China's Search for Its Soul

...Although the term is a twentiethcentury coinage, qigong originated in Daoism and it denotes a system of focusing through meditation on the qi, or "vital force," said by practitioners to exist in all human beings...

...In light of inadequate social safety nets and the probability of further economic turndowns, the regime's fear of an anti-government jacquerie is not far-fetched...

...During the first three decades of Communist rule, qigong had been dismissed by the authorities and by official science as nothing but "superstition," its practice ruthlessly suppressed...

...At the age of four, he was supposedly taken under the wing of the first of several qigong masters...

...After all, millions of innocent Chinese died in the profligate social and political experiments of Chinese Communism itself...

...To provide a critical mass for lasting cultural change, China's Christians wouldn't have to constitute a majority in the nation but merely the bones and sinews of a new civic consensus on the rule of law, representative government, and a global role more mature than the current edgy nationalism upon which Beijing relies...

...Just a few days earlier, Beijing security officials had been embarrassed by news that another Tibetan Buddhist dignitary, DAVID Atm~aN is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C...

...This marked a major turnaround...

...Fu Qingyuan, director of research at the Institute of MarxismLeninism of China's Academy of Social Sciences, a sort of Chinese Communist Vatican, admitted to a Western reporter last September that many in China were facing "a crisis of faith...

...At eight, he attained "supernatural powers" after catching in the corner of his eye a vision of the words "Compassion, Truth, Forbearance," the ethical watchwords of Falun Gong...

...He readily noted that a majority of Chinese believe in the traditional Chinese god of good fortune, and added that 17 percent believe in the existence of gods and demons, and half of these believe they've actually seen them...

...Even in China that is no longer true...

...China enjoyed a double-digit economic upsurge throughout the 198o's and most of the 9o's...

...Finally, Falun Gong, despite its polite disclaimers in most public settings, is genuinely bizarre in its teachings, which in some respects evoke the millenarian ideologies that fueled the hideously destructive Taiping Rebellion (185o-1864 and zo million dead) or the whirlwind terrors of the short-lived Boxer Rebellion of 1899-19oo...

...More prosaically, an officially approved Gallup Poll in 1996 discovered that a robust 56 percent of Chinese subscribe to the motto, "Work hard and get rich...

...Westerners who notice only the enduring emblems of China's cultural prowess--the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs, the Temple of Heaven--often don't appreciate just how much blood has been shed over the centuries to maintain the system of control that made those achievements possible...

...That leaves Christianity, an increasingly attractive ethical model for some Chinese intellectuals...

...While Buddhist monks chanted prayers for the occasion in Lhasa's thin and chilly air, two atheist Communist officials specially flown in from Beijing looked on approvingly as the government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region declared a shaved-headed twoyear-old to be the re-incarnation of the Sixth Reting Lama (who had died in February x997...

...In mid-December, a People's Daily editorial that could have been penned by a theological committee in Ttibingen offered some thoughts on the transcendental nature of theism...

...Qi, according to much of China's scientific establishment, for all intents existed...

...savage peasant rebellions sought not only to replace China's ruling dynasty but many times to overthrow the orderly culture of Confucianism itself...

...Li, followers believe, "implants" in their abdomens a spinning reverse swastika (which is actually shown spinning on the official Falun Gong Website) and then bestows upon them a sort of supernatural protection from diseases and other problems...

...The claims Falun Gong makes about itself and its founder, Li Hongzhi, fall precisely in the millenarian category that has traditionally threatened entire regimes in China...

...He has come, his followers say, "with a special mission...

...Most are also almost fatalistically aware of how vulnerable their own culture has historically been to extremist sectarian rebels...

...It was allowed to openly experiment with its claims to bring healing to people, and with its long-time connection to the martial arts it had an open door to China's military...

...China's Christians continue to grow rapidly in numbers in the countryside (perhaps 50-70 million nationwide, compared with four million in 1949), but they have yet to surface significantly in China's teeming cities...

...It might help to keep in mind three important facts about China...

...Although China's Falun Gong practitioners may number a mere two million in China--rather than the 7 ~ million claimed by the sect's spokesmen--China's Communist mlers plainly sense something much more worrisome than the movement itself...

...Disapproving as it is of anything that rocks the boat, Confucianism is not an ideal vehicle for political pluralism...

...The Lhasa event was thus an effort by the regime not only to save face among Buddhists in China and elsewhere, but to show that when it chooses Beijing too can take Buddhist"religious" initiatives...

...But it wasn't just a cynical shift in economic policy that caused China's philosophical and ethical consensus to implode...

...In an odd way, Beijing was being forced to pay philosophical lip service to the five "traditional" Chinese religions-which it designates as Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism (not "Christianity")-which it allows to operate in a strictly controlled way...

...For a regime only too aware of its diminishing national authority and the risks of its own ultimate demise, Falun Gong's Panglossian promises are no doubt deeply menacing...

...Whither China...

