In various articles, Falun Dafa is also called by other names, such as Buddhist Law and Fa Lun Gong.
Not all accounts were completely accurate, so, in order to understand them better, it may be useful to compare some of them, so here are texts of articles from
For an accurate statement about Falun Dafa, here is a 5 June 1999 editorial from the Falun Dafa Bulletin Board:
The peaceful Zhong-nan-hai gathering of 10,000 Falun Dafa practitioners to voice their grievances to the Chinese leaders was the last resort taken by Falun Dafa practitioners, who had been practicing cultivation under extremely difficult conditions in China. Those practitioners knew very well that they were risking themselves, nonetheless, they were still able to rationally and calmly explain Falun Dafa to the Chinese leaders and told them about the brutal harassment and crackdown of Falun Dafa practices that occurred in Tianjin and other places. They cultivate to become strong and healthy good citizens, but why have they not received support and understanding, but incurred all kinds of mistreatment, restriction and persecution?The cultivation of Falun Dafa only cultivates one's self. Therefore, we don't have any kind of organization whatsoever. Cultivation is achieved by individual's efforts to cultivate his inner heart; thus, any kind of organization does not have any effect upon cultivation. Because a cultivator has no interest in politics at all and he will never involve himself into politics or any antigovernment movement, such people can only bring about stability in any society. The characteristics of Falun Dafa cultivation in fact just fit the current situation in China -- "Stability should overwhelm anything else". The Chinese government can be completely ensured. The more the good people who practice Falun Gong, the better it will help the Chinese government sustain its social stability.
The complaints from the Falun Dafa practitioners were heard by the government and that incident had been settled in peace and understanding. However, a very small number of people with ulterior motives from some government departments began to interfere, and they kept spreading all kinds of rumors such as the "collective suicide at Xiangshan (Fragrance Mountain)" and so on, thus misled the Chinese government. The Chinese government then issued many new restrictions; they even considered some much more extreme policies. Such a situation is of course disappointing to people in all communities around the world. We hope the government would expose those people who have been creating the chaos in the sly, so that the government can avoid new mistakes which would disappoint and sadden 100 million good people in China.
All Falun Dafa practitioners can do is only to follow principles of "Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truthfulness, Benevolence, and Forbearance) and to explain Falun Dafa, with compassionate hearts, to people from all social strata who do not understand the real situation. As for those who have learnt of Falun Dafa, whether they will support, oppose or suppress, it is all their own choice. We have fulfilled our commitment. Especially, to those who have already lost their consciences out of greed and have deliberately chosen to ill treat and crackdown Falun Gong while paying absolutely no attention to our objective explanations, we don't have to say any more or demand anything. Due to the complexity of the situations in China, practitioners in China should still adhere to their consistent past tradition, cultivating quietly and steadily, learning the Fa solidly, practicing the exercises in parks and cultivating normally. No matter how the situation changes, everyone should continue to cultivate firmly.
The situation abroad is different from that in China. People from all social strata are chasing after Falun Dafa and asking what Falun Dafa is. Of course, the angle, the background and the motivation for the inquiries differ greatly. Therefore, it is imperative that Dafa practitioners positively introduce Falun Dafa to all kinds of people through the media, various channels and various Chinese or English forums on the Internet.
Falun Dafa has been known to everyone in China, therefore, how the practitioners do in China should be different from that in other countries.
Falun Dafa Bulletin Board Editors
June 5, 1999
On 26 April 1999, The Wall Street Journal carried an article by Craig S. Smith, the text of which is:
NEW YORK -- The greatest threat to China's ruling Communist Party may not come from democracy advocates or disgruntled workers, but from mild-mannered New York resident Li Hongzhi.Mr. Li is the spiritual leader of tens of millions of Chinese and thousands of other people around the world. His flock far surpasses that of the Dalai Lama, the exiled religious leader of Tibet, or that of any of the world's emerging new religions. By the Chinese government's own estimates, his following outnumbers China's 55 million-strong Communist Party.
The magnitude of the movement was made clear Sunday morning, when more than 10,000 devotees quietly began filling the sidewalks around Zhongnanhai, Beijing's leadership compound, to demand recognition by the government and the lifting of a ban on the publication of Mr. Li's writings. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, then sat, legs crossed in the "lotus" position, as many as eight deep, in passive silence. The well-organized, peaceful demonstration, which broke up late Sunday night, was the Chinese capital's largest gathering of protesters since the army's bloody dispersal of pro-democracy demonstrators on June 4, 1989.
That it was a spiritual gathering, and not a political rally, makes it no less sensitive. Not only did it flash like a beacon of the past almost a decade to the week after the democracy movement began in 1989; it also is a sharp reminder of communism's lost relevance in China's free-for-all market economy. Groups like Mr. Li's are on the rise, and the Beijing government can suppress them only at its peril.
Sunday's demonstration followed the arrest of several of Mr. Li's followers in the nearby port city of Tianjin after a group of followers surrounded the offices of a youth magazine that had attacked the discipline as fraudulent and dangerous. "The police came and drove them away with force, using very rude and violent behavior, and even arrested some people," says Zhang Erping, one of Mr. Li's closest associates in New York. He says that the followers went to Beijing to seek redress from the State Council, China's cabinet, and that he was told that some of Mr. Li's followers met Sunday with Premier Zhu Rongji. The government has said nothing of a meeting.
