Print

Mail

wiki links

Falun Gong suppression will one day harm China

Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) left behind the "June 4th Incident," and Jiang Zemin (江澤民) will leave behind the suppression of Falun Gong (法輪功), they say. These matters not only remain unresolved, they are matters which China will have to face eventually.

Ever since China branded the Falun Gong an "evil religious sect" last year, protests at Tienanman Square have persisted. The numbers of Falun Gong members and sympathizers grow at an astonishingly rapid rate. China's mishandling of the matter has escalated its seriousness. Falun Gong is becoming a major force both within and outside China.

Why brand as an enemy something that is essentially a type of health exercise? Many are now asking, "Isn't communism also an evil religious sect?" The suppression of Falun Gong is intensifying, becoming an enormous social phenomenon. Even supposing there has been illegal conduct on the part of Falun Gong members, they should have been dealt with as isolated incidents. Branding Falun Gong a "religious sect" and banning it entirely is definitely unwarranted.

I think Taiwan's experience in foreclosing sorrow over a painful part of its history is certainly a worthy lesson for China. If China truly intends to seek social peace and harmony, it must abandon its outdated obsession with militaristic rule. At the very least it must rule with compassion, if not democracy. Otherwise, the resentment will one day erupt.

On Oct. 1, the Vatican held a ceremony to canonize 120 missionaries and Catholics who died in China. Among them, were 86 were killed by the "Boxers," but none were those killed after the communist government came to power. The move provoked extreme rage and protests by China, which accused the murdered converts of "unforgivable sins against the Chinese." Propaganda only cited a few examples of such "sins," and ignored the killings by the Boxers entirely.

The Boxer Movement of 1900 is an extremely controversial part of contemporary Chinese history. The movement was highly praised by the PRC government as "anti-imperial and patriotic." During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards exalted the movement and vowed to inherit its "glorious tradition." Historians, however, have much criticized the Boxers. They have pointed out that although foreign missionaries enjoyed special privileges during the Qing Dynasty and that there were some deplorable mission members, the Church contributed to progress by spreading western culture and technology to China. It also helped the Constitutional Reform and Modernization of 1898. A series of conflicts between the western and the eastern cultures took place. Chanting the slogans of "helping the Qing to eradicate foreigners," the Boxers hated everything remotely foreign and related to the Church. They burned churches, killed foreigners, and destroyed the facilities of reformers. The Boxer Movement finally led to an invasion by the joint forces of eight powers. Only then did the Qing government turn around to suppress the Boxers. There are many worthy lessons from this part of history.

At the very least the Boxers' animosity to foreigners and opposition to reform were completely wrong. Their feudal and narrow concept of loyalty to the emperor and tradition was also outdated. As pointed out by Karl Marx in his criticism The Heavenly Kingdom of Peace (太平天國), it was all the product of a stagnant society. Today we live in a liberalized era. I don't believe that the Chinese people identify much with the killing of foreigners. From the Boxers' killing of foreign missionaries to the suppression of the Falun Gong, perhaps we should seriously think about how much of an improvement we have experienced over the past 100 years?

Jin Zhong is editor in chief of the Hong Kong-based Open Magazine.
This story has been viewed 2700 times.