[It's always a mistake to piss off touchy-feely New Agers. Burma fails
to
mention China's growing economic troubles.]
New York Times Op-Ed July 25, 1999
The Sect That Became an Enemy of the State
By IAN BURMA
The scale and tenacity of Falun Gong, the faith-healing sect led by a
Chinese guru now living in New York City, has taken everyone by
surprise,
even the Chinese Government. In April, 10,000 Falun Gong members
suddenly
turned up in Beijing for a silent demonstration outside the Forbidden
City,
where the Communist leaders live, and just as suddenly they were gone.
That
takes some organization. Now that the Chinese Government has banned the
sect, it has taken on a formidable enemy.
>From a historical perspective, Falun Gong looks very familiar. Secret
societies, religious movements and faith-healing sects, based on a
mishmash
of Buddhism, Taoism and millenarian folk beliefs, have been part of the
Chinese scene for thousands of years. They tend to grow -- and grow
violent
in times of crisis and transition.
When the Han Dynasty was tottering in the second century A.D., a Taoist
sect
named the Yellow Turbans staged a revolt that helped to bring the
Government
down. Their slogan was "Taiping, Great Peace."
After the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century, a failed scholar named
Hong
Xiuquan claimed to be Christ's younger brother and founded a sect named
Great Peace, in hommage to the Yellow Turbans. His Great Peace rebellion
cost millions of lives but hastened the downfall of the Qing Dynasty.
Barely 50 years later, another faith-healing society, the Boxers,
revolted.
They claimed to have supernatural powers, which made them impervious to
bullets. They were not, and died in great numbers, but not before taking
many others with them.
Falun Gong, then, with its Buddhist-Taoist beliefs in building superior
virtue through faith-healing techniques, belongs to a folk tradition
that
has always frightened the powers that be. The group's very existence
challenges the orthodoxy that underpins the right of Chinese Governments
to
rule.
The orthodoxy used to be Confucianism, which imposed a social hierarchy
as a
kind of cosmic order, with the divine emperor at its pinnacle. Today it
is
Marxism-Leninism. And therein lies a great difficulty for the current
Chinese regime. Few Chinese, even inside the Communist Party, really
believe
in the Marxist dogmas anymore. To continue justifying its rule, the
Government has had to turn more and more to a resentful form of
nationalism,
the idea that China is constantly being harassed by hostile foreign
powers.
A century of humiliating defeats at the hands of foreign enemies, from
the
Opium Wars until the Japanese invasions in the 1930's, has made most
Chinese
extremely receptive to this kind of nationalism.
It worked very well in the case of the Chinese Embassy bombing in
Belgrade.
But it cannot possibly work against Falun Gong. To be sure, the fact
that
the group's guru, Li Hongzhi, lives in New York is being used by the
Government to portray his followers as dupes of foreign manipulation.
But
since Falun Gong is so obviously part of a long Chinese tradition, this
slur
is hardly convincing.
Admonishments in the Chinese press to work harder to study Marxism,
scientific socialism, atheism and dialectical materialism look even more
absurd, not only because few people believe in these slogans, but also
because this approach exposes what Chinese Marxists would call a
contradiction in party propaganda. The Chinese Government is fighting a
purely indigenous cult by resorting to outdated clichés borrowed from
the
West. There are no nationalist points to be scored there.
The latest rash of Falun Gong protests -- 30,000 people rallying in
cities
all over China -- are said to be the biggest challenge to the Communist
Party since the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square 10 years ago. The
potential challenge might be even bigger. The sect is said to have about
70
million members, which would make it larger than the Communist Party,
which
has 60 million. Furthermore, many of those 70 million are said to be
party
members as well.
This is not so suprising. Political reforms have been blocked since the
1980's, and many people, including Communists, have become disillusioned
with politics as a way of solving China's problems. So they retreat into
themselves, meditating to reach higher spheres and cure their
frustrations.
Or they might hope that supernatural intervention and divine virtues
will
help China where politics have failed. All this, and more, is promised
by
Falun Gong.
So far, Falun Gong has not been overtly political. Indeed, the guru in
New
York preaches detachment from wordly affairs. Many Chinese secret
societies
and meditation sects have started off that way. Even Hong Xiuquan, or
Christ's younger brother, began his work to establish heaven on earth,
with
entirely peaceful intentions.
But nothing turns religious groups into political ones more effectively
than
persecution. It would have been wiser, therefore, if the Chinese
Government
had left Falun Gong alone and tolerated its heterodox practices. Only a
few
weeks ago, Prime Minister Zhu Rongji still advocated such a course. But
tolerance of heterodoxy is as alien to the Communists as it was to the
imperial governments before them.
By cracking down so hard, the Government has made an enemy where there
once
was just a sect. And the career of Zhu Rongji, already weakened by his
offering trade concessions to foreigners who went on to bomb an embassy,
should be watched with particular interest.
--------------------------------
Ian Buruma is the author, most recently, of "Anglomania."
Next message: Doug Henwood: "Re: Caff.'s critique of Negri/Rifkin
(o'connor)"
Previous message: Michael Perelman: "Re: Profits, info, & branding"
This archive was generated by hypermail 1.02.
|