Mr. Zhang and many of the middle-aged people who crouched peacefully around Zhongnanhai insisted that the demonstration was spontaneous. "Nobody actually organized anything," he says.
Favorable Reports
But this isn't the first time Mr. Li's followers have exhibited their activism and growing power. In early June last year, more than a thousand believers gathered outside Beijing Television Station following a broadcast in which a professor of China's Academy of Science disparaged the group, calling it a "cult." Under pressure to resolve the crisis before the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the TV station's chief fired the 24-year-old reporter involved and broadcast a favorable report about the group a few days later.
"Right now, no one dares to criticize them," says an official at the China Wushu Research Institute. The institute is responsible for overseeing the spiritualistic martial-arts groups that have mushroomed in the two decades since paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms began opening a parallel corridor to freedom of thought.
Into that vacuum have rushed the five organized religions China tolerates -- Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Islam -- and an assortment of spiritual leaders whose teachings are based on traditional Chinese beliefs. Many of these new spiritual leaders fashion themselves as masters of qi gong, a centuries-old practice that attempts to direct forces of energy from within and without the body to improve health, heal others and -- at the extreme -- develop supernatural powers.
Among those studying qi gong in the late 1980s was Mr. Li, then a bright, charismatic grain-bureau clerk in the northeastern industrial city of Changchun. He says that when he first heard of qi gong, he recognized it as identical to what he had called "cultivation" -- the set of spiritual practices he had been developing privately since the age of four.
While Playing Trumpet
He studied various schools of qi gong during his years as a trumpet player with a song-and-dance troupe of the Jilin provincial forest police. By the late 1980s, he says, he had moved to the provincial grain bureau and moved beyond qi gong to something higher. "Qi gong teaches healing and fitness," he says, "but I am teaching a universal principle."
Sitting on a white upholstered armchair in a New York hotel suite fragrant with lilies, Mr. Li explains that he came under pressure to leave China once his teachings, known as Falun Dafa, took off.
The 48-year-old former clerk is careful not to call his discipline a religion, though it has distinctly religious overtones. Based loosely on Buddhism, Falun Dafa (translated as Law Wheel Great Way), is a system of exercises and beliefs aimed at leading its practitioners to enlightenment and winning them an eventual place in heaven. It emphasizes moral uprightness -- followers are prohibited from smoking, drinking or sexual relations outside of marriage. And a prominent feature is the "law wheel," an object that Mr. Li says he can conjure at will and that he describes as a ceaselessly spinning miniature of the cosmos; he telekinetically "installs" one in the abdomens of followers as they read his books, to protect them from illness or interference by evil spirits.
If Mr. Li were to call Falun Dafa a religion, it would be banned under Chinese law and its followers prohibited from gathering in public parks and squares to practice their balletic exercises. He even disputes that his followers constitute a group, claiming that there is no organization underlying the 100 million people that he says practice Falun Dafa world-wide.
But denying that an organization exists is a semantic exercise that belies the masses of Mr. Li's followers around the world. In the city of Wuhan last October, tens of thousands of Falun Dafa practitioners held a rally at which they formed a huge human image of the Law Wheel -- dominated by a gold swastika in a red field. Mr. Li insists that such displays are organized spontaneously by local devotees and that there is no staff or hierarchy among practitioners to coordinate such events. There is no Falun Dafa office and no Falun Dafa bank accounts to finance activities, he says.
Still, while followers are discouraged from donating money, and no fees are charged for studying Falun Dafa, the discipline is nonetheless a money spinner for Mr. Li. At a recent Falun Dafa convention in New York, books, videotapes and compact disks sold briskly. The tab for such conventions is picked up by devotees; in 1998, a single volunteer covered the $35,000 bill for renting part of New York's Jacob Javits Center.
The many Falun Dafa Web sites, meanwhile, are maintained and financed by a handful of followers around the world. Indeed, proselytizing in general is a "holy act," Mr. Li tells the 3,000 people gathered at a recent convention at New York's Sheraton Towers ballroom. Many of the more active devotees spend their free time giving seminars wherever they can find an audience.
By the early 1990s, China's central government was alarmed at the spread of groups like Mr. Li's. History provided a warning: New religions or spiritual sects have triggered civil unrest in centuries past. At the close of the 18th century, the White Lotus Movement, a millenarian sect, led a violent uprising in northeastern China. And in the late 19th century, a man claiming to be Jesus' brother built a huge following across China and led a revolt, known as the Taiping Rebellion, against the ruling Qing dynasty. The leader, Hong Xiuquan, set up a government in Nanjing and controlled a large swath of central China for more than a decade. Imperial troops crushed his movement, but tens of millions died in the war.
Mr. Li's discipline spread no less rapidly. In 1992, he began giving lectures in stadiums across China's northeast, attracting paying crowds of several thousand and grossing as much as $20,000 a week. Later that year, Mr. Li moved to Beijing, where he gave a series of lectures and established a cadre of disciples who remain at the core of Falun Dafa in China today. And in 1996, he published Zhuan Falun, the discipline's bible, which quickly sold nearly a million copies. Mr. Li says that at a national book fair that year, it overshadowed the biography of Deng Xiaoping written by Mr. Deng's daughter.
