Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 116
Today, China is experiencing a huge change in its society. There is a great deal of insecurity
both ideologically and on a practical level for individuals. The ideology of Communism has
been replaced by the goal of economic growth and material well-being with the market as
the means. Yet economic growth and material well-being have not developed as quickly or
as successfully as hoped for, leaving many in need and enduring hardships, while the
previous safety nets of a life-time job, free health-care and free education are now gone.
Some have managed to ―get rich quick,‖ but the majority have not seen an improvement.
Everyone in China is also aware that there is a serious problem of corruption in the
government, even as the government is aggressively taking actions to stop it. This fits right
in with the broken mandate scenario. Mother Nature has also contributed to this scenario in
that China recently experienced a catastrophic earthquake and flooding. Moreover, there
have been numerous sightings of UFO's perhaps validation of Li Hongzhi's theories about
aliens taking over human society, or perhaps signs of anxiety and a looking to the heavens
for portents of change. The unexpected appearance in front of the Beijing government
buildings of 10,000 members of a spiritual group, whose leader is now living abroad,
startled the leaders, not only for political reasons but because they know how well all this
fits into the Chinese lore of the Mandate of Heaven in this time of insecurity and change.29
They also know that the above conditions make China ripe for a charismatic leader to offer a
simple solution.30 The people and leaders of China have lived through the Cultural
Revolution and the ―personality-cult‖ of Mao. They have seen what faith in an unquestioned
leader can do. They have experienced the trauma caused by a people giving themselves up
to the power drive of one man. The Chinese government feels that where Mao's communist
ideology has failed and where its replacement of economic well-being has not yet become a
reality, the dependency on a charismatic leader who offers protection, enlightenment, and
supernatural powers through simple-exercises, the reading of his books, and the non-
questioning acceptance of all his teachings, could fill the void with yet another personality
cult.31 Although Li disclaims any interest in politics, Li also says that the Chinese
government is unfit to handle China's problems and that only by the Chinese people
becoming Falun Gong practitioners can China resolve its problems.
On a political level, the government feels that if it allowed the Falun Gong to hold massive
public demonstrations and to make demands of the government regarding their own
interests, then it would be inviting every other group with a special interest to do the same.
The government is already worried about separatist movements in Tibet and Xinjiang and
Taiwan. They fear that if they don't hold China together it will, like the USSR, disintegrate,
and the concept of a united China won by the first Emperor in 255 B.C. would end and
chaos would take the place of order for 1.2 billion of the earth's inhabitants.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European communist states deeply worried
Beijing. They set up a panel to research the reasons for this collapse, and one of their main
findings was the strong role that the Church played. Could a qigong group like the Falun
Gong play a similar role? Since the Falun Gong has members in the government, the
military, members who are teachers, housewives, students, laborers, could such a populist
group32 along with its new strategic tool of the Internet, offer the beginnings of a
demanding civic-society that could ultimately bring down the one-party rule of Communism
in China? How many massive qigong groups are there in China that might be the
beginnings of such a civic-society, a society that they are not prepared to handle, and
therefore a society that ―jeopardizes social stability‖ not to mention the rule of the
Communist Party.33 This is the government's fearful scenario.
In the United States, there are many disparate groups and, regardless of whether we agree
with their ideas or not, we believe that an open society of ideas is healthier than a society of
repressed or banned ideas. In China on the other hand, the leaders deemed it important to

Cultic Studies Journal, Volume 17, 2000, Page 117
stop this group, a group that seemed not only willing but also able to hold mass gatherings
and continued protests, the teachings of which they saw as anti-scientific,34 anti-social, and
part of a personality cult with the potential to become a political threat. The irony is, that by
banning the group they have politicized its practitioners and drawn international attention
and criticism onto its actions. The potential political aspect of the Falun Gong thus became a
reality.
Conclusion
Politically, the Falun Gong is a group that has focused attention on China and induced
outside sources to put pressure on the Chinese government to broaden its concept of and
increase its respect for human rights and civil liberties.
As a movement and teaching in its own right, the Falun Gong has moved outside of China
into roughly thirty countries, having at the time of writing sixty-two Web sites in the United
States alone. It is difficult to state with any accuracy the size of the movement, but for the
past year the Falun Gong has been claiming one hundred million followers. It remains to be
seen how the teaching is accepted outside of China and how the originally Chinese-based
beliefs will be accepted or changed by practitioners outside of China. It also remains to be
seen whether the aspects of the Falun Gong teaching that appear potentially harmful, will
have harmful affects, and if so, to what degree. Certainly further study and observation is
indicated.
I believe that it would be beneficial if the press continued to broaden its coverage of the
Falun Gong beyond the human rights issue in China, if researchers studied the group in the
United States, if the Chinese press were allowed more freedom to research and report on
the issue, and if the Chinese government allowed independent research to be conducted
within China. Finally, as I suggested at the beginning, I feel it is important to avoid
demonizing anyone, whether it be the non-practitioners that Li Hongzhi demonizes, the
Falun Gong that the Chinese government demonizes, or the Chinese government that
political elements in the West demonize his support and early discussions on this topic, and
for his generous spirit.
Endnotes
1. For an excellent discussion of media issues see Media Studies Journal: Covering China 13, no.1
(Winter 1999).
2. James Mann. ―Framing China.‖ Media Studies Journal: Covering China 13, no.1 (Winter 1999)
102-107.
3. As an example: In the 1999 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China it states that ―late
in the year, according to some reports, the Government started confining some Falun Gong
adherents to psychiatric hospitals.‖ And in the Human Rights Watch Report of its China Update
2000 (which came out in February), it stated that ―A police officer did confirm a report that fifty
FLG members, reportedly repeat offenders, have been held in a psychiatric hospital near Beijing
since December.‖ In a 16 February 2000 report by John Leicester of the Associated Press, he
interviewed 7 of the 54 people who had been held at the psychiatric hospital in the suburbs of
Beijing. They said they had not been treated as psychiatric patients. Apparently, they were
locked up because they were known to be ―repeat‖ protestors and it was to ―stop them from
protesting during the December 20 hand-over of Macao‖ that they were locked up. But the
impression was given that the FLG members were being locked up for psychiatric treatment
because of their belief in Falun Gong.
4. Erik Eckholm, ―Beijing Quickly Detains Sect's Protesters‖ New York Times 26 Oct.1999. ―Followers
abroad have reported dozens of cases in which arrested members were mistreated by police,
although the accounts cannot usually be independently verified.‖ Numbers reported by the Rachlin
Management Media Group and also from the Information Center on Human Rights and Democratic
Movement in China, are often higher than numbers reported from western press on location in
China. Example: FLG practitioners protested in Tiananmen Square over a three-day period in