China’s battle with pagan cults reaches back nine-hundred years. The most recent cult China is struggling with is the Falun Gong. In December 2007, a member of this cult visited our home.

 My goal in this series is not to whitewash China. On the other hand, I do not see a need to point out flaws, since the mainstream Western media does such a great job doing that when it comes to China. The government that rules China is not a saint, but what government is? Look close enough and misconduct and evil may be found anywhere like in Washington D.C. 

I suspect the Western media picks on China because that country is an easy target, and it makes for great headlines. People tend to distrust what they do not understand. Another consideration is if you point at your neighbor’s flaws often enough, maybe those people paying attention will not notice what you are doing.  

I’ve mentioned before that my wife is Chinese. She was born in Shanghai; went to a labor camp during Mao’s Cultural Revolution and came to the United States as a student in the 80s and eventually become a U.S. citizen. She wrote several books about China that have been translated and published into more than thirty languages. Her first, Red Azalea, a memoir, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and won the Carl Sandburg Award. This memoir is about growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. The book is banned in China.

 My wife knows someone that joined the Falun Gong years after they became friends. This friend also spent time in Chinese jails for her beliefs. In 2007, she was on tour with a Chinese group that was performing a musical to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We were invited to attend this show in San Francisco at the Orpheum Theater. The tickets were not free at eighty dollars each. Putting on that show in that theater must be costly, so where does the money come from?  

The friend brought a fellow member of the Falun Gong to our house a few days before the show. While we were sitting around the kitchen table sipping tea, these two pitched the benefits of their group in soft voices. It was obvious that they had been trained like an Amway salesman is, but not as flashy.  

I’ve heard about the Falun Gong through the Western media for years but knew little about the group except that they were a thorn in the throat of the Chinese government. In 2008, members or supporters of the Falun Gong may have firebombed the entrance to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco. The media mentioned it might have been Tibetan separatists. Who knows which group was responsible, since both are enemies of the communist government in China?

I cannot say that this is true or not. However, take into account that in the 70s, the Dalai Lama admitted that the C.I.A. funded his movement to free Tibet from China. So, why not fund the Falun Gong? After all, the CIA has provided support for Islamic militant groups in China’s northwest province and has supported the other Tibetan separatist groups (there are four). The CIA has a long and shady history of doing things like this in countries all over the world.

We saw the show at the Orpheum and were disgusted (that‘s being polite).  What my wife’s friend didn’t tell us was that the show heavily promoted Falun Gong. Nothing I read or heard over the years prepared me for the truth. Instead, the Western mainstream media bashed China for not allowing the Falun Gong the same kinds of religious freedoms enjoyed in the United States where freedom of religion is a fundamental right.

 When I went into that theater in San Francisco, I thought Falun Gong was another Christian sect. That’s how ignorant I was. After all, there are more that forty Christian sects; my mother belonged to a few while she lived, and I was introduced to each.  Before that show ended, I discovered that Falun Gong was not Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish. Falun Gong promoted individual peace and harmony through belief in several gods.

If you are curious, you may find a few members of Falun Gong outside the Chinese embassy in San Francisco. They are always there when we go to pick up our visas before traveling to China. Go, you can see the pictures they have set up showing victims that have been tortured. 

A year later, while we were shopping in our local COSTCO, we discovered a table and display for a Chinese musical set up and selling tickets inside the store for one of those Falun Gong Chinese New Year celebrations. The people at that table were in Ming or Tang Dynasty costumes, and I was intrigued to say the least. I had no idea it was the same show. My wife walked up as I was talking to the costumed Falun Gong salesman and whispered in my ear, “That’s Falun Gong.” I quickly left.

Here are a few excerpts from a review written by Joseph Khan on Falun Gong and the Future of China by David Ownby (291 pp. Oxford University Press) 

“…Like the Communist Party, Falun Gong shrouds its inner workings in secrecy and communicates through propaganda….” 

“…Since the emergence of the White Lotus Society in the 13^th century, ordinary Chinese, particularly women and the poor, have found solace in sectarian movements whose features have remained consistent, Ownby argues. He calls the sects ‘redemptive societies’. They are organized around charismatic leaders who preach that salvation can be attained through cultivation of body and mind. Believers are said to acquire paranormal

“Chinese political leaders, who have rarely tolerated independent religious activity, repressed the sects. White Lotus societies were associated with rebellions in the 13^th and 18^th centuries and became an all-purpose designation for subversive groups, so much so that Ownby argues that the term long persisted because of ‘the paranoid imagination of the late imperial state’. 

“The republican (now in Taiwan) and Communist governments of the 20^th century inherited this antireligious bias. Both permitted five religions -- Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Catholicism and Protestantism -- provided that they submitted to strict state supervision….” 

“…Li (Hongzhi) founded Falun Gong…  He claimed that people who followed his cultivation formula acquired a ‘third eye’ that allowed them to peer into other dimensions and escape the molecular world….” 

“…His (Ownby) contention that Falun Gong belongs to a tradition dating to White Lotus is credible. The group’s emergence and its suppression do suggest that modern Chinese history is as much about continuity as revolutionary change.”