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FALUN GONG AND THE FUTURE OF CHINA. By David Ownby. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xi, 291 pp. US$29.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-1 9532905-6.
Falun Gong and the Future of China is a work directed at general readers and scholars alike, providing a rich context for interpreting the Falun Gong issue in terms of China's religious, political and cultural history, the challenges facing China at present, and the future evolution of a globalized Chinese society. Written in clear, engaging and often humorous prose, the work is an easy and most pleasant read, accessible to a broader general authence, without compromising on scholarly standards: synthesizing materials from a bewildering range of fields (ancient history, peasant rebellions, religious revivals, Chinese medicine, the qigong movement, diaspora studies, the Internet in China, Communist Party politics, and more) and challenging historiographical traditions, the work engages with scholarly debates and offers new perspectives on the interpretation of Chinese history, making it of great interest to specialists as well. Indeed, the author presents himself to the general public as offering the perspective of a professional historian on a highly sensationalized issue, and adroitly pulls it off.
Ownby uses the Falun Gong issue as a prism...