Soon after that, the Communist Party's Propaganda Bureau issued a ban on Mr. Li's book to all publishers. And in November 1996, the China Society for Research of Qi Gong Science kicked Mr. Li and his school out of their organization. "The Ministry of Public Security began stopping meetings, and they put pressure on me in many ways," says Mr. Li. He applied to move to the U.S. and arrived in early 1998.
Yet that hasn't stopped Falun Dafa from spreading. The book -- often in crudely reproduced counterfeit copies -- is easily available in most parts of China through Mr. Li's followers. Its message of salvation and talk of heaven has found an eager audience among a population starved for spiritual sustenance in the harshly materialistic post-Deng China. Today, some government officials estimate that the number of followers has reached 60 million or more.
Mr. Li now publishes the book in Hong Kong and lives "an ordinary life" on the royalties. Dressed in a blue blazer, light chino slacks and a bright-yellow polo shirt, Mr. Li looks more like a wealthy denizen of a country club than a spiritual leader from China. He says he spends much of his time practicing calligraphy at his home in New York City, where he lives with his wife and teenage daughter.
In the U.S., distributor Sino United Publishing of Los Angeles has sold more than 10,000 copies of Mr. Li's book in the past six months -- in both English and Chinese -- earning Mr. Li about $35,000. The book also has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Swedish, Japanese and Korean.
'Like Kindergartners'
Mr. Li says Zhuan Falun and his other books answer all questions anyone has about Falun Dafa, and he encourages followers to read the books again and again for a deeper understanding. And though many of Mr. Li's closest disciples have advanced science degrees, the mystical elements of his teachings don't seem to bother them. "We are like kindergartners trying to talk with a university professor about advanced calculus," says Feng Yuan, Falun Dafa's New York coordinator, who studied physics at China's prestigious Qinghua University and biophysics at Harvard University.
Mr. Li's writings devote much space to discussions of levitation, possession by animal spirits, and seeing the future with the third eye, located in the pineal gland behind the forehead. "Without a TV set, people will have one in their foreheads, and they can watch anything they want to see... . Without trains and planes, people will be able to levitate in the air from where they sit without using an elevator," Mr. Li says in Zhuan Falun.
Mr. Li defends these supernatural elements by pointing to similar Christian beliefs. "Didn't Christ cast out demons?" he argues. As for levitation, he says there are people in the U.S. with that ability, too. "What's his name, David Copperfield, he can fly," says Mr. Li, becoming animated for the first time in a three-hour interview. "Really, really! He can fly!" he says. "We have tons of people like that in China."
In his lectures, he frequently waxes mystical. "I exist in many bodies, in many dimensions and I can cross dimensions," he tells spellbound devotees at the Falun Dafa convention in New York's Sheraton Towers Ballroom. A massive gold-framed image of himself wearing a saffron robe and sitting in the lotus position hangs high behind him against a backdrop of azure drapes. "I am the oldest original spirit in the universe."
In fact, Mr. Li says, Jesus and Buddha were teachers like himself, leading people toward similar forms of enlightenment. But he says their original teachings have been diluted and subverted over the course of time, so that today, it is nearly impossible to reach enlightenment by following those religions. "At the moment, I am the only person in the world who is teaching orthodox [law] in public," he says in Zhuan Falun, adding that his teaching is a unique opportunity for mankind in the "Dharma-ending time."
Mr. Li isn't specific in his lectures about what the Dharma-ending time means, but followers believe it is the final stage of human history, when gradual moral and spiritual degradation pushes mankind beyond hope of salvation. What happens next, followers say, won't be pretty. Mr. Li says making Falun Dafa public is man's last hope "in this period of the Last Havoc."
'A Political Threat'
That kind of talk rattles many people in China. "Some of the fastest-growing cults could develop into a political threat, as any cult is set against the ideology of mainstream society," says Sinan Ma, a television producer who spends much of his time speaking out against what he calls "reactionary" emerging religions.
Mr. Sinan says he is wary of openly criticizing Falun Dafa. "I don't want to offend disciples of Li Hongzhi, who are notoriously frenzied about any criticisms of their teacher," he says.
Even as the government struggles with how to handle Mr. Li and his followers, their influence is becoming increasingly pervasive. At China Wushu Research Institute, a young man pouring tea for a reporter whispers in English, "Did you read the book?" -- referring to Falun Dafa's bible. When the reporter nods, the young man, 28-year-old Wang Kai, suggests talking after the meeting.
Later, Mr. Wang produces reams of information on Falun Dafa from files in his cramped office. As a researcher in the institute's qi gong department, he is charged with writing the reports assessing Falun Dafa and other groups under investigation. And Mr. Wang is a devoted follower of Mr. Li.
On 27 April 1999, The Wall Street Journal carried an article by Craig S. Smith, the text of which is:
Confounded China Considers Response To Challenge From Spiritual GroupSHANGHAI, China -- A day after thousands of silent protesters besieged China's leadership compound in Beijing, the government appeared as confused as ever about how to deal with the mass movement known as Falun Dafa.
