Couldn’t resist putting my two-cents in since my mother-in-law is currently living with us as a result of being involved with Falun Gong. I’m not sure how that’s affected my view of it
I think we should be careful here. We tend to see the most radical practitioners because they really broadcast it. From what I’ve seen, most people treat Falun Dafa as something healthy to do, like Tai Chi. I guess it works, because in four years, my mother-in-law hasn’t had so much as a sniffle. On the other hand, there are many people who devote most of their time to practice and go to every seminar held by Li Hongzhi. It’s a range like everything else.
I’ve heard quite a bit of calling Li Hongzhi a “buddha” and you better not suggest he might be mistaken. Trust me.
As I understand it, this is exactly what got them banned. They protested in large numbers and made the government very nervous. It’s ironic because the government supported Falun Gong earlier because it promoted a healthy lifestyle. Practitioners believe that cultivating qi (chi) promotes health and long life, while de (duh) causes illness. I don’t know if that’s true, but as a rule, the practitioners I’ve met go the doctor’s less, and China’s been experiencing increasing health care costs.
It’s terrible what the government in China is doing to these people. Others suggested ignoring it and helping other, more established religions. Falun Gong followers are being persecuted mercilessly in forced labor camps and “mental hospitals.” We may disagree with them, I personally have pretty strong feelings about their beliefs and I think Li Hongzhi’s claims are sometimes ridiculous, but I don’t think we should ignore their human rights.
This is the one part of the PRC (not sure about Macau) where they’re legal. As in western cities, they hang around and hand out quite nicely produced literature protesting persecution on the mainland. There are quite a few westerners as well as Chinese doing this. Although tolerated here, they have problems booking public halls for meetings, and sometimes followers from overseas are refused entry by Immigration.
Basically, they’re just another bunch of religious loons, like Hare Krishna, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. As China Guy says, the PRC govt has a major hang up about them, because they organized independently and effectively outside the communist party’s control a few years back. They made serious inroads here and in China into high levels in the civil service and among business tycoons back around 98-99, then vanished at those levels when Beijing’s views became known. They have since hacked into satellite/cable TV broadcasts in China - guaranteed to send the govt nuts. Their followers now are mainly middle aged, mainland-born types (mainly women) plus - for some reason - ‘new age’ type westerners.
Their literature and other publicity materials are fairly well-produced. there’s some money there. They run a website and TV station of some sort out of New York (Epoch Times), though the link isn’t obvious.
