12/28/1999

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Copyright 1999 / The Times Mirror Company

The depth of an authoritarian government's fear of its own people can be measured by how severely it punishes dissent. This week a Chinese court sentenced four major organizers of the recently outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement to prison terms of up to 18 years. They were convicted in a one-day trial on a spectrum of dubious charges, ranging from fostering a cult aimed at undermining laws to stealing state secrets. All four, significantly, are members of the Communist Party. The sentences were a warning to others that services to the state provide no immunity when the state professes to feel threatened.

Falun Gong's true threat isn't to state security but to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. A spiritual movement that draws its ideas from Buddhism and Taoism and that practices meditative exercises to encourage health and morality, Falun Gong's rapid growth has shocked the regime. It has no political program. But its appeal to the disillusioned and those searching for spiritual meaning in their lives has caused China's leaders to regard it as an implicit rival, to be feared and persecuted.

Beijing's rulers need only look to their own party's history from the 1920s on to recall how tenaciously deeply held beliefs can resist even the most brutal persecution. Falun Gong is being forced underground. But it's highly unlikely that its appeal will fade. The strength of the movement is that it fills a need the regime refuses to address or even acknowledge. That all but guarantees its survival.