...hina has had other qigong movements in recent years, such as the Zhong Gong in Shanxi Province and the Xiang Gong in Henan, and there have been legally approved qigong movements in virtually every corner of the country...

...But the growth was brought about only after the unleashing of entrepreneurial skills by political masters who for three decades had suppressed private enterprise as a criminal activity...

...All these rebel groups used charms, incantations, healing ceremonies, and invulnerability rituals based on ancient systems ofshamanistic spirit-possession and on martial arts techniques derived from qigong...

...Most Chinese appear to agree with the authorities that Falun Gong is a harmful cult...

...he philosophical malaise is easy enough to comprehend...

...Ordinary Chinese, meanwhile, have an even harder task...

...Experiments under controlled conditions established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the late 197o's and early 198o's concluded that qi, when emitted by a qigong expert, actually constitutes measurable infrared electromagnetic waves and causes chemical changes in static water through mental concentration...

...Although Falun Gong leaders actually secured a meeting with Premier Zhu Rongji before quietly dispersing, the regime, and President Jiang Zemin in particular, were infuriated by the public humiliation symbolized by such an unauthorized spectacle right on their own doorsteps...

...Li himself was born in north China's Jilin Province in 1951 , apparently into an intellectual's family...

...Ever since the Yellow Turban revolt during the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-22o A.D...

...Qigong, however, enjoyed two advantages over its religious cousins...

...Some might see the event as nothing more than an our-lama-is-bigger-than-your-lama contest between the Chinese Communist Party and the Tibetan government-in-exile, headed by the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, India...

...When the qi is effectively harnessed, qigong adepts believe, virtual supernatural feats of human strength or concentration can be accomplished...

...China's ideological vacuum is acknowledged even by the official keepers of the Marxist-Leninist faith in Beijing...

...The American Spectator _9 Marc h 2 o o o 25...

...Only 24 Marc h 2 o o o ' The American Spectator through Falun Gong, the official literature goes on, "can the myths of the universe, time-space, and the human body be completely unveiled...

...The Karmapa Lama, all of x 4 years old, was the only reincarnated lama official recognized by both Beijing and the Dalai Lama...

...China's term for "cult"-xie iiao, or "evil religion"-connotes almost atavistic fears among many Chinese for whom the most frightening word in any political vocabulary is Juan, or "chaos...

...The major religions absorb and manifest many spiritual riches created by humanity and serve as important components of traditional culture and a way of.life for a multitude of believers...

...Second, for at least two millennia, Chinese history has been pockmarked with murderous peasant rebellions led by sectarian religious cults against the nation's ruling dynasties...

...One of the four Falun Gong alleged leaders sentenced to 17 years in prison last December was a high-ranking member of China's police force, the Public Security Bureau...

...As they wrestle with what spin to put on the Boxer Rebellion, whose aooth anniversary occurs this June, they must also wonder if Falun Gong is, as the Boxers were, a sign that the collapse of a regime is close at hand: deeply heterodox, perhaps ephemeral, but emblematic of massive disillusionment with the old Communist orthodoxy...

...Historically corruption-- like peasant unrest, natural disaster, and flaccid role at the center-has been a benchmark of a Chinese regime's vulnerability to change...

...The gentlemanly system of Confucian ethics that foreigners have always admired nevertheless cemented in place a rigid class structure at whose peak was an emperor whose legitimacy was derived from Heaven...

...China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing (1644-19n), was challenged almost constantly by similar millenarian groups such as the White Lotus rebels, the Taipings (whose leader believed he was the younger brother of Jesus), and the Boxers...

...During the 198O'S , however, qigong masters were allowed to pass on their skills with official approval, just as Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, along with Buddhist and Daoist Temples and Muslim mosques, under carefully controlled official auspices, were permitted to open for worship...

...Last July 22 Falun Gong was officially banned in China and its followers subjected to the most intense nation-wide crackdown since democracy activists were hunted down following the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989...

...The Ming conquerors of the Yuan relied on a Confucian bureaucracy for political stability...

...But China's scientific community doesn't share this view...

...They, for instance, are astonished that America remains a profoundly religious nation despite its technological prowess and social mobility...

...A return to Confucianism in the philosophical sense, though attractive to some intelleetuals, offers little solace because its code of ethics belongs to an era when social hierarchies were second nature to people...

...give everything in service to society...

...Though Falun Gong repeatedly eschews any political ambitions, many Chinese are skeptical, particularly because its leader, Li Hongzhi, ascribes to himselfa veritable phantasmagoria of supernatural attributes...

...In an economy where 86 percent of officially registered companies The American Spectator _9 Marc h 2 o o o 23 are still controlled by the state, the combination of virtual absence of legal due process, an authoritarian polity, and a roiling, export-fed prosperity has led to a massive upsurge in corruption at every level of Chinese life...

...That perennial question has engaged outsiders for centuries...

