectarian ‗other‘ and is being used in the
current conflict by both sides. As Kluver describes it, in China ‗once conflict has emerged
into the open, the language used to describe one‘s rivals becomes almost violent, in ways
that make the Western partisanship seem almost collegial‘.
The Chinese government has used the word ‗cult‘ to label the Falun Gong along these same
lines as a label to brand, to degrade, to define and to marginalize. While the Chinese term
xie jiao (deviant teachings) has been utilized for over a millennium as part of the ruling
power-sectarian paradigm, its current translation into the word ‗cult‘ may reflect the
government‘s adaptation of modern Western discourse. The irony is that the Chinese
government may have chosen the Western discourse as a means of gaining sympathy and
understanding from the West, whereas it appears to have achieved the opposite effect and
annoyed and prejudiced the West‘s willingness to listen.
The use of intense derogatory language to berate and degrade the ‗other‘ reached a modern
height in China during the Cultural Revolution. To be ‗labeled‘ was dangerous and
frightening, and terms such as ‗ox-monsters‘, ‗snake-demons‘, ‗evil spirits‘ and ‗monstrous
freaks‘ were used. The cruder the language used, ‗the more one was perceived as being one
with the workers, peasants, and soldiers‘.33 Li Hongzhi, a young man during the Cultural
Revolution, did not escape the influence of this use of language. Li used the rhetoric of
possession to describe and warn off his practitioners from other spiritual or qigong masters:
‗The human society is very terrible. Most of the so-called masters of great reputation in
India are possessed with boas. The Qigong masters in China are mostly possessed with
foxes, or yellow weasels, and some with snakes‘.34
When Li was confronted by a challenger to his role as master within the Falun Gong
movement his response was not too different from that of Kou Qianzhi in the fifth century.
Li warned that ‗a vile person in Hong Kong who lost her senses has severely interfered with
Dafa by saying absurd things due to demonic interference from her own mind... nobody
should pay attention to what the saboteur in Hong Kong has instigated or give her an
audience... At present, those irrational scum are already under the manipulation of secret
agents‘.35

Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 189
Another aspect of the use of this language is what Barend ter Haar refers to as the
‗demonological paradigm‘.36 He suggests that the idea of exorcising demons, which comes
from the ‗traditional religious culture in China as a whole‘, is an integral part of Chinese
culture that allows violence to be legitimized. It is operating on a mostly unconscious level
to set up the ‗other‘ against which one can legitimate violence, and is playing a similar role
in China as racism plays in the West.37 While the demonization of the ‗other‘ is often found
in violent conflict, ter Haar suggests that this cultural element of literal demon exorcism
forms an underlying justification for use of violence in China.
This demonizing dynamic is mutually employed. It could be argued that the entire campaign
by the Chinese government has been a means of demonizing the FLG movement in order to
justify any measures taken against it. On the other hand, Li Hongzhi has also used this
paradigm, dehumanizing and demonizing Falun Gong‘s enemies.38 In Li‘s ‗Suffocate the Evil‘
posted to the FLG website 22 October 2000, Li comments on a reeducation camp where
‗[m]ost of the disciplinary guards there are reincarnated minor ghosts from hell‘. And in his
‗Beyond the Limits of Forbearance‘ statement posted 2 January 2001, Li states that ‗the
present performance of the evil shows that they are utterly inhuman and completely without
righteous thoughts‘.39 The Chinese government calls the FLG an evil cult and Li Hongzhi an
evil man and speaks of protecting China from chaos, while Li Hongzhi calls for the
elimination of evil from the universe and speaks of protecting the cosmos from chaos.
Self-Definition and Beyond
To a large extent, this conflict has become a war of words a ‗propaganda war‘ as some
journalists call it. The prize of this war of words is the claim to truth, the ability to have one
version of reality accepted over another.40 The ramifications include not only the right of
Falun Gong practitioners in China to practice and to have the ban lifted, but also issues of
international relations, arms sales, trade, economics, cold wars and hot wars. In this
process, each side presented their version of reality as a simple, powerful story to legitimate
their actions and reach their goals.
Each side has had to define itself, as well as their opponent. The Chinese government has
put most of its energy into defining its adversary the FLG movement, although as of Spring
2001 it began some efforts at self-definition to counter-act the Falun Gong‘s message. The
government‘s attempts at defining its opponent have been played out mainly within China,
with some success, particularly due to the intensified campaign following the self-
immolations in Tiananmen Square in January 2001.41 During the first year after the ban, the
FLG spent most of its energy defining itself, mainly as a means of counter-acting the
government‘s accusations that it was a cult, although as of September 2000 the FLG began
to put more effort into defining its opponent, the Chinese government, with a specific focus
on Jiang Zemin, the president of China. The Falun Gong‘s attempts at defining itself and its
opponent have been played out mainly in the West.
Chinese Government – Self-Definition and Beyond
The Chinese government states that it wants to protect its people and protect its country‘s
stability by banning a group it believes is harmful to its own followers and a threat to social
stability. It believes the group is led by a charismatic leader who ‗hood-winked‘ millions of
Chinese into following him and is now using them for his own political ends. It believes the
Falun Gong has joined anti-China forces in the West to bring down the Chinese Communist
Party. Having banned the group, it claims it is now resisting anti-China forces that want to
destabilize its society, and helping to reeducate Falun Gong followers back into normal lives.
This is the public self-definition presented by the Chinese government.
Yet it is also the story of a nation in the midst of major economic and social changes whose
governing ideology is progressively seen as irrelevant and whose one-party rulership