Also referred to as Falun Dafa, Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline. It brings together meditation, exercises, and moral teachings as a means to cultivating the mind and body, with the ultimate aspiration being spiritual transformation, or what in the East is known as “enlightenment.” As of 1999 over 70 million people in China were reportedly practicing Falun Gong, making it the most popular practice of this nature in all of China, if not the world. It is taught by Mr. Li Hongzhi.
What are Falun Gong’s political views?
The practice itself does not have any express political views. Political opinions among adherents are as diverse and varied as you might find in any given population.
Why is the Chinese Communist Party persecuting Falun Gong?
The complex rationale behind the campaign can be broken into four elements: 1. Falun Gong’s popularity, 2. the role of Jiang Zemin, 3. conflicting ideology, and 4. the nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s system.
1. The more popular Falun Gong became, the more resistance it encountered. Party leaders fear any large, independent group, and Falun Gong was probably the largest.
2. Fearing Falun Gong’s rapidly growing popularity was overshadowing his own legacy, then-Party leader Jiang Zemin ordered the practice “eradicated.”
3. While the Party does allow some religious affiliations, religious groups must submit to the state and their leaders must be Party approved. Other groups who, like Falun Gong, have chosen to preserve their belief system and refused to tender to the Party have also met persecution, including Tibetan Buddhists and house church members.
4. Finally, as the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party (www.ninecommentaries.com) has argued, the persecution of Falun Gong is the latest in a continuum of violent campaigns that the Party uses to remind the population of its control. Mao Zedong once said that China should have a Cultural Revolution every seven or eight years. Indeed, since the 1950s not a decade has gone by without some violent state-led campaign aimed at the masses. Since taking power, the Party has killed 60-80 million Chinese citizens.
More information about Falun Gong please visit www.falundafa.org, www.faluninfo.net, www.fofg.org, and www.cipfg.org.