Author | Maria Hsia Chang |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | Falun Gong |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Publication date | 2004 |
Pages | 188 |
ISBN | 0-300-10227-5 |
OCLC | 182530364 |
322'.1'0951 | |
LC Class | BP605.F36C47 2004 |
Falun Gong: The End of Days is a book by Maria Hsia Chang about the Falun Gong.
Bradley Winterton, in Times Literary Supplement , stated that the book's main idea is that Falun Gong only became political after the Chinese government began to suppress it. [1] Steve Schroeder of Booklist stated that, according to the book, political movements can come from groups that would be "ostensibly apolitical". [2]
The author is a political scientist who originates from China, [3] and is an instructor in that field at the University of Nevada. [4]
The book uses journalism articles and Li Hongzhi's texts as sources, but does not use other primary sources nor fieldwork. David A. Palmer wrote that the sourcing includes anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP), pro-Falun Gong "alleged but unverified “facts” ". [5]
"A religious sect defies the state," Chapter 1, is a history of the Falun Gong. Chinese religious movements in general, [6] and how they interact with millenarianist groups, [3] are the topics of Chapter 2, "Chinese religions and millenarian movements." Falun Gong's beliefs according to Li Hongzhi's texts are outlines in the third, "Beliefs and practices." The criminal charges from the Chinese central government against people in the Falun Gong movement are outlined in the fourth, "The state vs. falun gong." A criticism against said legal arguments and against the CCP in general are then presented in the fifth, "The persecution of other faiths." [6]
David A. Palmer wrote that the book "is a useful and relatively balanced synthesis of what Western journalists and human rights organizations have been writing on falun gong in the past five years." [7] Palmer stated that due to the nature of the sourcing, "she departs little from the standard Western media “script” on falun gong, i.e. the brutal repression by a totalitarian state of innocent meditators with weird ideas". [5]
Zhonghu Yan of Hope College wrote that the book "offers a balanced view of both this group and the Chinese government." [3] Yan concluded the book is "highly readable" and "scholarly and yet popular." [8]
Schroeder describes the work as "a cautionary tale for modern states and a compelling argument for" allowing new religions to be practiced. [9]
Lucian W. Pye of Foreign Affairs wrote that the book is "an excellent introduction" to Chinese religions in general and Falun Gong in particular. [10]
Ilaria Maria Sala stated in the Far Eastern Economic Review stated that because of the simplicity and the "haphazard and sometimes sloppy manner" of picking the sources, Sala felt that she was "a bit disappointed" in the work even though the author had made "commendable[...]effort" to write her work. [11]
Winterton stated that the book "is concise, lucid, determined to be fair to all sides, and devoid of the kind of jargon that infests academic writing in the humanities." [1]
Publishers Weekly described it as "an objective and scholarly account". [12]
Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a new religious movement. Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a 173-hectare (427-acre) compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near the residence of Li Hongzhi.
David William Kilgour was a Canadian human rights activist, author, lawyer, and politician. He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Li Hongzhi is a Chinese religious leader. He is the founder and leader of Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, a United States–based new religious movement. Li began his public teachings of Falun Gong on 13 May 1992 in Changchun, and subsequently gave lectures and taught Falun Gong exercises across China.
The 610 Office was a security agency in the People's Republic of China. Named for the date of its creation on June 10, 1999, it was established for the purpose of coordinating and implementing the persecution of Falun Gong. The 610 Office was the implementation arm of the Central Leading Group on Dealing with the Falun Gong (CLGDF), also known as the Central Leading Group on Dealing with Heretical Religions, a leading small group of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Because it was a CCP-led office with no formal legal mandate, it is sometimes described as an extralegal organisation.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice and system of beliefs that combines the practice of meditation with the moral philosophy articulated by its leader and founder, Li Hongzhi. It emerged on the public radar in the Spring of 1992 in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun, and was classified as a system of qigong identifying with the Buddhist tradition. Li claimed to have both supernatural powers like the ability to prevent illness, as well having eternal youth and promised that others can attain supernatural powers and eternal youth by following his teachings. Falun Gong initially enjoyed official sanction and support from Chinese government agencies, and the practice grew quickly on account of the simplicity of its exercise movements, impact on health, the absence of fees or formal membership, and moral and philosophical teachings.
Falun Gong, a new religious movement that combines meditation with the moral philosophy articulated by founder Li Hongzhi, first began spreading widely in China in 1992. Li's first lectures outside mainland China took place in Paris in 1995. At the invitation of the Chinese ambassador to France, he lectured on his teachings and practice methods to the embassy staff and others. From that time on, Li gave lectures in other major cities in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North America. He has resided permanently in the United States since 1998. Falun Gong is now practiced in some 70 countries worldwide, and the teachings have been translated to over 40 languages. The international Falun Gong community is estimated to number in the hundreds of thousands, though participation estimates are imprecise on account of a lack of formal membership.
