Content area
Full Text
FALUN GONG AND THE FUTURE OF CHINA By David Ownby. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 291 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-532905-6.
QIGONG FEVER: Body, Science and Utopia in China. By David Palmer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 356 pp. ISBN 0-231-14066-5.
FALUN GONG: End of Days. By Maria Hsia Chang. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. 188pp. ISBN 0-300-10227-5.
FALUN GONG'S CHALLENGE TO CHINA: Spiritual Practice or Evil Cult? By Danny Schechter. NewYork: Akashic BooL·, 2001. 287 pp. ISBN 1-888-45127-0.
POWER OF THE WHEEL: The Falun Gong Revolution. By Ian Adams, Riley Adams and Rocco Galati. Toronto: Stoddard Publishing Co. Ltd., 2000. 158pp. ISBN 0-7737-3270-5.
On April 25, 1999, some ten thousand adherents of the spiritual practice known as Falun Gong (literally "Great Law of the Wheel") converged on the Zhongnanhai complex in central Beijing, headquarters of China's ruling Communist Party (CCP) and home to top regime officials including then-president Jiang Zemin. The group had come to appeal to the country's highest authorities after a string of government measures and critical press had damaged its public image. Instead, it struck fear at the heart of the CCP establishment, showing a capacity to mobilize that, in the eyes of the Party's leadership and many students of Chinese politics, represented a fundamental challenge to the regime. The demonstration was China's largest since the student protests in Tiananmen Square nearly a decade before and, like that incident, it provoked a violent reaction from the state. In the days and weeks that followed, a campaign of attrition was launched to defame and destroy Falun Gong, resulting in allegations of harassment, detention, torture and death in police custody that persist to the present day.
Despite having been all but eradicated in China and having largely faded the headlines, Falun Gong lives on. Ten years after the government crackdown, it has spread across Asia, North America, Australia and Europe to become one of the fastest growing religious organizations in the world. It has also morphed from a spiritual movement to a more overdy political one, initiating its own transnational advocacy campaign that makes skilful use of communications technologies to unite Western governments, prominent politicians and human rights activists in its struggle forjustice on behalf of the group's Chinese...