Despite the open challenge -- the protest was the largest since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of a decade ago -- Beijing was relaxed on Monday. Hundreds of police patrolled outside the red walls of Zhongnanhai, where China's political elite live and work, but the streets gradually reopened to vehicles and pedestrians.
On Sunday, more than 10,000 adherents of the spiritual discipline lined the sidewalks around the compound, as police stood guard and blocked traffic in downtown Beijing. While many protesters were unsure why they were there, having been summoned by word-of-mouth, their representatives petitioned China's cabinet for legal status that would offer them protection from what the group regards as increasingly unfair media criticism. The group also wants protection from regional authorities, who have the power to deny Falun Dafa followers the right to assemble, and wants a ban lifted on books written by Falun Dafa's founder, Li Hongzhi.
Government Studies Options
An official at China's Wushu Research Institute, one of the government bodies charged with investigating Falun Dafa, confirmed on Monday that the group's representatives met with Premier Zhu Rongji, who has just returned from a visit to the U.S. The official said "the authorities are working on a solution" on how to deal with the group's demands, but cautioned that a public announcement is unlikely even after the government reaches a decision. Other people said the government had promised to respond within three days.
In the meantime, the government has ordered a media blackout. Beijing's Municipal Public Security Bureau said "higher authorities" had banned any domestic media coverage of the event.
The mute government response to Sunday's protest reflects the depth of Beijing's dilemma in confronting a group that is too large to suppress, yet doesn't fit easily into the rigid categories that the communist bureaucracy has long used to control society. China's antiquated government institutions are ill-prepared to deal with the explosion of such groups filling the vacuum left by the collapse of communist ideology as society's guiding moral force.
Falun Dafa, which is popularly known as Falun Gong, was founded in the early 1990s as a system of exercises and beliefs that promise its followers enlightenment, supernatural powers and a place in heaven. The number of its followers in China is variously estimated at more than 20 million to more than 60 million. The group's leader, Mr. Li, now lives in New York City.
Declaring the discipline a religion would require Beijing to either outlaw the group -- China's constitution recognizes just five major religions -- or open the door for other unrecognized religious groups that might want equal treatment. Treating the group as a physical-fitness regime, on the other hand, would require the government to turn a blind eye to the discipline's obvious religions overtones -- and open a loophole for other religious groups to slip through.
Tracked Via Internet
"Mr. Li says it isn't a religion, but we can watch his organization through the Internet and understand his ideas," said Li Jie, the director of the Wushu Research Institute, several days before Sunday's protest. He said his institute's investigation of Falun Dafa is continuing. But even the Wushu Research Institute, charged with recommending to the government how to treat the group, is deeply divided over the issue. While some of the institute's officials are wary, others are avid Falun Dafa followers.
In fact, one of the difficulties the government has in dealing with Falun Dafa is that many retired senior Communist Party cadres are followers, says Chen Xingqiao, an official at China's Buddhism Association who has studied the discipline. Falun Dafa means Law Wheel Great Way, or Dharma Wheel Discipline. Though worried about their health and in need of spiritual fulfillment, many aging party members are reluctant to follow Buddhism or other organized religions because of the party's official adherence to atheism, Mr. Chen says. Falun Dafa is more palatable because it doesn't call itself a religion, he adds. "And once they are inside the group and realize its true nature, they are already obsessed," he says.
One thing is clear: The ranks of Falun Dafa's followers continue to swell and their power continues to grow as China's increasingly market-driven economy raises social tensions. Still, Mr. Chen doubts the government will give in to the Falun Dafa followers' demands. "That would set a very bad example," he says.
On 30 April 1999, The Wall Street Journal carried an article by Craig S. Smith, the text of which is:
Chinese Spiritual Group Draws Strength From Retired Elite, Some Party MembersSHANGHAI, China -- Falun Dafa, the spiritual discipline whose followers surrounded Beijing's leadership compound on Sunday, draws its strength from the masses but its maneuverability from a core of well-organized, well-connected devotees -- prominent Communist Party members among them.
For half a century, China's Communist Party has guarded vigilantly against the formation of any other mass organization. It crushes political parties, bans labor unions, has even outlawed multilevel marketing networks that might challenge its authority.
But such an organization now exists, having coalesced right under the party's nose from a most unexpected quarter: the country's retirees.
Worse, from the party's point of view, this group answers to what it regards as a higher power, Li Hongzhi, the charismatic founder of Falun Dafa, which promises enlightenment, supernatural powers and a place in heaven. When asked last month whether Falun Dafa could co-exist with the Communist Party, Mr. Li said, "I am teaching a universal principle. As for other principles, I don't know, I don't want to comment."
Ironically, whether intentionally or not, Falun Dafa's organization takes a page from the Communist Party. While the ranks of Mr. Li's 20 million to 60 million followers are filled with the disillusioned and the disenfranchised, the upper echelon is composed of people called "tutors" who are organized into "stations" around China -- not unlike the party secretaries and cells of the Communist Party's structure.
Cream of Society
Falun Dafa's tutors include highly educated or highly placed people from the cream of Chinese society. Communicating with each other by electronic mail and cellular telephones, they provide the group with access to information and help it exert influence in a country where personal relations are still critical to getting things done.