Li Hongzhi published the Teachings of Falun Gong in Changchun, China in 1992. They cover a wide range of topics ranging from spiritual, scientific and moral to metaphysical.
The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. There is controversy over the incident; Chinese government sources say that five members of Falun Gong, a new religious movement that is banned in mainland China, set themselves on fire in the square. Falun Gong sources disputed the accuracy of these portrayals, and claimed that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. Some journalists have claimed that the self-immolations were staged.
Zhong Gong (中功) is a spiritual movement based on qigong founded in 1987 by Zhang Hongbao. The full name (中华养生益智功) translates to "China Health Care and Wisdom Enhancement Practice." The system distinguished itself from other forms of qigong by its strong emphasis on commercialisation, and a targeted strategy that aimed to build a national commercial organisation in China in the 1990s.
James Roger Lewis was an American philosophy professor at Wuhan University. He was a religious studies scholar, sociologist of religion, and writer, who specialized in the academic study of new religious movements, astrology, and New Age.
The persecution of Falun Gong is the campaign initiated in 1999 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China, maintaining a doctrine of state atheism. It is characterized by a multifaceted propaganda campaign, a program of enforced ideological conversion and re-education and reportedly a variety of extralegal coercive measures such as arbitrary arrests, forced labor and physical torture, sometimes resulting in death.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice taught by Li Hongzhi. Practicing Falun Gong or protesting on its behalf is forbidden in Mainland China, yet the practice remains legal in Hong Kong, which has greater protections of civil and political liberties under “One country, Two systems.” Since 1999 practitioners in Hong Kong have staged demonstrations and protests against the Chinese government, and assisted those fleeing persecution in China. Nonetheless, Falun Gong practitioners have encountered some restrictions in Hong Kong as a result of political pressure from Beijing. The treatment of Falun Gong by Hong Kong authorities has often been used as a bellwether to gauge the integrity of the one country two systems model.
Vision China Times Australia is a Chinese language newspaper owned by the Vision Times Media (Australia) Corporation Pty Ltd. Vision China Times Australia was established as a weekly newspaper in Australia in July 2006, based on a widely-read overseas Chinese news website, secretchina.com, which was launched in 2001 in the United States and is known as Vision Times or Kanzhongguo. The newspaper has been described as part of the media outreach of Falun Gong, an anti-communist new religious movement, although this has been contested by the paper's Australian editorial team.
Heterodox teaching is a concept in the law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and its administration regarding new religious movements and their suppression. Also translated as 'cults' or 'evil religions', "heterodox teachings" are defined in Chinese law as organizations and religious movements that either fraudulently use religion to carry out other illegal activities, deify their leaders, spread "superstition" to confuse or deceive the public, or "disturb the social order" by harming people's lives or property. What exactly these definitions mean has been interpreted in various ways since their establishment in 1999/2000. Organizations that are found by local police forces in the PRC to be distributing heterodox teachings are targeted for disruption, and its leaders and organizers are severely prosecuted.
Dragon Springs, also known as the Mountain, is a 427-acre (1.73 km2) compound in Deerpark, New York, US that serves as the headquarters of the global Falun Gong new religious movement and the Shen Yun performance arts troupe. Falun Gong founder and leader Li Hongzhi lives near the compound, as do hundreds of Falun Gong adherents. Members of Shen Yun live and rehearse in the compound, which also has an orphanage, schools, and temples.
The Religion of Falun Gong is a 2012 nonfiction book by Benjamin Penny, published by the University of Chicago Press, that discusses the Falun Gong's belief system.
Revenge of the Forbidden City: The Suppression of the Falungong in China, 1999-2005 is a 2009 book by James W. Tong, published by Oxford University Press. It describes how the Chinese government suppressed the Falun Gong in that stated time frame. David Ownby of the Université de Montréal described it as "a very nuts-and-bolts book".
Falun Gong and the Future of China is a 2008 book by David Ownby, published by Oxford University Press. The book is about the Chinese new religious movement Falun Gong, and covers its history and the group's media and portrayals of itself. The book received generally positive reviews.
Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China is a 2007 book by David A. Palmer, published by Columbia University Press. It is about the "Qigong fever" in the late 20th century in China.
Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora is a non-fiction book by Andrew Junker, an adjunct assistant professor in sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, the book is a sociological study of the Falun Gong movement and the post-1989 democracy movement (Minyun), both suppressed in China. By comparing these two movements from a social movement perspective, Junker argued that Falun Gong's more enduring mobilization results from its decentralized organizational structure and demonstrates the potential for progressive social change.