China is scared of Falun Gong ( 法輪功 ). Should you be scared of it too?
Why China fears this religious group and how it became a strong MAGA supporter allegedly involved in a multi-million dollar money laundering scheme
Greetings, welcome back.
Last week’s publication on the early education of Ding Wenjiang, one of China’s first scientists, seemed to provoke less interest than most of what I have offered here. — which is a shame as it really is a fascinating story that teaches a lot about how China shifted from a backwards looking, tradition bound empire into a nation ready to become part of the modern world. Sometimes you can a lot about a nation by seeing how one person from that nation meets the challenges in their life. Like all my pieces published here, it is still available as an archived piece. If you haven’t yet, please consider reading it.
Last week, there was also a lot of good stuff for those interested in learning about Tim Walz and his China background, information on one of my favorite YouTube channels that dealt with life in Shanghai, and another update on the saga of Alice Guo, real life comic book/ b-movie super-villain. (Is it just me, or are other people also feeling like we are living in the age of real life, comic book, super-villains? )
In the meantime, although I do plan to return to the life of Ding Wenjiang, as the election oriented piece on Kamala Harris did well, I am returning to connections between Chinese history and the current US election, this time by focusing on the Falun Gong sect, AKA Falun Dafa, an outlawed Chinese religious sect now headquartered in the USA with definite cult like tendencies. Under the Trump administration, the group, and its newspaper and media outlet, The Epoch Times, became increasingly fervent supporters of Trump, including being involved in projects with Steve Bannon and being one of Trump’s larger financial donors. This is a particularly topic as the Chief Financial Officer of The Epoch Times, was indicted in June on charges of multi-million dollar money laundering.
Today I offer an introduction to the group and its paper and the arrest.
In 2015, I wrote a piece for an online publication called “Timeline” on the group and the historical context for why the Chinese government fears it and persecutes it so much. I have included that here. Therefore, you all get historical context dating back over two thousand years, but I have added to it.
We’ll cover not just a quick history of the group, but also the practice of Qigong, Falun Gong’s recent ties to the MAGA movement of the Republican Party, the group today, the money-laundering arrest, in addition to a piece on the reason Chinese governments since the beginning have considered cult like groups a problem and cracked down on them.
And for good measure, I added a very brief update on Alice Guo and some music by an underground Taiwanese band that I think is very, very cool.
Thanks for reading.
QUICK INTRODUCTION TO FALUN GONG ( 法輪功 ), AKA FALUN DAFA ( 法輪大法 )
To understand the history of Falun Gong, it is necessary to first understand Chi ( Qi) theory, that there are exercises that are believed to improve the flow and quality of a person’s Qi, and the way these grew in popularity during the 1980s and 1990s. 1
While belief in Qi arose over two thousand years ago, a few hundred years BC, and the belief that exercises, including many martial arts exercises, can improve one’s qi, has existed since almost that time, it was only in the late 1940s that the term “qigong” ( 氣功 ) was coined. Qi is, of course, Qi / chi, the energy that flows through the human body and all things. “Gong” means work or practice and is the same character as in the word “gongfu” or “Kungfu.”
At this time, the late 1940s, the Chinese government was trying to control, systematize, and promote the practice of healthy exercises that were believed to encourage the flow and strength of one’s qi as part of an effort to modernize and improve life in the country.
While during the Mao era and the cultural revolution, the practice of Qigong was carefully regulated and restricted, following the death of Mao it began to flourish with increasing popularity. Chinese governmental research into the practices, effects, and capabilities of qigong including claims of supernatural powers began to take place, including the creation of a Chinese government approved research institute into the practice and a visit by the American group Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal to study such claims. 2
Unfortunately, it wasn’t too soon after this that the whole thing sort of began to spiral out of control as its popularity increased.
Claims of supernatural powers ( none proven to exist by the way), people perpetuating health fraud and scams using qigong as part of the swindle, and the formation of cult-like charismatic groups that practice qigong under the leadership of someone claiming to have divine insight and ask for complete obedience rose up.