Among them is Li Chang, a retired Ministry of Public Security official whose former office was in the Ministry of State Security compound off the northeast corner of Tiananmen Square. The two organizations are responsible for China's internal security, overseeing the country's state police and China's equivalent to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Sitting cross-legged on a wooden cot in a sparsely furnished Public Security Ministry-owned apartment, the silver-haired Mr. Li explained that he was among 300 to 400 people who attended Li Hongzhi's first Beijing lecture series when the charismatic spiritual leader arrived in the capital in May 1992. A laminated poster of Falun Dafa's Law Wheel, dominated by a Buddhist swastika, hangs on the wall of the apartment. A half-dozen round, yellow pillows, on which followers sit on during meditation, are stacked in a corner.
Mr. Li is now the chief contact person for the Foreign Liaison Group of the Falun Dafa Research Society in Beijing. The society, a group of Mr. Li's earliest and most devoted disciples, acts as a conduit of information from Mr. Li to the thousands of tutoring stations scattered around China. The research society also acts as Falun Dafa's senior decision-making body for China in Mr. Li's absence.
Call for Coordinated Efforts
"I want to tell everyone that whatever we want to do, we should coordinate with the tutoring stations instead of just doing it in whatever way we fancy. Secondly, I also want to tell you that things our tutoring stations do are approved by the Beijing Research Society when I am absent," Mr. Li told a gathering of his followers last July in his northeastern Chinese hometown, Changchun.
Li Chang, who isn't related to Falun Dafa's founder, Mr. Li, says that "because telecommunications aren't that developed" in China, it still takes two to three days for information to get from the "Master" to his followers in China's major cities.
But "Li Hongzhi is in charge of everything," Li Chang says. For example, company documents show that Li Hongzhi owns Falun Fo Fa Publishing Co., the Hong Kong publisher of Falun Dafa texts that are distributed world-wide. Li Hongzhi, a U.S. resident who carries a Chinese passport and a U.S. green card, is currently in Sydney, where he will speak to a gathering of his followers this weekend.
Key members of China's Wushu Research Institute, the government organization responsible for regulating martial-arts groups and charged with investigating Falun Dafa, are also followers. Mr. Li's devotees are also said to include ranking government officials, including the Communist Party secretary of at least one wealthy coastal province. The party secretary is the highest-ranking official at the provincial level.
At least one People's Liberation Army general is also said to be a follower. And Li Chang says Falun Dafa's followers include "many" members of China's National People's Congress, the country's largely rubber-stamp Parliament, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a government advisory body.
Disciplined Network
Many of these influential followers act as tutors in charge of stations that each oversee thousands of followers who gather daily for exercises and study at designated public meeting places.
This is the powerful, highly disciplined network that was able to carry out Sunday's mass demonstration in Beijing. More than 10,000 followers from provinces across northeast China descended on the capital and massed around Zhongnanhai, Beijing's leadership compound, in an attempt to pressure the government into recognizing their discipline and giving it some legal protection.
The protest was all the more remarkable because it occurred during the 10th anniversary of the beginning of 1989's pro-democracy protests, which ended in the massacre of protesters on the streets around Tiananmen Square. Security around the leadership compound is tightened during such anniversaries.
And while Li Hongzhi said in a recent interview that he had nothing to do with a smaller protest by his followers in Beijing last year, he doesn't discourage such actions. After last year's protest, in which Falun Dafa followers besieged Beijing Television Station and forced the ouster of one of its young journalists, Mr. Li chastised a follower in Changchun who suggested the protest was counter to Falun Dafa's doctrine of forbearance.
"You meant to say you didn't take part in the activity because you are a 'steadfast true practitioner?' " Mr. Li asked the questioner according to a transcript of the exchange carried on a Falun Dafa Web site. "In what you said, there was an indication that you were trying to justify your having lost a perfect opportunity. I have made it very clear to you already. Every time such a major event takes place, it is the best opportunity to test if our followers can make that perfect step."
On 26 April 1999, The New York Times carried an article by Seth Faison, the text of which is:
BEIJING -- More than 10,000 followers of a religious cult surrounded China's leadership compound Sunday, demanding recognition from authorities who are wary of any group not easy controlled. It was the biggest protest here since the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989.Coming as a complete surprise to the authorities, the protest drew followers from all over China. Eerily silent and devoid of banners or slogans, the protesters seemed to materialize out of nowhere, suddenly appearing in large numbers at the seat of Chinese power in the middle of the morning and remaining immovable all day long.
Displaying remarkably good organization and discipline, with demonstrators remaining motionless and calm and seated on the sidewalk while organizers communicated by mobile telephones. Many protesters apparently tried to use meditation to persuade leaders to see them in a more favorable light.
The cult, known as Buddhist Law, asserts that it has more than 100 million members in this country of 1.2 billion, the largest among hundreds of cults that have flourished in China in recent years as socialism evaporates as an ideology. Preaching good behavior to win salvation from an increasingly evil world that is headed for catastrophe, followers believe that they can cure illness and eviscerate wickedness from the world.
The cult's popular leader, Li Hongzhi, 48, moved to New York City two years ago, under pressure from the authorities to restrict his activity.
