WHEN TROUBLED, nations, like people, tend to turn outwards or inwards. For 50
years, China has been looking outwards. “The public is great, the private is trivial,”
was the great mantra of the Chinese revolution. Looking inward was long viewed as a sign
of weakness.
Now, suddenly, China is turning inwards, a shift that signals Chinese at all
levels are feeling profoundly troubled. Nowhere is this more evident than in the spread of
the spiritual movement known as Falun Gong, and the government’s determination to
crush it.
“Falun” is a Chinese translation of a Hindu concept referring to
“the Wheel of Truth which crushes all falsehood.” Gong means a spiritual power
greater than any other power in the world. The spark that ignited the movement is a
middle-aged trumpet player, now living in New York, named Li
Hongzhi. Like so many
messianic preachers of other places and times, Li Hongzhi’s teachings encompass both
despair and hope — a combination that clearly resonates with the soul of more and
more Chinese people both inside and outside the country.
SEARCHING FOR MORAL POWER
The movement’s strongest following, astonishingly, is among old people
— men and women who were 10 years old in 1950, the “golden age” of the
Chinese Communist revolution. Too young to fight in the various wars in and out of China,
they were fired by a Communist ideology that had moral power similar to that of Buddhism,
Christianity and Islam.
Now they are
old and troubled by what they see around them. In April, they surrounded Zhongnanhai, the
compound where all top government leaders live, right next to Tiananmen Square. Until the
recent crackdown, they staged demonstrations in front of broadcasting stations, furious
over media attacks that dismiss them as superstitious crazies.
Corruption and feudalism bother them deeply. They know, too, that Mao Zedong
failed because the Marxist doctrine of class struggle as the motor force of history came
to a dead end. Now Deng Xiaoping’s successors are failing because the American model
of consumer capitalism they adopted is also coming to a dead end-evident in China’s
escalating deflation.
For decades these oldsters have admired the Communist government for what it has
achieved, notably unifying a sprawling country and giving it stability. Today they speak
about how the once revolutionary Communist government seems only able to tinker and
repair; that it no longer has vision and faith. And now, as it faces serious internal
problems and major setbacks in its international relations, it is acting towards Falun
Gong the way so many regimes in the past would have done. The old generals, cadres,
workers and peasants are full of reproach. With every crackdown, they see it as forfeiting
its charisma and moral credibility.
Retirement in China comes in the early 60s, but a recent government generational
policy encourages old people to go back to workplaces as mentors and advisers to young
workers and students and middle-aged managers. Not surprisingly, many of the old people
have passed on the wisdom they have gleaned from Falun Gong and other spiritual beliefs.
ROOTS OF MYSTICISM
Falun Gong ideas are spreading fast, by word of mouth and even through the media
publicity given them by furious official attacks. But no amount of government suppression
can cut the ties between old and young.
In 1845 Hong Xiuquan, the peasant-born intellectual of the great Taiping (Great
Peace) Rebellion (1851-64), read a just-translated New Testament and was taken by its mix
of despair and hope. He felt he was the younger brother of Jesus and founded the
God-worship Association. Less than ten years later, his Taiping movement had conquered
most of China.
It could happen again, and those in the Zhongnanhai government compound know it.
That is why as they orchestrate the prosecution of Falun Gong leaders, they too are
turning inward.
Franz Schurmann, professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley,
has traveled widely in China and reads extensively in the Chinese media.
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BERKELEY, Calif., Aug. 26 — Mindful of the explosive role mystical
forces have played in toppling weak regimes throughout Chinese history, China announced
this week a plan to prosecute senior leaders of the Falun Gong sect and send them to
prison for the rest of their lives. In the following essay, historian Franz Schurmann
explains why the thought of its people “turning inward” is so frightening to
China’s leaders.