Falun Gong arose amidst this and was officially created in 1992 under the leadership and guidance of Li Hongzhi, a man believed to have divine insight and supernatural powers by his followers.
To put this rise in Qigong cults into context, during the 1980s and 1990s, China was in the midst of a great ideological vaccuum and many of its people were seeking ideologies and belief systems that gave their life meaning. Communism had destroyed or diminished the role of traditional religions including Buddhism, Taoism, folk religion, and so on in the society. And then, after the period of Mao and the Cultural Revolution, most people’s faith in Communism had greatly suffered too. Many, many Chinese people were seeking something to believe in and several new religious groups of all types arose during this period. Some were better than others. Many exploited their members, and others were becoming prominent enough so that the Chinese government saw them as a threat to stability and the rule of the Chinese Communist party.
In 1999, the Chinese government responded, and it responded in part by cracking down on many groups, and banning Falun Gong as well as Zhong Gong, another qigong group with cult-like aspects, as well as other “heretic sects.”
Soon after the leaders of both groups fled to the USA where they applied for asylum, and while the leader of Zhong Gong died in a car accident in 2006 and his group failed to flourish, Falun Gong took off under the leadership of Li Hongzhi ( 李洪志 ) and became larger and larger, spreading to several nations, with a large membership, and developing great wealth.
As for the difference between the names Falun Gong ( 法輪功 ) and Falun Dafa ( 法輪大法 ), the former refers to the exercises that the group practices. The latter refers to the proper name of the group. “Falun” translates as “Wheel of law” or “Dharma wheel” and “dafa” as “great law” or “big law.”
What is a cult?
If there is one word that demands definition, it is probably “cult,” and I am using it a lot here today. Most of what I know about so-called cults comes from a book called “Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion,” by Marc Galanter. There are at least two editions, and I have read them both carefully.
Basically, the way Galanter describes it, the essence of cult-like groups is that the perceived norms of behavior of members have shifted in a radical way from those of their mainstream society, to a set of behaviors that is very different, but is seen by the members of the group as “normal” or at least “desirable.” In other words, there is a strong division between the behaviors of the people of the society at large and those of the people within the group, and the people within the group look to each other, the other members, to define how they shoud act instead of looking to people outside the group to judge how they should act.
In other words, if the members of the group say that the group leader should be obeyed in all things, then an individual within the group would be very likely to define that as “a normal thing to believe.” And if that leader then ordered them to move to a strange town, cut off contact with their birth family, and do hard work for no pay, the members of the group would then look to each other to decide if that were a “normal thing to do.” And when their birth family or childhood friends ask them to not do this, they tend to be ignored because the member of the cult-like group is no longer using such people to judge what is normal or desirable behavior and instead is following the feedback from people within the group
One of the things I like so much about Galanter’s book is that he is surprisingly neutral on this. He makes it very clear that sometimes changing one’s standards of behavior from that of your birth family and childhood friends and instead following the standards of a different, insular group with practices outside the mainstream can be a good thing and uses Alcoholics Anonymous as an example.
So having defined cult . . .
Falun Gong and the MAGA movement
Falun Dafa developed strong ties to and has given great support to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is, of course, in many ways an amazing man. And I say this as someone who does not support him. He has many talents and an awesomely honed, narrowly defined skill set. Part of this is the ability to reach out to obscure, little known movements and organizations that are angry, frustrated, and feeling ignored and marginalized, and then make them feel heard, respected, understood, and then ultimately convince them that their best path to achieving their goals is to support Donald Trump in his goals.
(For more on this, read my book. Scams from the Great Beyond --The Presidential Edition: A Skeptical Look at Our 45th President Using the Tools of a Paranormal Debunker and Historian —By now, you should know that I was going to say this.)
Now while it appears that Trump’s skills are in decline and he no longer has the ability to focus his words and manipulate crowds and the national media the way he once did, there can be no doubt that this is one reason he has had such a great effect on our nation.
