Why would Beijing want to destroy a movement peaceably devoted to an eclectic mix of mysticism, meditation and slow-motion physical exercise? Falun Gong has no political agenda, and its only charismatic figure–Li Hongzhi, the 49-year-old founder–lives quietly in exile in the United States. Yet there are those in the Beijing leadership who consider Falun Gong, which claims tens of millions of members in China, the most serious current threat to the supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party. The result, for two years now, has been a brutal crackdown on people who, in most other countries, would be considered harmless idealists. Last week the struggle took a new, more ominous turn when five professed members of the movement walked into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, doused themselves with gasoline and set themselves on fire. One protester died; the other four survived and were arrested.
Beijing’s war on Falun Gong presented the Bush administration with an early foreign-policy challenge. The first foreign ambassador Colin Powell met with after becoming secretary of State was the departing Chinese envoy, Li Zhaoxing. Only a few hours after the self-immolations in Tiananmen, Powell said Washington would continue to raise human-rights issues with Beijing. Later, the State Department condemned the crackdown on Falun Gong and urged Beijing to respect “freedom of religion, freedom of belief and freedom of conscience.” China called the American finger-wagging “totally unacceptable.”
Beijing cannot afford to ignore foreign sympathy for Falun Gong. A continuing, or worsening, crackdown could deprive China of a prize it is pursuing eagerly: the right to host the 2008 Olympics. But as Falun Gong gains adherents outside mainland China–from Taiwan and Singapore to Australia and the United States–some hard-line Chinese officials become even more suspicious that the movement is a foreign plot aimed at them. The suspicions are mutual: many overseas supporters of Falun Gong believe China’s president is personally leading a crusade against their movement. “Jiang Zemin wants us all dead,” says Caroline Lam, 25, an ethnic-Chinese financial researcher born in Sydney.
Beijing claims Falun Gong is an “evil cult” that has caused the deaths of 1,700 practitioners “who went insane, committed suicide or refused medical treatment.” The authorities have rounded up thousands of believers, killing more than 100, according to Falun Gong. “They strip our women and push them into cells with male prisoners and let them rape them,” Mei Zhang, 41, a Chinese immigrant to Australia, said during a recent protest in Hong Kong. Falun Gong has gained strength rapidly in Hong Kong and Macau, former foreign colonies that still have more freedoms than the mainland. Sophie Xiao, a spokesperson for Falun Gong in Hong Kong, says: “Our brothers and sisters suffering inside the mainland are the body. We are the mouth, screaming.”
The crackdown may soon be extended to Hong Kong. “I will not allow Hong Kong to become a base for subverting the central government,” the territory’s Beijing-appointed chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, was quoted as saying recently. Hong Kong’s second-ranking official, Anson Chan, a defender of the territory’s eroding freedoms, resigned recently amid speculation that she had been forced out. And when 12 Falun Gong members arrived in Hong Kong to tell a conference about imprisonment and torture on the main-land, they were stopped at the airport and sent back overseas.
With its own ideology in shreds, the Chinese Communist Party feels threatened by any group that can attract millions of people to a set of ideals. “Falun Gong has absolute control over people’s hearts and minds–that is what they are most afraid of,” says a well-connected source in Hong Kong. The leadership has also been alarmed by the discovery that hundreds of thousands of Communist Party members have joined Li’s movement. “So many party members believe in Falun Gong that the leaders want to make an example of the movement to scare them,” the source says.
But the party leaders may not be united on how to deal with Falun Gong. “Jiang Zemin is increasingly being targeted, not only by Falun Gong, but also within the party for ordering the crackdown,” says Frank Lu, a leader of the student democracy movement in 1989 and now a human-rights worker in Hong Kong. “Just as there were splits in the party in 1989 over how to handle the student protests, so there are cracks now emerging at the top of the leadership over Falun Gong.” By attacking Falun Gong, the party risks labeling millions of Chinese as enemies of the regime, politicizing a group that originally had nothing to do with politics. “Falun Gong includes middle-class people, farmers and officials. They represent a widespread and high level of discontent,” says political scientist Wang Hong-ying, a visiting professor at George Washington University. “This is how an organized opposition could arise from religion.”
Falun Gong isn’t ready to challenge the party openly. Overseas members says the protesters who burned themselves in Tiananmen were not associated with the movement. “We strictly forbid killing–not even mosquitoes,” says Xiao. “We would never commit suicide.” But on Jan. 1, leader Li Hongzhi put out a message on the Internet implying that one of his cardinal principles, “forbearance,” might not always be appropriate. Li instructed believers to “suffocate evil” and observed: “Tolerance is not equivalent to doing nothing.” If Beijing continues to lean on Falun Gong, the movement could be pushed into the political arena–turning the party’s fear of an organized, aroused opposition into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