Dressed in simple clothing, followers converged from many provinces of China, sitting all day on worn squares of cotton padding in long rows that stretched for nearly two miles along two sides of Zhongnanhai, the compound in central Beijing where China's leaders live and work.
The police, apparently eager to avoid a confrontation, did not force the protesters to move, and the gathering dispersed peacefully by 10 p.m.
The protest came right in the middle of a most politically sensitive time, the 10th anniversary of the student movement that began in April, 1989, and just weeks before the anniversary of the crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4. China's leadership is already deeply concerned about the potential for social unrest as a wrenching transition to a market economy is throwing tens of millions out of work.
As China becomes a less regimented society -- with people confused over conflicting laws and regulations and with tens of millions of people losing their jobs as state-run industries close -- religious cults with mass followings like this one appear to pose a greater threat to social order than democracy advocates do.
"The authorities can surgically take out political activist groups, but this is a whole new thing, far harder to control," said Robin Munro, a China scholar who researched Chinese political opposition groups for years as head of Asiawatch in Hong Kong. "Sects are inherently peaceful, but only become politicized, and then potentially explosive, when repressed."
Mindful of the strong role that secret societies played in the downfall of the last imperial dynasty, in 1911, China's leaders are juggling their need for social order with popular demands for greater religious freedom.
To many Chinese bewildered by a fast-changing society, perhaps the greatest appeal of a cult like Buddhist Law lies in its simplicity.
"What we stand for is good for the nation and good for society, so how can we threaten anyone?" said a 47-year-old woman in a worn green jacket who sat near the corner of Zhongnanhai. "They don't understand us. We want understanding."
Several other followers nodded in agreement as the woman spoke.
"We will stay as long as it takes," said a 52-year-old man in a tattered grey sweater. "A day, a week, a year. We are not in a hurry."
The protesters, wary of giving their names or talking in detail about their organization, said they were demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji. In the late evening, as the protest dispersed, organizers announced to small groups that they had been promised a meeting with members of the State Council, China's Cabinet. The government made no announcement, and state-run news media were conspicuously silent about the protest.
Buddhist Law is a sect of qigong, a traditional Chinese teaching that incorporates a broad range of healing techniques, martial arts and meditation. The overwhelming majority of Chinese believe in some form of qigong, while some join cults built on the teachings of a particular master, like Li.
The Communist Party denounces cults as superstitious remnants of an earlier age and asserts that many charismatic qigong masters fool followers with get-rich-quick schemes and fake medicine.
Many of the cult followers carried a book by Li. Buddhist Law, founded by Li in 1992, preaches that evil lurks in the modern appearance of rock 'n' roll music, television, drugs and homosexuality. Although the group is vehemently opposed to modern science and technology, many members use the internet to spread the group's message.
"Your diseases will be eliminated directly by me," wrote Li in one of his five books, regarded by followers as sacred texts.
Li's teachings echo ancient Chinese civilization, asserting the power of healing by using qigong to tap into a person's "inner energy." The cult also uses the Buddhist notion of karma, which holds that people's good and bad deeds determine their fate in the next life.
The origin of Sunday's protest apparently lay in a recent article in an obscure academic journal published in the coastal city of Tianjin, that warned of the dangers posed by cults in China. Several protesters said they were deeply offended by the article and that a dozen followers were arrested in Tianjin last week after a small protest there.
Last year, after Beijing Television broadcast a program critical of Buddhist Law, organizers engineered a protest outside the television station. Two employees of the station were later said to have been dismissed because of inaccuracies in the broadcast.
Buddhist Law has apparently earned tens of millions of dollars by selling Li's books and videotapes of his preachings, as well as meditation cushions and pictures of Li. But the full size and scope of the operation remains hidden.
The organization, secretive about its operations, has a network of support in the United States, and the followers say that many Communist Party members, senior officials and police officers are among its members.
Li, who asserts that he has a higher spiritual authority than Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha, teaches that he was sent to earth by a "supreme being" to save mankind from moral corruption caused by consumerism, modern science and technology.
Chinese society has disintegrated so seriously, Li contends, that many humans are reincarnated as demons, some of them disguised as monks.
"Especially in Taiwan," he has written, "many famous monks or lay Buddhists are actually demons."
Competing for followers with other cults, Li has denounced other qigong masters as "possessed with foxes or yellow weasels, and some with snakes."
At Sunday's protest, followers extolled the virtues of their cult, talking more about the beneficial effects of moral discipline than about the greatness of their leader.
"I am a better father and husband and citizen," said a 48-year-old man from Hebei Province, who said he had been a member of Buddhist Law for six years. "We are making a better society.
"I don't get sick anymore," the man continued. "If everyone is healthy, it will save medical costs and be good for society as a whole."
Sunday's protest, populated mostly by people from outside the capital, elicited much fascination but limited sympathy from Beijing residents, thousands of whom gathered to look on.
"They're crazy," said Li Xiaoming, 27, who works for a transport company. "But there are a lot of them, so the government has to listen."
