Modern China’s great shame

In white shirt and suit of banker’s blue, with bland tie and neat haircut, he looks as if he might sell you an insurance policy or a car. Certainly his appearance doesn’t suggest he could inspire millions of believers around the world and arouse murderous anger in the government of China.

But in fact, Li Hongzhi is the charismatic father of Falun Gong, a quasi-religion that he introduced in 1992. As a result, he’s become a cherished leader to millions of adherents. But Beijing’s official reaction to his teaching has led to tragedy for many of his followers.

When he first revealed his way of thinking he was a government-registered teacher of Qigong. That’s a Buddhist-influenced system of breathing, meditation and body movement whose adherents believe it enhances health and spirituality. Li incorporates much of that teaching in his own work but also emphasizes moral values and the development of character. He focuses on three tenets: truthfulness, compassion and forbearance.

In the early 1990s, Li travelled across China, giving classes in Falun Gong to audiences ranging from a few hundred to several thousand. Li’s first book appeared in 1993, his first teaching video in 1994. His reputation spread with astonishing speed. By 1999, the government estimated the number of Falun Gong practitioners at 70 million.

That was bad news, in the official view. No one could call Falun Gong treacherous or even politically controversial. But China, as a totalitarian state, considers any unofficial and unauthorized organization a menace. It could develop as a parallel power within the one-party state. With its commitment to truthfulness, it could begin denouncing the rampart corruption across the country.

So Beijing started a propaganda campaign against Falun Gong in 1999. It closed down internet access to websites that even mentioned Falun Gong. It denounced Falun Gong as a “heretical organization,” a threat to social stability.

When those measures failed, the government imprisoned hundreds of thousands of practitioners, subjecting them to forced labour and sometimes torture. Human rights groups suggested that abuse in custody killed 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners.

In 2006, two Canadian human rights authors, David Kilgour and David Matas, conducted an investigation of widely believed stories that Chinese authorities had been responsible for “largescale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners” to supply the Chinese implant trade. China has consistently denied this charge but Kilgour and Matas discovered, among other facts, that the authorities could not, or would not, explain the source of some 41,500 organs transplanted by Chinese surgeons.

Their preliminary report was denounced as false by official China but praised by the human rights community. In 2009, Kilgour and Matas published their work in book form as Bloody Harvest: The killing of Falun Gong for their organs (Seraphim Editions). The book is banned in Russia as well as China.

Li Hongzhi now lives in the United States (where he Falun Gong master Li Hongzhi in a 1999 interview. moved in 1996 with his wife and daughter) and often lectures at conferences of Falun Gong Experience Sharing. Last May, in Brooklyn, he led a conference of 10,000 practitioners from 58 countries. After he spoke, followers reported miracle cures of medical conditions (such as heart trouble) experienced by thinking righteous thoughts along Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance lines.

The Chinese government under President Xi Jinping has recently taken a less aggressive approach to Falun Gong than previous administrations. But those who adopt Li’s ideas are still watched carefully, still arrested, still sent to jail. We know this because a volunteer organization named Minghui gathers data on fresh outrages, summarizes them every month and sends those summaries across the world in several languages. What it contains “is also watched closely,” a recent bulletin notes, “by Chinese regime officials.”

The most recent summary, headlined Persecution News from China, describes incidents that took place in nine provinces. One woman was placed under Administrative Detention. Another was taken to what the summary calls a “Brainwashing Centre.” A third, arrested at work, was taken to a detention centre for 15 days.

The most frequent charge against them is “talking about Falun Gong.” No matter what is said, just exchanging a few words on this subject is an infraction. Among those frequently guilty of this crime are some Toronto Chinese, who often meet in Queen’s Park and willingly explain to tourists the basis of their faith and its suppression. The Chinese decision to make Falun Gong conversation an offence reveals the hope of government officials. They are so ashamed of what’s happened during this dreadful era of Chinese history that they hope no one will ever speak of it again.