We are talking about a man who has formed a solid base of support among an incredibly diverse coalition of angry, disgruntled fringe organizations with an amazingly, ofen bizarrely wide range of beliefs. I mean, it takes an amazing man to convince both the White supremacist, holocaust deniers and the extreme Zionist Jews that they should unite together in the belief that Donald Trump will be the man to help them both get what they want. And those evolution denying, fundamentalist Christians who somehow see Trump as a strong supporter of Christian values when he has broken how many of the ten commandments and shows no evidence of having read the Bible? And there are others, countless others of these angry, little niche groups that are united only in their belief that Donald Trump, alleged outsider candidate, is going to move society in the direction they wish. (anyone out there ever heard of “the Red Pill Movement”?)
And among these one of these groups also lies Falun Dafa.
And who is Falun Dafa? I am going to let them describe themselves here.
My Personal Contacts with Falun Gong
For those who wonder, I, too, have had some personal contact with Falun Dafa.
My personal contacts with Falun Gong have been limited but interesting. Around 2006, I had returned to my hometown area in upstate New York and was looking around trying to figure out good places to meet cool people. In this context, I attended a local Amnesty International meeting that included a light dinner with a talk on problems in the Sudan. I knew nobody there, and soon found myself chatting with two Chinese women, one middle aged and the other elderly, who told me they were there seeking support for protests against the Beijing Olympics and the protests would focus on the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record.
The middle aged woman spoke perfect English and had a non-Chinese last name. I learned later that she had married the owner of a major furniture factory not too far away, although I was left a bit confused as to the state of the relationship. The older woman spoke no English, but was surprised that I was able to chat a bit in Chinese and chatted back.
The younger one said that they were both members of Falun Gong, and that her mother had been imprisoned for several years due to her membership in the sect by the Chinese government, before she had been able to come to the USA.
Soon the one who spoke English announced that she was going to go make a pitch to the group about her anti-Beijing Olympics protests and suggested that I keep her mother company while she ate dinner, something I gladly agreed to do.
Honestly, Amnesty International does important work, I support them, but that doesn’t mean I wish to hear detailed depictions of atrocities 3 if I can instead have a dinner with an interesting person.
Alas, as stated previously, my Chinese really is not that good. I could not remember the word for prison, incarceration, or any vocabulary related to time spent in jail, and thus was forced to fall back on asking her questions about whether or not she was enjoying her food. Later the woman told her daughter that she had genuinely enjoyed talking with me, but I am afraid that I learned absolutely nothing of interest or importance from the conversation. Of course, I don’t blame her for this, and I enjoyed talking to her too.
Her daughter and I swapped phone numbers, but did not work too hard to stay in touch. Our paths crossed once or twice since, last time in the context of teaching Chinese language, something she did remotely to students in New York State public schools through a program. Her elderly mother has since passed away and the daughter says she believes her to be in a better place now. (Sadly, I lost many phone numbers on my phone a year or two ago while trying to put a new sim card in while in Vietnam, and hers was among them.)
Obviously, not evil people, but one of the complex issues around so-called cults, some would say religion in general, is that the members are not evil people generally speaking. They are just following standards of behavior that generally do not make sense to people outside of their group.
The only other time, I recall actually conversing with a Falun Gong member was on a public bus in Boston, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get the conversation away from her wishing to sell me tickets to the silly Shen Yun show. This, by the way, is a sign that you are speaking to a cult-member. They keep falling back on programmed responses designed to focus on the subject, they have been told to use an outsider for, either potential membership or to buy something generally speaking. It’s about impossible to get them to not do this.
I have run across members of the group practicing their group meditation practices in both Taiwan and Hanoi, Vietnam, but made no effort to interact with them. My understanding is that the Vietnamese government is discussing actions to control or restrict the group.
Falun Dafa, The Epoch Times, and the MAGA Movement
I am going to start this section with a news report from the Australian Public Broadcast system. It’s a few years old, but it’s still very informative, especially if you have no background in the subject.
