Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
Is the Falun Gong sect a real threat to the regime or simply a phantom menace?
Jul 27, 1999 | April 25 started as a normal Sunday in Beijing. But before the day was out, thousands of ordinary people in drip-dry shirts had mysteriously appeared outside Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound of the Chinese Communist Party near the Forbidden City. Here they formed a mile-long line around its walled perimeter and then finally flooded out onto the Avenue of Eternal Peace, where they calmly sat down with an eerie orderliness in front of the compound's main gate and peacefully began to meditate. There were no political banners rippling in the wind, no headbands proclaiming freedom and democracy, no bullhorns amplifying provocative slogans as during the student movement of 1989.
Indeed, many of the participants -- who quickly grew in number to around 10,000 -- were middle-aged women of no particular political inclination. They were, instead, members of the Falun Gong, a rapidly expanding sect that combines traditional Chinese breathing exercises (qigong) and a belief in miracle cures with a mish-mash of Buddhist and Taoist mysticism. Despite the fact demonstrators insisted that they were apolitical -- wishing only to protest the detention in nearby Tianjin of fellow believers who had taken up the cause against a magazine that had editorially attacked the sect -- party leaders were deeply disturbed by their appearance in the capital, and set up a special task force within the Central Committee to look into the group. It was a measure of how seriously this task force took the sect's challenge that this week, after accusing Falun Gong of wanting "to provoke those who do not know the truth to stage massive gatherings, inciting trouble and chaos in a bid to violate social stability," police moved to detain thousands of sect followers in more than 30 Chinese cities.
The mass detention of the followers of Falun Gong that have been carried out in China this past week are a dangerous panic response that has added fuel to the most widespread movement of organized protest since 1989. They also highlight an unexpected threat to Chinese Communist Party rule that could, if not handled prudently, be far more menacing to stability in China than any student protest movements that have preceded it.
What makes this crypto Buddhist-Taoist sect so potent is not only its broad-based support but its inchoateness, which renders it extremely difficult to control. But what is perhaps even more threatening to established power is the fact that this mass cult turned protest movement is led by a traditionalistic leader whose sudden state of charismatic rebelliousness evokes for many Chinese a deeply ingrained sense of historical memory of how many past ruling dynasties fell after they were challenged by just such internal cultic upheaval.
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