II. WHAT IS FALUNGONG?

Falungong is a form of qigong, an ancient Chinese deep-breathing exercise system sometimes combined with meditation that enthusiasts claim promotes physical, mental, and spiritual well-being by enhancing the flow of vital energy through a person's body. It also includes elements of popular Buddhism and Daoism and offers followers a road to salvation.1

Membership in qigong groups surged during the 1980s as many of the tight controls that marked the Cultural Revolution period (1966-76) were lifted. In 1989, the official China Qigong Scientific Research Association, established in 1985, announced that "one in twenty Chinese-both old and young, strong and weak-now practices qigong."2 Its popularity continued through the 1990s as the official association sponsored research into the scientific components of qigong, applauded its proven health benefits and traditional Chinese roots, and championed proselytization by its numerous affiliate groups.

Falungong, founded by Li Hongzhi in May 1992, was probably the most successful of the affiliates. The China Qigong Scientific Research Association approved the Falungong Research Branch Society for membership as a direct-affiliate branch the following year. Li, whose title became Direct-affiliate Qigong Master, continued to teach Falungong training seminars in Beijing and the northeastern provinces, his home base, under the auspices of local branches of the association until September 1994. The relationship between Li and the association soon deteriorated and the affiliation was eventually terminated, although the exact sequence of events and reasons for termination remain unclear. Li continued to teach Falungong for a time, both in China and overseas, finally settling in the U.S. in 1998.

Falungong did not officially withdraw from the China Qigong Scientific Research Association until 1996. During 1994-96, it had tried to ensure its legality and independence and to establish its credentials as more than an exercise group through registration as a social organization. After it applied unsuccessfully in turn to the National Minorities Affairs Commission, the China Buddhist Association, and the United Front Department, the work units of the six individuals who signed the applications warned them that all registration efforts must stop. As a result, Falungong spokespersons said, Falungong decentralized its organizational structure,and local groups affiliated with branches of China's sports administration.3

In 1996, Falungong suffered a second setback in its efforts to gain legal recognition when the government's Press and Publications Administration issued a "Notice Concerning the Immediate Confiscation and Sealing Up of Five Kinds of Books, including China's Falun Gong."4 In banning the five Falungong publications, the notice cited another Press and Publications Administration document, the "Notice Concerning the Banning of Books That Propagate Ignorance and Superstition." The sanctions were extended in 1998-99.

These setbacks did not impede Falungong's growth. Neither did quiet objections from some officials, academics, and journalists who as early as 1996 questioned Falungong's belief structure and quasi-religious character, its "anti-scientific nature," alleged anti-modernization outlook, and willingness to defy Chinese authorities. Even alarm at the number of practitioners, some forty million at the end of 1998 by government count, did not stifle Falungong's ability to organize.5 Part of the reason stemmed from officials' fear that by openly challenging it, the government would be compelled to consider whether Falungong was a religion. Opening that debate would force the Chinese leadership to confront its policy of recognizing only Buddhism, Daoism, Catholicism, Islam, and Protestantism as legitimate faiths.6 The official indecision allowed Falungong to quietly confront open challenges and usually to extract apologies for derogatory remarks. In 1996, for example, when Enlightenment Daily, a newspaper with a major interest in cultural matters, critiqued Li Hongzhi's work, a Falungong protest at the paper secured a retraction. In 1998, when He Zuoxiu, a renowned physics professor and implacable foe of all kinds of superstition, of which he considered Falungong one, criticized the group in an interview on Beijing Television, a protest at the station by some 2,000 practitioners succeeded in securing a retraction and asubsequent favorable report.

It should be noted that Falungong is not the only qigong organization that has come under attack since the late 1990s. The Chinese government began dismantling one of the largest, Zhonggong, in December 1999, later declaring it an "evil cult," banning it, and seizing its assets.7 From the time its leader, Zhang Hongbao, surfaced in Guam and requested asylum in the United States, the Chinese government fought unsuccessfully for his return.8 The Chinese government has continued to arrest and sentence Zhonggong members since Zhang's petition for asylum was granted in June 2001.9

Practitioners say Falungong is a higher or advanced form of qigong.10 Its exercise regimen is said to deliver greater health benefits than other qigong systems and its belief system, emphasizing truthfulness (zhen), compassion (shan), and forbearance (ren), is said to encourage the highest standards of moral behavior and to augment the goodness already present within individuals and within society.11 There is an added incentive for the individual practitioner. As the impulse to begood and do good grows, he or she is said to be able to attain supernatural powers with the help of a master, such as the ability to literally see what most others cannot.

There is no question that salvationist and apocalyptic ideas are part of the Falungong canon. In Zhuan Falun, Li Hongzhi's major text, the promise of salvation is explicitly offered "unconditionally" to humankind out of "compassion." Through practice of a "righteous way," Li says, there can be salvation for all. "We teach salvation of both ourselves and others, as well as of all beings. Thus, Falun can save oneself by turning inward and save others by turning outward."12 Li also says that human civilizations are cyclically destroyed, stating in Zhuan Falun: "I made a careful investigation once and found that humankind has undergone complete annihilation eighty-one times. With a little remaining from the previous civilization, only a small number of people would survive and enter the next period, again living a primitive life."13 He refers to the present as the "Last Havoc."14

Although it borrows from Buddhism and Daoism, Falungong maintains in its own publications that it is not a religion, and that none of its exercises can be characterized as religious rituals. In response to official accusations that the Falungong leadership had fashioned a tight organizational structure similar to that of the Chinese Communist Party so as to facilitate overthrow of the government, practitioners respond that there is no organization, no hierarchy, and that they harbor no "political intentions"; "no one," they say "can tell anyone else what to do."15 In 1999, however, the government cited the existence of a hierarchically organized geographic structure of thirty-nine main "stations," 1,900 "guidance stations," and 28,000 "exercise sites" as evidence to bolster its accusations. Falungong spokespersons countered that these were simply avenues for facilitating practice.16

Falungong protests have been tightly organized and coordinated. One official Chinese source noted that between April 25, 1999 and early August 1999, afterFalungong had come under intense pressure from Chinese authorities, it caused "307 sieges of party and government organs." On one day alone, July 21, 1999, "several thousand" demonstrated before the provincial government complex in Hubei, 700 protested in Anhui, an unspecified number in Hunan, and over 2,000 in front of the Guizhou Provincial Government office in Guiyang.17

Falungong's tactic of mounting orderly public protests had been in use for several years before it backfired on April 25, 1999, when at least 10,000 men and women quietly demonstrated for legitimacy outside Zhongnanhai, the compound in the heart of Beijing where the Chinese Communist Party leadership lives and works. The mass rally triggered an aggressive Chinese government response and, as described in more detail below, marks a major turning point in Falungong-government relations. Falungong leaders apparently thought there would be no repercussions from the April 25 demonstration even though it was much larger than earlier protests and at a much more sensitive site. According to a Falungong spokesman, until then "the government had been mostly supportive of us... Many top leaders seemed to support us."18