Under the Trump administration, the group developed great fondness for Trump, presumably believing that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and knowing of Trump’s dislike of the Chinese government. Obviously Trump’s talent for reaching out to angry, marginalized fringe groups was a factor too.
For years prior, the organization had multiple news and media outlets around the world in English, Chinese, and other languages. Chief Among these are The Epoch Times, a newspaper and media company, and New Tang Dynasty Television, but there are many others. The organization has been known to hide its connections to some of these outlets. If one scours the web and comes across an obscure particularly anti-China source of news or opinion, consider the real possibility that Falun Dafa may be behind it. (BTW, it at one time was banned from starting groups or purchasing ads on Facebook as it was using false representation and fake identities to promote Trump. It’s covered in these videos.)
Below, I have included a link to a YouTube video called, “This Chinese Cult is not your friend -the Falun Gong Story” and it makes the claim that “China Uncensored,” an interesting YouTube channel that is particularly critical of China, is run by Falun Dafa. I find this completely believable.
For more see:
NPR -Falun Gong, Steve Bannon And The Trump-Era Battle Over Internet Freedom
And here’s a report from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Note that while it’s on YouTube, there are actually no visuals and it appears to be basically a radio broadcast.
But none of this really means that The Epoch Times is a bad paper or news source, right? No, of course not. Check out these testimonials from New Tang Dynasty Television on how great a paper it is. And when we say “great” we mean “great” to such an extent that the word “great” cannot explain how truly “great” it is.
And remember what I said about how cult members look to one another for a reality check or to get a second opinion? Well, obviously, they looked at each other and said “Is this a good ad? Do you think people will find it believable?” and the answer, obviously, was “Oh yes, very good. Quite believable. Let’s publish it!” and that’s why cults are dangerous and do strange and self destructive things. Too much internal feedback from people with a distorted view of reality.
As the self defense author, Marc MacYoung once wrote, people tend to make friends with people with similiar views to their own. And that means that when they look to their friends for advice, they are often getting an opinion from someone with equally bad judgement in certain important areas. Cults are this phenomena taken to the Nth degree.
And here’s another source. Chatty, clearly opinionated, but making no effort to hide it, The Young Turks is an interesting YouTube channel, and I am surprised that they are covering this when most have not.
Getting straight to the source
If interested, you can go straight to the source.
NTD - New Tang Dynasty Television
You can find The Epoch Times newpaper here: The Epoch Times online newspaper
(Please remember, I am not endorsing this channel or its content. Quite the opposite.)
And there’s the Sound of Hope Radio network but it’s in Chinese.
Historical Context for the Chinese Persecution of Falun Gong
And now for the historical context of the Chinese government’s fear of cults.
This was originally published by a publication called Timeline on its website. Their goal was to take current events, in this case the Chinese government’s persecution of Falun Gong / Falun Dafa and put it in historical context by offering a brief introduction and lots of links. Aside from updating a couple dead links the article is exactly as it was when originally published.
=== === ==== ====
As a nation with thousands of years of history, it should be no surprise that China has a long history includes periodic religious uprisings. And while some of these are quite small, the scope and size of many, as well as the widespread loss of life and occasional long-lasting political consequences, have been quite serious. While some in the West might associate the idea of religious warfare exclusively with Islam or Christianity, on the contrary, Chinese history has been marked by intermittent, violent uprisings usually associated with millennial sects preaching prophecies of upcoming cosmic world and societal changes. Such uprisings often occur during times of famine and agricultural problems, another periodic problem in China where high population density, shifting rivers, and occasional droughts and floods can easily cause the supply of food to become unstable and uncertain. The theology of such groups is usually a syncretic blend of traditional Chinese folk religion along with more sophisticated philosophies. While many of the beliefs are taken from Buddhism and Taoism, such groups often lie outside the Chinese mainstream. Therefore, historians often refer to them as “heterodox, syncretic, millenarianist sects.”
1.
