This chapter examines Falun Gong in the post‐1995 period, as it became a transnational movement following founder Li Hongzhi's relocation from China to the United States. It focuses on the many Falun Gong practitioners who are members of the Chinese diaspora in North America, among whom the author did fieldwork between 1999 and 2002. The results of this fieldwork suggest that some 90 per cent of Falun Gong practitioners in North America are recent Chinese immigrants, who are better educated and wealthier than the average American or Canadian. Some have joined Falun Gong for health reasons, others because they find in Falun Gong answers to their questions about the meaning of life. As revealed in their witness statements to one another at experience‐sharing conferences, practitioners believe that their lives are a series of “tests” which enable them to burn off karma and advance in their cultivation.
This article seeks to place Falun Gong - and the larger qigong movement from which it emerged - into the long-term context of the history of Chinese popular religion from the midMing (1368-1644) to the present. The argument developed is that Falun Gong and qigong are twentieth-century elaborations of a set of historical popular religious traditions generally labeled by scholars as "White Lotus Sectarianism." This article attempts both to look forward at the Falun Gong from a perspective informed by an understanding of its historical antecedents, and to look backward at the historical traditions on the basis of what we know about Falun Gong and qigong. The ultimate objective is to arrive at a recharacterization of a popular religious phenomenon which has been incompletely understood.
This chapter chronicles the conflict between Falun Gong and the Chinese state. It begins by tracing the flagging fortunes of the qigong boom beginning in the mid‐1990s, a decline which prompted Li Hongzhi to leave China in 1995 and to establish residency in the United States. Falun Gong practitioners in China reacted to increasing media criticism within China by engaging in large, peaceful protests directed at the newspaper, magazine, or television station which had criticized the group. This strategy led eventually to the massive Falun Gong demonstration outside CCP headquarters in Beijing on 25 April 1999, which resulted in the launching of the suppression campaign against Falun Gong. The chapter devotes considerable attention to the competing wars of representation fought by the Chinese state and Falun Gong as each sought to sway public opinion. Falun Gong ultimately lost this battle and became increasingly political, a stance symbolized by the founding of a Falun Gong–run newspaper, the Epoch Times, which tirelessly criticizes the CCP.
6. Jiang Qing, another prominent figure in the Confucian revival, has made similar proposals. See Bell, China's New Confucianism. china perspectives This article examines the academic and intellectual career of Kang Xiaoguang, a prominent advocate of Confucianism and of the establishment of Confucianism as China's state religion. It argues that Kang's advocacy is rooted in a utilitarian vision of religion, and a pragmatic desire to encourage the development of healthy state-society relations in twenty-first century China.
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