China syndrome: the persecution of Falun Gong

Christian Century, August 10, 2004 by Dean Peerman

For Li, it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. He filled a vacuum, providing a spiritual outlet for millions of disillusioned Chinese. "There was a time," writes Chang, "when the people held the party and its Marxist creed in religious reverence. But they have paid dearly for their devotion. More than that, to many the party has abandoned its convictions: it now worships a new idol, Mammon." ("To get rich is glorious," said China's late leader Deng Xiaoping.) The new panacea, state-managed capitalism, has little appeal among the Chinese masses. Indeed, it is leaving them in the dust--the country's economic ascent notwithstanding--and has resulted in massive unemployment and rampant crime and corruption. The authors of Power of the Wheel offer this ominous assessment of Chinese society: "All the traditional cracks and fissures are reappearing, but on a larger scale, and with even more frightening speed."

DESPITE DENYING that Falun Gong is a religion, Master Li promises not only good health but salvation. And there he loses me. No doubt his exercise program can be beneficial, and some of his teachings, such as his stress on compassion, tolerance and nonviolence, seem--well, downright Christian. Except that these are described as steps on the way to achieving godhead. Using Li's exercises to gain physical fitness is one thing; buying into his belief system is something else entirely. But for him the two are inseparable. The final goal of cultivation practice, Li says, is to "become God or Buddha."

Getting there requires more than performing exercises, of course; to learn the truth of the universe, one must study Falun Dafa. And here we come upon an arcane worldview that is truly mind-boggling--a worldview that features both space aliens and numerous deities, that affirms not just karma and reincarnation but parallel lives (we all live in "multiple dimensions"), that holds that Earth has had many more civilizations than history records and that humanity has suffered "complete annihilation" 81 times.

Master Li claims to have implanted a "law wheel" (falun) into the abdomen of each practitioner. It is not a physical wheel, Li hastens to say; it does not interfere with the stomach's guts. But it is more than metaphorical. Very sensitive people, he says, can sometimes feel it rotating. (Much that might otherwise seem utterly implausible gets explained as being "in another dimension.") Furthermore, according to Li, when a practitioner reaches a high level of cultivation his or her third or "celestial" eye, connected to the pineal gland, opens and bestows such powers as "supersonic" vision and clairvoyance. (Chang points out that Li says there are "over 10,000 genuine supernormal capabilities," yet he forbids his followers to use such powers in public because they might have "serious consequences and dangers.")

Convinced that as a consequence of moral decay the world is in its last days (hence the subtitle of Chang's book), Li envisions an apocalypse not unlike the rapture phenomenon of the Left Behind book series. Sanctuary will be available for those who adhere to Falun Dafa, the "right law," but "evil people" will be destroyed (xiaohui) "in a horrific manner." The good will survive the conflagration and rebuild the world.