The Yellow Turban uprising.
In 184 A.D. , during the latter part of the Han dynasty, tension in Chinese society was high, largely due to agricultural problems and food shortages. The Yellow Turban revolt, led largely by the Taoist “Way of Supreme Peace” sect (太平道 ) rose up and revolted. The sect and its leaders prophesized great changes, including the sky shifting from blue to yellow, and a more egalitarian society. Conflict lasted for over twenty years and resulted in the death of millions.
For centuries after, both consciously and unconsciously, the group became a model for other sects and further peasant uprisings.
http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/huangjin.html
http://totallyhistory.com/yellow-turban-rebellion/
2.
The 1368 AD Red Turban Uprising
Having conquered China in 1279, and ruled ever since, the Mongols found themselves forced to abandon China due to inability to suppress the Red Turban uprising. This uprising was started largely by members of the White Lotus Sect. It ended the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty and led to the founding of the Ming, an ethnic Chinese dynasty.
http://asianhistory.about.com/od/china/fl/The-Red-Turban-Rebellion-in-China-1351-1368.htm]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Turban_Rebellions
3.
White Lotus against the Qing Dynasty Leadership
In the 18th Century, members of the White Lotus Sect rose up again, this time seeking to oust the Manchus, a northern people who had conquered China in 1644 AD and founded the Qing dynasty. Although this time the uprising was unsuccessful. The White Lotus Sect believed that its members could attain magical powers and prophesized great changes in society. From 1794 to 1804, the rebellion raged and was put down with the death of 100,000 rebels and many Imperial soldiers. It was soon followed by the Eight Trigrams Rebellion in 1813, an uprising that used similar religious trappings. Both rebellions were fueled by agricultural problems and food shortages.
http://www.ibiblio.org/chinesehistory/contents/03pol/c03s03.html
http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Terms/bailian.html
ter Haar, B.J. 1992,1999. The White Lotus --Teachings in Chinese Religious History, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu.
4.
The Taiping Uprising
From 1850 to 1865, the Qing rulers were faced with another religious uprising, this one with a markedly different and quite strange theology. When, after many years of hard study, a man named Hong Xiu-Quan failed an examination that would have given him an impressive position in the Imperial bureaucracy, he suffered a mental break and spent days moving in and out of a strange dream state. While trying to interpret these visions with the aid of a Christian missionary, he developed the belief that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ sent to China to “restore” Christianity (he believed China had been a Christian state in prehistoric times) and, inspired probably by Moses and old testament teachings, to smash idols. (He had, it seems, come into conflict and dismissed the missionary long before they got to lessons on the new testament.) He set out to establish the “Kingdom of Heavenly Peace” or “Taiping Tian Guo,” but after years of conflict that raged back and forth across China, the uprising was put down. The loss of life was huge, and although little known outside of China, the Taiping uprising is among the bloodiest wars in history.
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_taiping.htm
http://www.taipingrebellion.com/
Spence, Jonathan D. (1996) God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, W. W. Norton & Company.
5.
The Boxer Rebellion
In 1900 ad, northern China was rocked by the Boxer uprising, an anti-foreign, anti-missionary uprising led by a secret society that held magical beliefs including invulnerability to bullets and spirit possession. Although not exactly a religious uprising, the “Fists of Harmonious Righteousness” or “Yi He Chuan” did incorporate some of the rituals and magical beliefs of such groups and had ties with them. Although the uprising was initially aimed at overthrowing the Qing and driving foreign influence from China, the Qing imperial court soon allied themselves with the Boxers and assisted them in fighting foreign troops and besieging the foreign embassies in China. The uprising led to massive foreign intervention by combined forces from several colonial powers and caused great tragedy and political loss to China.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150606152243/https://www.history.com/topics/boxer-rebellion
http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1999/winter/boxer-rebellion-1.html
Cohen, Paul A. ( 1998 ) History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth, Columbia University Press.
