What Is Falun Gong and Why Does Falun Gong Matter?

Hello, everyone! Welcome to “Inconvenient Truths by Jennifer Zeng”.

Recently, while faced with mounting pressure from the international world, as well as all sorts of internal crises, the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, launched a so-called “Zero-Out Campaign” against Falun Gong throughout China. What is the “Zero-Out Campaign”? What is Falun Gong? Why does the CCP want to “zero-out” Falun Gong? And why does Falun Gong matter? Today I’d like to talk about these issues.

 What is Falun Gong?

 First of all, what is Falun Gong? 

“Falun Gong” in Chinese actually has three words: Fa (法）, Lun（輪）, and Gong（功）. “Fa” means Law and principles in the Buddha School. It can also mean the Way, the Dao ( Tao) in Daoist School. 

“Lun” means the wheel. So Falun can be roughly translated as “Wheel of Law '',  “The Wheel of the Law '', or “Wheel of Dharma '' if we adopt the translation of ancient Indian language. 

Gong can mean an exercise, a practice, or energy, the practice of energy. So “Falun Gong” can be understood as a practice that practices the Wheel of Law, or an exercise that is based on the principles of the Wheel of the Law.

Falun Gong sometimes is also referred to as “Falun Dafa”. Da（大） in Chinese means big, great. So “Dafa” can be understood as “The Great Way”, or “The Great Dao”, the “The Great Principles”. So “Falun Dafa” can be understood as “The Great Way of the Wheel of the Law”.

Okay, I hope my explanation hasn’t made you more confused. 

Anyway, Falun Gong is one of many qigong practices that were spread in China during the 1990s. It has 5 sets of gentle physical exercises including sitting and standing meditation that look very similar to Tai Chi and Yoga. It has its own teachings, and the core principles to follow are “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance”. 

Another question people often ask is: Is Falun Gong a religion? 

My own answer is: Yes and No, depending on how you define “religion”. Falun Gong doesn’t have any religious formalities or rituals to observe. There are no temples or churches, no monks, nuns, or priests. Falun Gong talks about “The Great Way is formless”, and the most important thing is people’s hearts. If one’s heart is not here, it is useless to try to hold people with outward formalities.

However, like other religions, Falun Gong is also a belief system and talks about heaven, paradise, the afterlife, higher beings, Buddhas, gods, etc. It regards itself as one of the practices of the Buddha school. In this regard, you can regard Falun Gong as a religion.

Falun Gong was founded by Mr. Li Hongzhi in China and was first introduced to the public in 1992. About 200 people attended his first class in Changchun City. He held altogether 56 classes in the next two years in 22 cities in China; and about 70,000 people attended his classes.

Because of Falun Gong’s obvious physical and mental health benefits, many people eagerly introduced it to their families and friends after learning it. Many people voluntarily taught it to others. Falun Gong never allows its practitioners to charge fees when teaching others. 

So, through word of mouth, and a large number of volunteers, Falun Gong spread very fast in China. Within 7 years, its practitioners outnumbered the CCP members. According to the CCP’s own investigation and estimation, there were about 70-100 million Falun Gong practitioners in China in 1999.

 Why the Persecution?

 Then, problems occurred. You know, China is a one-party country; and this one party needs to control everything, every aspect of people’s lives. The CCP never allows any independent thinking or anything to become bigger than itself.

That was the main reason why the CCP suddenly decided to eliminate Falun Gong in 1999, after allowing it to spread for 7 years. 

 Unprecedented Persecution Met With Unprecedented Resistance

 When the CCP decides to crack down on something, especially on a group that has a large number of people in it, the first thing it will do is to launch a campaign of public opinion to make people think that it is fully justified for the party to crack down on this group.

So that was exactly what the CCP did to Falun Gong. When the crackdown officially started on July 22, 1999, all the CCP’s propaganda machines were in full swing to attack Falun Gong. Whichever TV channel you turned on, it was guaranteed that you would see the attacks against Falun Gong. Even children’s channels and entertainment channels were all used to broadcast the lies and attacks. The public was bombarded 24/7 by anti-Falun Gong propaganda. 

With such an absolutely overwhelming public opinion campaign, the CCP was very confident that it could eliminate Falun Gong in 3 months.

However, they didn’t expect that almost every Chinese person who had experienced previous political campaigns understood from what they saw on TV that the CCP was determined to wipe out Falun Gong completely in no time, Falun Gong practitioners themselves were not terrified as the CCP had expected. 

Instead, they started going to Beijing or writing letters to the CCP leaders to appeal for Falun Gong.  Because there were so many of them, at some stage, according to the estimation of police, there were as many as 1 million Falun Gong practitioners hanging out in Beijing, trying to figure out ways to petition for Falun Gong. 

On some special days, such as the New Year’s Eve, a thousand could show up in Tiananmen Square.

Throughout the CCP’s history, something like this had never happened. Whenever the CCP decided to crack down on something, that thing could hardly survive for more than 3 days. The CCP had been very confident in its power, and its violent ways to handle things. 

So the same kind of tactics was immediately applied to Falun Gong. Initially, they arrested Falun Gong practitioners, detained them for 15 to 30 days, believing that would be enough to scare Falun Gong practitioners to death.

However, the CCP didn’t expect that these people wouldn't surrender. They continued to defend their rights to practice their beliefs.

So the CCP accelerated the persecution. They threw Falun Gong practitioners into labor camps, sentenced them to more than 10 years, and invented many shocking torture methods to torture Falun Gong practitioners. Thousands have been tortured to death, millions have been put into jails, labor camps, detention centers, mental hospitals, and brainwashing classes.

Apart from mental and physical torture, Falun Gong practitioners were also forced to do hard, slave labors, and most products were exported to foreign countries to make dollars for the CCP.