On 26 April 1999, The London Telegraph carried an article by David Rennie in Beijing. The article contained the third image from the top of this page, and also carried some links to Falun Dafa material on a website at the University of Toronto. The text of the article is:
MORE than 10,000 followers of a Chinese religious cult yesterday surrounded the central Beijing compound where China's top Communist leaders live and work in the city's largest protest since the bloodily suppressed student demonstrations of June 1989.The mostly elderly and middle-aged devotees of the Fa Lun Gong cult were demanding official status for their sect following the arrest of dozens of cult members in the nearby city of Tianjin. They also asked to see China's Prime Minister, Zhu Rongji, to protest at denigration of the movement in the official media. Protest organisers said late last night that China's State Council, or cabinet, had agreed to negotiations starting today. The sect claims to have 100 million members who follow the teachings of an American-based martial arts master, Li Hongzhi. He claims to have been sent to earth by the "supreme being" to combat the evils of science and modern immorality. Most followers at yesterday's gathering appeared to be from the Beijing region.
Followers of religious cult leader Li Hongzhi besiege the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in BeijingPolice ordered the demonstrators to disperse towards evening and maintained a line of unarmed officers and patrol vehicles to keep protesters 10 yards from the high red walls of the leadership compound. Plain clothes agents filmed and photographed demonstrators and foreign reporters. However, police made no attempt to break up the protests. Some demonstrators drifted away as night fell, but others vowed to remain outside the Zhongnanhai compound, which once formed part of the next-door Imperial Forbidden City and lies about half a mile from Tiananmen Square.
Cult followers stood in silent rows facing the compound or sat on prayer mats. Others read from the works of Li Hongzhi. At sunset, groups of the devotees, who had been picnicking on bread and water, rose to their feet and started to applaud, pointing to an apparent vision near the setting sun. Waves of devotees rose to applaud and point with them, some beaming ecstatically, and others looking more confused.
China's ruling Communist Party remains officially atheist, but tolerates religious activity within state-approved "patriotic" temples and churches after the years of vicious religious repression under Mao. However, senior leaders have expressed deep concern about the massive increase in unofficial religions. Millions of ordinary Chinese, including Communist Party members, have been turning to religion as the old certainties of the planned economy fade away. Temples, fortune-tellers, preachers and convicted con-men have all experienced a surge in popularity, with many Chinese dabbling with several faiths at once.
To some analysts, protests such as yesterday's, with its thousands of silent devotees, pose more of a threat to the Communist Party than China's hard-pressed, tiny, pro-democracy groups. A street protest of a dozen dissidents is considered substantial. The 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square were misleadingly familiar to the West as students peacefully sang of freedom and erected a statue to democracy. China has a far longer tradition of mystical cults and bloody rebellion. The 19th century Taiping rebellion, led by a failed scholar who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus, attracted a million followers and was defeated with Western military help.
On 25 April 1999, the BBC carried an article by Duncan Hewitt. The article contained the first two images from the top of this page, and a link to a video report by Peter Van Velsen, and also carried some links to Falun Dafa material on a Falun Dafa introductory website and a Falun Dafa website with links. The text of the article is:
Thousands of people have taken part in a protest in the Chinese capital Beijing to demand the right to practice a system of meditation.The protesters say they are angry at an article criticising the movement, known as Falun Gong, and at the detention and beating of a number of its followers in another town.
The protesters sat or stood three or four deep for at least a kilometre along the tree-lined streets opposite the offices of China's Cabinet or State Council, beside the Forbidden City.
Police cordoned off some roads to traffic but generally kept a distance from the largely silent protest.
The participants, many of whom were from the neighbouring province of Hebei, said they did not want to cause trouble but expressed anger at what they called ill-treatment of followers of the Falun Gong movement.
Some said they were demanding the release of 40 or 50 people who were allegedly detained and beaten by police on Friday in the neighbouring city of Tianjin, where they were protesting at an article by a senior academic criticising Falun Gong.
Some participants said a delegation had been allowed into government offices to discuss their grievances but there was no official confirmation.
Millions of followers
The Falun Gong teachings, influenced by Buddhism and Taoism, advocate Qi Gong exercises as a way of achieving self-cultivation and benevolence.
They are thought to have millions of followers, many of them academics and officials. But followers, who say the movement is not a religion, have long complained of discrimination.
Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, who now lives in the United States and no longer lectures in China.
The protest, one of the biggest in the Chinese capital for a decade, is likely to fuel the Chinese Government's concern at the popularity of such movements.
On 25 April 1999, CNN carried a Reuters article. The text of the article is:
BEIJING, April 25 (Reuters) - More than 10,000 followers of a Chinese religious cult besieged Beijing's leadership compound on Sunday to demand official status for their faith in the biggest protest in the capital for a decade.Leaders of the cult, which claims 100 million members and whose U.S.-based leader preaches salvation from a wicked world headed for catastrophe, demanded to meet Premier Zhu Rongji.
As evening approached, police handed out fliers demanding the demonstrators disperse, but they took no action to try to break up the gathering.
The protest, sparked by the arrest of dozens of cult members last week in the port of Tianjin, was by far the largest demonstration since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, which were crushed by the army on June 4 of that year.
The gathering underlined concerns among the leadership of social unrest in a politically sensitive year, which includes the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
It illustrated the new challenges faced by the Communist Party, not just from pro-democracy activists but from religious and cultist groups which have found a mass following amid rapid social change and upheaval.
