Falun Gong's Challenge to China

By Danny Schechter

Book Overview

". . . Schechter] offers a persuasive analysis of this strange and still unfolding story . . . " --New York Times Book Review

"Schechter's account lays bare the Chinese dictatorship's hysterical response to an innocent organization, which will, without intending to, educate the Chinese public in mass resistance . . . Schechter's book is must-reading for those who want to understand the Chinese government's fear of its own people." --Gregory Palast, The Observer (London)

Falun Gong's Challenge to China remains the only book-length investigative report of this human crisis affecting the lives of tens of millions of practitioners in China and around the world. This updated paperback edition has information on all of the latest developments with the Chinese government crackdown, including Danny Schechter's analysis of the alleged public suicides by Falun Gong practitioners in Tiananmen Square in February 2001. New reporting also includes the Bush administration's response to the crisis and the positions taken by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In October 2000, China's president Jiang Zemin declared that Falun Gong, a spiritual movement with an estimated 100 million practitioners, was bent on "overthrowing the Chinese government, and undermining socialism." He branded them "counter revolutionaries" and vowed to crush their spiritual practice. The last time this type of rhetoric was heard was just before the government in Beijing sent tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989 to crush a worker and student movement for democracy.

Falun Gong's response to this latest threat by a regime that had already banned it--and denounced it as "an evil cult"--was to mobilize a large non-violent protest in the center of Beijing. Over a thousand people were arrested in a scene reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr's protests in the American South and Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance campaigns.

Why is this happening? What is Falun Gong and how has it attracted an estimated 70-100 million practitioners? Why has the Chinese government declared it an "evil cult" and sought to "smash it"--unsuccessfully so far, despite the involvement of thousands of police and government officials. What is it that China's leaders fear? What role has been played by the internet in this crisis? What is the real story behind the story?

This timely non-fiction book presents the inside story of China's crackdown on Falun Gong. Based on the last interview given by Li Hongzhi before he went underground, as well as information supplied by scores of practitioners and various independent third-party sources, human rights journalist Danny Schechter describes the rise of an enigmatic and sometimes mystical movement that has captured the imagination and loyalty of millions of members of the Communist Party itself.

Schechter's report is followed by an extensive reader offering documents on all sides of the controversy including government studies, propaganda reports, and Li Hongzhi's own writings. Schechter's careful monitoring of the situation cites experts, studies, human rights activists, intelligence reports, and original research to make sense of a story that has only been told episodically and with little depth. He documents and details what has happened and why.

Here for the first time:

* How and why 10,000-15,000 Chinese citizens surprised the government by surrounding the center of its power in 1999 with a day long vigil.

* The debate inside the Communist Party on how to address the rise of Falun Gong, with hard-liners ultimately prevailing with a campaign reminiscent of the extremism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

* Li Hongzhi's little-publicized plea for a dialogue with the Chinese government.

* How a dispute over inflated fees demanded by government agencies helped fuel the conflict.

* How the transition to capitalism in China--and not just Communist totalitarianism--has led to unrest and a spiritual crisis for millions.

* First-person reports from inside Chinese prisons and mental hospitals where Falun Gong practitioners are being tortured.

*The internet's function in amplifying voices of dissent from inside a country with a closed and tightly controlled media; the Internet's role in the world's most rapidly spreading spiritual movement.

*How the Chinese government's has been unable to suffocate Falun Gong, despite extensive attacks on Falun Gong websites and other facets of the group's elusive "network."

* How and why Western press coverage tends to resemble and even mimic the one-sided Collected of the Chinese state media.

* The mixed messages emanating from the White House and the failure of US government attempts to stop the human rights abuses. The Washington Post recently reported: "You wouldn't know it from listening to deferential Clinton administration officials, but China is carrying out one of its more ferocious assaults against freedom of speech and freedom of association in recent years . . . A Hong Kong-based human rights group reported that police beat to death one Falun Gong adherent, Zhao Jinghua, when she refused to renounce her beliefs . . . Given the absence of a free press, it's impossible to know how many have been arrested and how many have died in custody."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1888451130
• ISBN13: 9781888451139
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Akashic Books, Ltd.
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Very informative book to an important current issue

Among third party books, this is the best I could find so far. When I was a graduate student in University of California at Santa Barbara, I have been looking for a good book from an objective angle on Falun Gong. But at that time this book did not come out. When I got this book, I find it provided almost all of the information that I have spent months the collected from different sources. Since Falun Gong is amind, body, spiritual system, it may not easy to be really understood with superficial reading. Especially for people already have other spiritual or religious tendency. I myself is a case. But when getting more and more information from books (especially the Falun Gong books), you will find why millions people in China practice Falun Gong and like to do so. Eeven the persecution in China could not stop people doing this.

Don't make this book what it's not

First and foremost, a reader should not mistake this book as being a text on Falun Gong and its tenants. In fact, the book pays only a relatively superficial bit of attention to analyzing the core precepts of Falun Gong. Rather, this book is a description of the Chinese government's and media response to Falun Gong and whether that reaction is rational or justified. From that perspective, the book is quite good. Schechter is quite careful in indicating that while he presents alleged first person narratives of torture going on in China of incarcerated practitioners, those narratives are still alleged descriptions. They have not been verified. And in the appendix, he provides the reader with excerpts from publications that present both benign and critical descriptions of Falun Gong and its founder, Li Hongzhi. What the book is quite exceptional at is showing how the Western media has been lazy in its coverage of the Falun Gong issue in China, often adopting the lexicon of the Chinese government-controlled press, and hence becoming a mere mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. And it also challenges the reader's ability to accept core constitutional precepts, such as if all humans are to enjoy the right of religious/spiritual freedom, than all forms of religious/spiritual thought must enjoy those protections. If it isn't Christian or Jewish, Westerners tend to deride other doctrines as "cults," which only reveals an ethnocentric ignorance and intellectual laziness endemic in Western society. A reader of this text is not asked to decide whether Falun Gong should be considered legitimate. That is quite beside the point. Rather, the reader is asked whether Falun Gong practitioners should be allowed to practice their beliefs without mollestation. This text also reveals how China's decision to drastically cut back medical benefits to huge portions of its population sowed the seeds for Falun Gong's popularity because the doctrine does boast improved health through personal cultivation. No wonder it appeals to middle-aged and elderly people more than others, because it has been precisely this demographic that suffered the greatest loss because of the Chinese government's decision to reduce medical benefits. If we believe in religious and spiritual freedom, then the answer must be yes, Falun Gong and its practitioneers should be left alone. In the United States, the debates that form the historic Supreme Court decisions that define our freedoms were and continue to be initiated by what the rest of society deems as "fringe" elements. The right we have to refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance we owe to Jehovah's Witness. This book is an exceptional text and evaluation of not only the Chinese government's reaction to Falun Gong, but of the United States' and other Western reactions.

A thorough, objective third party report of Falun Gong issue

This book is the most objective and informative writings from the third party on Falun Gong issue that I have seen so far. Unlike many reports and articles that buy-in a lot of Chinese government propaganda and purposely government fabricated stories, the contents in this book are reliable, and has certain deepth to the complicated Falun Gong issue. Also, most news reports superficialy descibed Falun Gong as a meditation system that blend Taoism and Buddhism, this book begin approaching the real context.

Outsider's inside view

This book makes me feel like Falun Gong is not something merely for the Chinese people. It raises the concern of the human right status in China as China grows its economic dramatically. You may find the answers as you ask: What is the truth? Who tells the truth?