(doesn’t quite fit but very interesting anyway -- https://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/boxer/ )
Today
In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was founded and soon made great attempts to regulate and control religious practice in the nation. Today, although China has opened up in many ways, the ruling Chinese Communist party is aware that many question its right to rule China and keeps a wary eye on religious sects that could form the nucleus for widespread dissent or even another uprising.
THE END
Interesting Videos on Falun Gong
Here’s a couple interesting videos on Falun Gong. These are the two that made me aware of the issue and the presence of the group in modern American politics.
And finally, switching topics . . .
Update on the Evil Mayor Alice Guo
Last week, I reported that the evil Mayor Alice Guo was no ex-mayor, but in hiding although her lawyer insisted that she was in the country, while she issued statements that she had done nothing wrong. After weeks of her lawyer insisting that she was in the country, it now turns out that the former Mayor Alice Guo left the Philipines in July and has now been seen in Indonesia. This has complicated her legal appeals, and angered the authorities in the Philipines.
The Evil Former Mayor Alice Guo, human trafficker, serial liar, and now fugitive from justice, although, in fairness, she is still insisting that the whole affair is a misunderstanding, and she has done nothing wrong.
Special Bonus!!!!! Super Cool Music!!!
TheWhiteEyesBand 白目樂隊 from Taiwan
This is a really cool band from Taiwan that I stumbled across on YouTube. I contacted them and bought their CDs on YouTube, and even swapped a little bit of email with them. While they did at least once perform in the USA at a music festival in Austin, Texas, they don’t normally perform outside of Taiwan, as far as I know. In fact, I kind of doubt if they perform much at all anymore and may be retired and working hard at ordinary jobs. A shame. I asked them if I could be head of their Albany, New York fan club, and they said “yes” so ya’all better treat me with respect and as someone of importance.
Thanks for reading Mostly Asian History! This post is public so feel free to share it.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, Chinese spelling is a complex matter, and “Qi” and “Chi” are the same word pronounced the same way “Chee” which rhymes with “tea.” (Coincidentally, “Chee” is also the Navajo word for “red,” and all you Atlantean lost pyramid ancient alien types have fun trying to spin elaborate theories that this is “more than a coincidence.” ) See Chinese spelling and Romanization of the Chinese Language
I have written for The Skeptical Inquirer, the magazine published by this organization (now renamed “The Center for Inquiry.” Perhaps some day, I will share my thoughts about this trip and this organization. They’re mixed. While the publication is definitely worth reading, and I recommend it, the parent organization has some deep problems, but I think they are getting better.
There is an author of ninja books who writes under the pen name “Haha Lung.” Prior to writing ninja how-to manuals, he wrote several other gruesome how-to manuals of all kinds, many written while he was reportedly in prison. One of the most gruesome of these is called “Theater of Hell” and is a history of torture techniques with very detailed descriptions of the torture techniques described, enough detail so that one would easily know how to do the tortures described. It, too, was said to be written while the author was in prison. How does one obtain detailled descriptions of torture techniques while in a US prison? In this case, a lot of the information on how to torture people was obtained from Amnesty International reports, make of that what one will. Some day, perhaps, I will write about HaHa Lung and his ninja how-to books. Of course, that would mean, I would have to read them, but, alas, I am not really in the mood to do that at the moment.
Didn't watch the videos but will take a long. Thought this was a very interesting newsletter. Ya know, coincidentally, I actually subscribed to the Epoch Times, online version, for a while. I knew instantly they supported MAGA and actually learned a little about Falun Gong but I guess it's actually Falun Dafa. The reason I subscribed was because I wanted to see if I could find their link to Trump. I didn't mention this to you when you were writing your book about Trump, did I? I'm forgetting things; think old age has crept up on me. Anyway, I might call you in the near future. Have some questions about substack, how things are going for you with it.
Is this happening to you, notice the phrase "take a long" instead of "take a look"? It seems I get these weird words cropping up in my text occasionally and starting to think it's AI doing this? I don't notice until later, it seems. Is my suspicion correct?