China's crackdown boosts Falun Gong's profile overseas

Far Eastern Economic Review

01/27/2000 Page 28

It's 5 a.m. and a woman is standing in the park, both arms raised above her head practising Falun Gong. A portable stereo fills the air with a melody that moves serenely up and down the Chinese pentatonic scale. But this isn't a park in China. This is Boston Common, one of America's best-known public spaces, and the woman is Anna Skibinsky, a 26-year-old physics graduate at Boston University. Beijing's six-month-old ban on the group -- which combines traditional meditation exercises with teachings from Buddhism, Taoism, and its founder Li Hongzhi -- has spurred interest in the movement outside of China. Although precise numerical comparisons aren't available, U.S. practitioners estimate their current numbers at between 20,000 and 30,000, with "hits" and e-mails to the organization's Web site rising sharply since Beijing's clampdown. A recently reprinted Falun Gong primer is said to have sold out on two major U.S. bookstore Web sites. Meanwhile applications for a nine-day beginners' course in New York have doubled.

Falun Gong was first introduced in the U.S. in 1995 when, according to Zhang Erping, Li's personal translator, most of the practitioners were Chinese. Since then it has spread to non-Chinese Americans, usually through university or professional circles. Skibinsky, for example, first learned the exercises at practice sessions at Harvard University in 1997.

And some U.S. practitioners are so devoted that they give much of their time and talent to the movement. Take Gail Rachlin of New York, who grew up in a Jewish family and runs a marketing company. She discovered Falun Gong two years ago and has since become the movement's chief media contact. A significant number of followers have turned activist since the crackdown in China. Zhang and Rachlin have lobbied Congress and have circulated an international appeal letter calling for "a dialogue for peace." Others have demonstrated in front of Chinese consulates. In many major U.S. cities, practitioners have gone to the mayor's office and commended the Falun Gong as a worthy civic organization.

The practitioner was enrolled in a Chinese-language programme in Beijing when the crackdown began. He chose to abandon a $7,000 scholarship and return to the U.S. "There was very little I could do in China to remedy the situation," he says. "Here, I've written for papers; I've been answering questions for a lot of people. At a conference at Columbia in October, I talked about my experience there, what I saw and learned."

Another practitioner, Jimmy Zou, took the opposite route. He returned to China, he says, because he wanted to tell followers "what was going on outside of China." In Beijing he was arrested after he told a policeman who was asking questions that he was a member of Falun Gong. But, Zou says, he only revealed that he was an American citizen after he had spent a day in custody being beaten and shocked with electric prods. His aim was to see "how it really was," he says, and later he told his story to the news media. "Lots of stories from inside of China can't be verified," Zou explains. "Now I can verify that it's true."

That head-on approach isn't to the taste of all followers. Gina Sanchez, a Californian who is studying for her masters degree in Oriental medicine, points out that one of the principles of Falun Gong is ren, or the ability to endure hardship -- and followers in China are doing just that. "Practitioners in the United States recognize this, but we can't really do anything, because it's their tribulation. The only thing we can try to do is to spread the system." Ironically, the Chinese government's repression of Falun Gong has become the most effective engine for spreading the word. As more news emerges from China, interest elsewhere grows. So far thousands of practitioners have been detained; the latest, a retired air-force general who reportedly was jailed for a hefty 17 years for having links with the movement.

In the U.S., such interest can be undermined by the culture gap. In China, it's common to go to parks in the early morning and practise, if not Falun Gong, then qigong and discuss the idea of qi, or life force. "In America," explains Kutolowski, "it's harder to talk about or express these things in an intimate way. In China, there's the vocabulary and the place for it in people's lives. In America, there's neither the vocabulary nor the place."

Others seem less bothered by the East-West divide. "I'm a typical American," remarks Levi Browde, a computer programmer who grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, "and I don't think my inclinations to Falun Gong are an exceptional case. Many other people that I've known see extreme problems with Western culture."

Indeed, Falun Gong's popularity lies in its ability to convince people that it delivers results. "It's very, very potent," says Skibinsky, the physics graduate. "Everybody has some kind of interesting reaction to it." Kutolowski maintains that within his first few days of practising, his health problems, including allergies and Wilson's syndrome (chronic mild hypothermia), disappeared. "I thought, man, does this happen to everyone, or am I just really lucky? And I learned that it's the rule, rather than the exception."

But whatever its health benefits, ultimately it's the persecution in China that has given the Falun Gong movement new strength. "Since the practitioners in China have been forced onto the international scene," says Zhang Erping, "their loss is our gain. We have had enormous exposure to the media, and many people have come to learn."