And more shockingly, Falun Gong practitioners have been turned into body parts or organ suppliers for the CCP. Whenever somebody needs an organ and is willing to pay the money, the CCP will kill one Falun Gong practitioner, or other prisoners, harvest his/her organs, and sell it to the patient to make huge amounts of money.

In the past 21 years, according to an in-depth investigation, as many as 2 million people could have been killed for their organs.

From the scale, nature, and the extent of the persecution, we have very good reason to call it an unprecedented one that has never been seen in human history.

However, Falun Gong’s story doesn’t stop at the persecution. What hasn’t been exposed enough is the unprecedented resilience that Falun Gong practitioners have displayed through all these years.

Apart from going to Tiananmen Square to appeal for Falun Gong at the early stage of the persecution, Falun Gong practitioners have been distributing flyers, DVDs, making phone calls, sending emails, faxes, and letters, putting up posters at public places, talking to people face to face to expose the persecution, as well as the evil nature of the CCP, and ask people to quit the CCP and its related organizations.

They even write up or print slogans on cash notes that expose the CCP’s crimes, and ask people to break away from the CCP’s spiritual and mental control. Some people joked that the reason why the CCP wanted to issue digital currency was that they didn’t want to see those Falun Gong related slogans on their cash notes anymore.

This is, of course, probably just a joke. But it does speak about one truth: The scale and strength of Falun Gong practitioners’ resistance are not something the CCP expected. That is why they had to launch this so-called “Zero-Out Campaign” again, 21 years after they vowed to “eliminate” Falun Gong in 3 months. 

 What is the “Zero-Out Campaign”?

 So what is the “Zero-Out Campaign”, and how does it work?

The “Zero-Out Campaign” means that the CCP wants to reduce the number of Falun Gong practitioners to zero. 

And how does it work? 

During all these years of persecution, the CCP has virtually blacklisted every single Falun Gong practitioner they know. When the CCP started to issue the second generation ID cards for Chinese citizens in 2004, they put some kind of special code in the smart IC chips of the ID cards of Falun Gong practitioners.

So, when Falun Gong practitioners want to use their ID card to do something, say, to apply for a passport, as long as the ID card is swiped, an alert will immediately pop up, warning that this person is a Falun Gong practitioner. 

Sometimes the police officers will carry some kind of device with them. This device can detect a Falun Gong practitioner’s ID card if this card is within 30 meters of this device. 

And because of this, virtually all aspects of a Falun Gong practitioner’s life is be affected. They will have problems applying for a passport, finding a new job, buying a ticket to Beijing, enrolling their children in school, etc.

There are also some people who once practiced Falun Gong, but have given it up due to the persecution. But their names are still on the blacklist.

So, during this recent “Zero-Out Campaign”, the CCP’s local officials will go to re-register Falun Gong practitioners on their list one by one. If Falun Gong practitioners promise in writing that they have given up Falun Gong, or will give up Falun Gong, the CCP officials will promise to have their names removed from the blacklist, or have their status “reset”, so that they can enjoy the same kind of treatment like non-Falun Gong practitioners.

Maybe for people who live in a free society, they can hardly imagine how difficult life can be in CCP’s China if one is listed as an enemy of the party. But the CCP knows. So it figured, to be removed from the blacklist must be very attractive for Falun Gong practitioners. So the CCP hopes that many people can choose to leave the ranks of Falun Gong practitioners in this “Zero-Out Campaign”. 

There are also many reports on Falun Gong’s website that those who refused to give up Falun Gong have been repeatedly harassed, arrested, or forced into exile again.

 Why Does Falun Gong Matter?

 In my previous show “The CCP, Hong Kong, Taiwan, & US: Romance of 4 Kingdoms”, I said that the reason why the CCP can never get Hong Kong right is that it just doesn’t understand that there are people in the world who don’t live for money, and who cannot be conquered by fear. They don’t understand how people with a soul and a heart will look at the world and react to the suppression.

That is also the reason why the CCP can never get Falun Gong right, and stupidly started the persecution of Falun Gong.

In order to maintain the persecution, and stop people, and other countries from condemning the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP has not only spent an astronomical amount of money, but also purposely corrupted the moral values of the society, so that people can stay silent, run after money, and do evil together with the CCP when practitioners of “Truth, Compassion, and Tolerance” are being groundlessly and ruthlessly persecuted.

And also, because the world has done very little to stop the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP gained more confidence about its way of governance, and expanded the same kind of persecution, methods of persecution, to Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and perhaps to Taiwan soon.

Another thing people failed to realize is the relationship between the persecution of Falun Gong and the power struggles within the CCP.

As early as 2001, two years after the persecution started, overseas Falun Gong practitioners started to launch lawsuits against the CCP leaders who are responsible for the persecution in many countries and vowed to hold the persecutors accountable for the lives lost in the persecution. 

Sometimes when the CCP leaders, including Jiang Zemin who started the persecution, visited foreign countries, they even dared not to enter their hotels from the front door to avoid being protested against by overseas Falun Gong practitioners or served legal documents.

Those who have blood on their hands during this persecution were given a nickname: “Gang of Bloody Debts”.  So when the CCP leaders who belong to this  

 “Gang of Bloody Debts” retired or stepped down, they wanted to make sure that their successors must also belong to the “Gang of Bloody Debts” so that the new leaders wouldn’t want to redress the Falun Gong issue, would carry on their previous policies so that they wouldn’t be held responsible for their crimes. That was an important reason for all the fierce power struggles within the CCP in the last 2 decades.

 I believe in the future, when CCP is gone, when more facts are revealed, people will understand more about why Falun Gong matters.

 That’s all for today. Thank you for watching. Please make sure you subscribe to my channel, share it with your friends and family, and check out my other videos.

 Thank you. See you next time!

8/29/2020

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