Falun Gong's Challenge to China: Spiritual Practice or "Evil Cult"?

Among third party books, this is the best I could find so far. When I was a graduate student in University of California at Santa Barbara, I have been looking for a good book from an objective angle on Falun Gong. But at that time this book did not come out. When I got this book, I find it provided almost all of the information that I have spent months the collected from different sources. Since Falun Gong is amind, body, spiritual system, it may not easy to be really understood with superficial reading. Especially for people already have other spiritual or religious tendency. I myself is a case. But when getting more and more information from books (especially the Falun Gong books), you will find why millions people in China practice Falun Gong and like to do so. Eeven the persecution in China could not stop people doing this.

First and foremost, a reader should not mistake this book as being a text on Falun Gong and its tenants. In fact, the book pays only a relatively superficial bit of attention to analyzing the core precepts of Falun Gong. Rather, this book is a description of the Chinese government's and media response to Falun Gong and whether that reaction is rational or justified. From that perspective, the book is quite good. Schechter is quite careful in indicating that while he presents alleged first person narratives of torture going on in China of incarcerated practitioners, those narratives are still alleged descriptions. They have not been verified. And in the appendix, he provides the reader with excerpts from publications that present both benign and critical descriptions of Falun Gong and its founder, Li Hongzhi. What the book is quite exceptional at is showing how the Western media has been lazy in its coverage of the Falun Gong issue in China, often adopting the lexicon of the Chinese government-controlled press, and hence becoming a mere mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. And it also challenges the reader's ability to accept core constitutional precepts, such as if all humans are to enjoy the right of religious/spiritual freedom, than all forms of religious/spiritual thought must enjoy those protections. If it isn't Christian or Jewish, Westerners tend to deride other doctrines as "cults," which only reveals an ethnocentric ignorance and intellectual laziness endemic in Western society. A reader of this text is not asked to decide whether Falun Gong should be considered legitimate. That is quite beside the point. Rather, the reader is asked whether Falun Gong practitioners should be allowed to practice their beliefs without mollestation. This text also reveals how China's decision to drastically cut back medical benefits to huge portions of its population sowed the seeds for Falun Gong's popularity because the doctrine does boast improved health through personal cultivation. No wonder it appeals to middle-aged and elderly people more than others, because it has been precisely this demographic that suffered the greatest loss because of the Chinese government's decision to reduce medical benefits. If we believe in religious and spiritual freedom, then the answer must be yes, Falun Gong and its practitioneers should be left alone. In the United States, the debates that form the historic Supreme Court decisions that define our freedoms were and continue to be initiated by what the rest of society deems as "fringe" elements. The right we have to refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance we owe to Jehovah's Witness. This book is an exceptional text and evaluation of not only the Chinese government's reaction to Falun Gong, but of the United States' and other Western reactions.

This book is the most objective and informative writings from the third party on Falun Gong issue that I have seen so far. Unlike many reports and articles that buy-in a lot of Chinese government propaganda and purposely government fabricated stories, the contents in this book are reliable, and has certain deepth to the complicated Falun Gong issue. Also, most news reports superficialy descibed Falun Gong as a meditation system that blend Taoism and Buddhism, this book begin approaching the real context.

This book makes me feel like Falun Gong is not something merely for the Chinese people. It raises the concern of the human right status in China as China grows its economic dramatically. You may find the answers as you ask: What is the truth? Who tells the truth?