Li Hongzhi, the charismatic leader of the Fa Lun Gong sect, claims powers of healing and rails against homosexuals, rock and roll, television and drugs, which he believes have poisoned the minds and bodies of mankind.
Those detained at Tianjin had staged a one week sit-down protest outside a college which sponsors a magazine that had attacked the cult.
One woman announced to Sunday's crowds that three cult representatives had been received by Zhu and he had promised an inquiry into their complaints.
The protesters were packed up to eight deep on pavements running for at least two km (1.2 miles) along two sides of the Zhongnanhai walled compound, the seat of power of the Chinese Communist Party where Zhu and other leaders work.
Most were elderly devotees, their heads lowered as they silently read copies of a book written by Li which they regard as their bible. Some sat cross-legged on newspapers in the lotus position.
Li's works are banned by authorities as superstition, which is outlawed in China.
"When the government agrees to our demands, we will leave," said a 60-year-old protester from Huairou county on the outskirts of Beijing.
"If they agree this year, we'll leave this year. If they agree next year, we will leave next year."
"We want legal status," the man said.
Another middle-aged man said: "We want to practise our belief in a less restricted environment."
Police were posted at intervals to stop the protesters spilling on to the streets and blocking traffic.
There were no slogans, no banners and no signs of aggression. Some had brought picnic lunches and several cult organisers were even directing traffic themselves.
Li, 47, teaches that he was sent to earth by the "supreme being" to rescue mankind from moral depravity caused by science and technology. He claims a higher spiritual authority than Jesus, Mohammad and Buddha.
Li has travelled widely in the United States and Europe, drawing adherents with claims to be able to heal sickness using "qi gong," an ancient Chinese martial art form.
Fa Lun Gong has a following mainly among the elderly and sick, but it has also reached into the middle and lower reaches of the Communist Party.
"Fan Lun Gong is the biggest threat to the Communist Party, not the China Democracy Party," a Chinese journalist said, referring to the banned opposition party.
On 25 April 1999, ABC News carried a Reuters article by Andrew Browne. The text of the article is:
B E I J I N G, April 25 &emdash; More than 10,000 followers of a Chinese religious cult besieged Beijing's leadership compound on Sunday to demand official status for their faith in the biggest protest in the capital for a decade.Representatives of the Fa Lun Gong sect, which claims 100 million members and whose U.S.-based leader preaches salvation from an immoral world on the brink of destruction, demanded to meet Premier Zhu Rongji.
The protesters dispersed late at night after organizers assured them that the State Council, or cabinet, had agreed to hold negotiations on Monday.
Organizers said the concession came after several meetings with Zhu. There was no official word on whether the premier had been personally involved, or whether talks would take place.
The size of the protest &emdash; by far the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that were crushed by the army &emdash; shocked Chinese officials and Beijing residents.
It underlined new threats faced by authorities as the old socialist society unravels, leaving ordinary Chinese bewildered and fearful, and prey to cults and folk religions that fill a spiritual void.
The peaceful gathering began before dawn outside the high perimeter walls of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in the heart of Beijing, close to Tiananmen Square.
It was sparked by the arrest of dozens of cult members after a sit-in last week in the port city of Tianjin. The gathering highlighted concerns among the communist leadership of social unrest in a politically sensitive year, which includes the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. Unemployment, which has grown as capitalist reforms begin to bite, have fuelled anxiety among authorities.
Although the government appears to be most worried by a political challenge posed by pro-democracy dissidents trying to form a party, the rise of cults is a threat they do not take lightly.
In the early years of communist rule, the government unleashed a white terror against religious sects, gangs and secret societies that competed for popular support.
The last imperial dynasty was almost overthrown in the mid-19th century by a rebellion whose leader claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ.
Li Hongzhi, the charismatic head of the Fa Lun Gong sect, claims powers of healing and rails against homosexuals, rock and roll, television and drugs, which he says are signs of the end of the world.
"Fan Lun Gong is the biggest threat to the Communist Party, not the China Democracy Party," a Chinese journalist said, referring to the banned opposition party.
The protesters, from all over China, were packed up to eight deep on pavements running for at least two km (1.2 miles) along two sides of the compound where Zhu and other top leaders work, and where some also live.
Most were elderly devotees, their heads lowered as they silently read copies of a book written by Li which they regard as a sacred text. Some sat cross-legged on newspapers.
The crowds were organized with almost military discipline. Organizers swapped information through a network of mobile telephones, and protesters were careful to remove all litter as they drifted off into the night.
On 25 April 1999, USA Today carried an article. The text of the article is:
BEIJING - Thousands of people stood silently on streets outside China's central government headquarters Sunday to demand the right to practice a system of meditation, the country's largest demonstration since Tiananmen Square in 1989. More than 10,000 people crowded the sidewalks along the streets north and west of Zhongnanhai, the walled compound where China's top leaders work just west of the imperial palace. Demonstrators wanted legal protection for practicing Falun Gong, a school of qigong, a system of controlled breathing, martial arts, meditation and healing. The government sanctions qigong as a unique Chinese tradition, but condemns some charismatic qigong masters for using superstition to fool followers.
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