A pro-Falun Gong TV network, New Tang Dynasty, broadcasts around the clock worldwide and a newspaper, the Epoch Times, publishes in 17 languages. The newspaper may be best known for the heckling of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) by one of its reporters in the middle of a White House visit in 2006.
‘REAL THREAT’
“From the Chinese Communist Party’s perspective, they’re not really wrong here — they are a real threat at this point,” Gutmann said of Falun Gong.
But the Falun Gong remains deeply controversial among Chinese, even among those who are no fans of the communist system.
Wei Jingsheng (魏京生), one of China’s most-respected pro-democracy dissidents in exile, criticized Beijing for its “crude suppression” of the Falun Gong.
“Fortunately, for both Falun Gong and the Chinese democracy movement, there are a lot of people overseas, thus the Chinese Communist Party cannot destroy them completely,” Wei said.
But he cautioned that while Falun Gong “has a positive impact on society,” if “a small portion of them go extreme, it would be similar to other fundamentalists.”
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