Falun Gong and Science: Origins, Pseudoscience, and China’S Scientific Establishment

FALUN GONG AND SCIENCE: ORIGINS, PSEUDOSCIENCE, AND CHINA’S SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT

Helen Farley

It seems that any farmer’s market or large social gathering will some- where boast a small stand with a few pamphlets, fronted by gentle people with smiling faces, espousing the health benefits of Falun Gong or Falun Dafa as it is also known. Practitioners are ready to regale those with an ear to listen personal testimonies of how a set of five meditational exercises were able to transform their lives from being stressful and conflict-ridden to being healthful, peaceful and enriched. The media and the Falun Gong media machine have ensured that most are familiar (and outraged) by China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, and yet these same people so passionately opposed to the movement’s suppression, remain unaware of what ideologies lie behind this movement; of what makes Falun Gong tick. For exam- ple, most remain ignorant of the problematic discourse that exists between Falun Gong and the scientific community; ironic given that the movement is so heavily reliant on the science of telecommunications to spread its word. This chapter scrutinizes the uneasy relationship between Falun Gong and science by examining the emergence of Falun Gong from the larger qigong movement in the 1990s. Qigong itself was a formulated tradition that appeared just before the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The relationship between qigong and science is considered, with the latter being both friend and foe to the movement at different times. The nature of this association has to some extent influenced the relationship between science and Falun Gong. The chapter concludes with an examination of the ideologies of Falun Gong in relation to the contemporary scientific worldview as expressed by its charismatic founder, Li Hongzhi.

Introduction

Falun Gong—literally Great Way of the Wheel or the Dharma Wheel Discipline—ﬁrst rippled the consciousness of Western media when up to ﬁfteen thousand adherents peacefully surrounded the seat of the 142 helen farley

Chinese government at the red-walled Zhongnanhai compound on Sunday 25 April 1999.1 Mostly middle-aged, many had travelled a considerable distance to be in Beijing. They stood shoulder to shoulder before sitting down to meditate in the lotus position. This show of soli- darity was in marked contrast to the noisy student demonstrations of a decade earlier.2 The Chinese government was caught off guard but then Premier, Zhu Rongji, met with some of the movement’s leaders who protested the ofﬁcial harassment that they had received. Indeed, many of their fellow followers had been arrested in Tianjin, follow- ing condemnation of their movement by physicist He Zouxiu of the Chinese Academy of the Sciences. He had claimed that Falun Gong had been responsible for several deaths and challenged the group’s claims to science.3 Undeniably, Li Hongzhi had been very vocal in both his condemnation of contemporary science and in his espousal of an alternative ‘scientiﬁc’ paradigm. In the face of this censure, the group wanted legal status to ensure their protection from regional authorities who often refused them even the right to assemble. They also wanted the ban lifted on their founder’s books which they considered scrip- ture.4 Three months later, on 22 July 1999, the Chinese Communist Government outlawed the movement.5 In response, tens of thousands protested in ten cities including Beijing. Within a week 5000 practitioners had been rounded up, taken away by the police to schools and sports stadiums.6 Though most were later released, seventy to a

1 Benjamin Penny, “The Life and Times of Li Hongzhi: ‘Falun Gong’ And Religious Biography,” The China Quarterly, no. 175 (2003): 643; Beatrice Leung, “China and Falun Gong: Party and Societal Relations in the Modern Era,” Journal of Contemporary China 11, no. 33 (2002): 763, 64; Gareth Fisher, “Resistance and Salvation in Falun Gong: The Promise and Peril of Forbearance,” Nova Religio 6, no. 2 (2003): 296. 2 Danny Schechter, Falun Gong’s Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or ‘Evil Cult’? (New York: Akashic Books, 2000), 9–10; Julie Ching, “The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications,” American Asian Review, no. 1 January (2001). 3 Schechter, Falun Gong’s Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or ‘Evil Cult’?, 45; Ching, “The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications.” In fact, a PhD candidate specialising in theoretical physics at the Chinese Academy of Science died subse- quent to developing schizophrenia after practising extreme fasting as part of his Falun Gong practice. Hongyan Xiao, “Falun Gong and the Ideological Crisis of the Chinese Communist Party: Marxist Atheism Vs. Vulgar Theism,” East Asia: An International Quarterly 19, no. 1/2 (2001): 127. 4 Ching, “The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications.” 5 Cheris Shun-Ching Chan, “The Falun Gong in China: A Sociological Perspective,” The China Quarterly 179 (2004): 666. 6 Ibid.