...They fear that, in the minds of ordinary Chinese, they have lost the "Mandate of Heaven" to rule China, that almost tangible aura of ultimate national legitimacy...

...As it continued: "All of the major religions which exist in the world today have undergone over a thousand years of 22 March 2 0 o o _9 The American Spectator changes, and taken on forms which are well adapted to some social environment...

...Since the late 197o's, China has used its semitolerance of religious belief to argue that it's becoming a more open society...

...Today, more than ever in Chinese history, the answer lies in the emerging shape of the nation's soul...

...The pro-capitalist policies of the i98o % cheerfully extolled in slogans like "To get rich is glorious," were pushed through by bureaucrats who in the x97o's had sought to impose the greatest experiment in collectivist utopianism ever devised by human beings...

...Buddhism offers solace to many Chinese, but except in times of great upheaval, it has tended to stay clear of addressing contentious political and social issues...

...For most Americans, the specter of a totalitarian regime fighting as if for its life against a peaceful meditation sect is not just quirky, but incomprehensible...

...They provide a proper coordinating function and serve as a balancing mechanism in various aspects of society...

...The real wild card is Daoism, whose ability to attract large numbers of followers and endow them, at least temporarily, with great mental and physical prowess, can lead to the downfall of old regimes but not necessarily to the construction of lasting new ones...

...It is also tempting to see the Lhasa ceremony as another example of Beijing's curiously roller-coaster response to religious belief in China...

...Many rebellions drew their strength from Daoism, the indigenous Chinese folk religion that extols the harmonies of nature but also is rooted in ancient shamanistic practices...

...the seventeenth Karmapa Lama, had defected to India after a harrowing six-day trek across the Himalayas...

...Thereafter, according to the official hagiographical account, he accomplished such supernatural feats as levitation, teleportation, passing through solid objects, and making himself invisible...

...Almost certainly, the ferocity and thoroughness of the Chinese Communist regime's attack upon Falun Gong stems from the sect's significant penetration of the military and state security...

...Indeed, the editorial was an almost desperate attempt to enlist the more thoughtful of China's cultural intelligentsia behind Beijing's long-term efforts to stamp out Falun Gong, the upstart meditation and exercise sect that has caused China's leaders deep embarrassment ever since last April 25 . On that day, lo,ooo entirely peaceful Falun Gong"practitioners" (to use the group's preferred term) suddenly and without any foreknowledge by Chinese security surrounded the Communist Party headquarters in Beijing to demand an end to police strong-arm tactics against them...

...The first is that, though the country is still ruled by the 6o-million strong Communist Party, virtually no one in this gigantic political machine still believes in the Marxism-Leninism on which the legitimacy of Communist rule is based: There is, in short, a huge and dangerous philosophical and ideological vacuum in China...

...To distinguish a religion having a complete system from a crudely formed superstition," it said, "we need only look at whether its 'supreme being' is a limitless, transcendent 'spirit' or a limited, materially oriented 'person.' That is sufficient...

...Essentially three things alarm the authorities about Falun Gong: Li Hongzhi's own claims to supernatural power, the cult-like devotion to him by his followers, and the sect's universalistic assertions that, if adopted, would essentially solve all the world's problems that have arisen from human folly...

...Pragmatic and good-natured Americans may believe that qigong belongs in a general category of socially neutral, New Age-style concepts that are merely subjective, not necessarily harmful, and incapable of scientific proof...

...Falun Gong, one of its official Websites proclaims, "is like a red sun rising from the east, whose radiance with unlimited vitality will illuminate every corner of the earth, nourish all the living things, warm the whole world and play an unparalleled role in the realization of an ideal and perfect human society on this planet...

...Only three percent expressed a belief in the traditional Communist line, "Never think of yourself...

...Evidently nobody else could see these words...

...This wasn't a case of theology-envy on the part of China's transcendentally challenged Communist leaders...

...When the alien Mongolian conquerors of China, the Yuan dynasty, were overthrown in 1368 by their ethnically Han Chinese Ming successors, many of the rebels fought under the belief that the Maitreya, a new reincarnation of the Buddha, would descend to earth to grant salvation to all his followers...

...More ominous for China's leadership, the slowdown in the nation's economic growth (down to 7-8 percent officially in 1999 after stratospheric levels of 1214 percent in the early 9o's) has resulted in an ever-growing army of urban unemployed, estimated last year to number around 16 million...

...But it has also become aware that many of its own citizens, including highly educated Chinese, are attracted to religious belief and ethics as an alternative to rampant consumer materialism and the turgid sloganeering of official atheism...

...But this can't be the real reason for Beijing's underlying fear...

...Sometimes Buddhism has been the motivator of rebellion...

...Quite so...

...The regime's ongoing official campaign against Falun Gong focuses hard on the harm that the sect is said to have caused ordinary Chinese.Allegedly more than Moo Chinese have died because they neglected to seek proper medical attention or even, in a few cases, cut their stomachs open with a knife to see if they could locate that swastika...