Controversies
Among the most persistent controversies surrounding Falun Gong is its characterization by the PRC government as "xiejiao"—a "heterodox organization", "evil religion", or "evil cult". The state-run Chinese Buddhist Association, concerned with Buddhist apostates taking up Falun Gong practice, were the first to term Falun Gong xiejiao in the latter half of 1996. A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching", but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English. Western media initially adopted this language after the PRC government's media reports, but soon began using less loaded terms. According to Chang, in the context of imperial China, the term "xiejiao" was used to refer to non-Confucian religions, though in the context of Communist China, it has been used to target religious organizations which do not submit to the authority of the Communist Party.
The Chinese government's view that Falun Gong is a destructive cult, widely used as part of state propaganda against the practice, was later picked up by some elements of the anti-cult movement in the West. However, such views are largely criticized or dismissed in mainstream Western scholarship of the practice.
Opinions differ on whether or not Li Hongzhi made money from the practice, and if so, how much. Dai Qing states that by 1997, Li was receiving annual income in excess of ¥10 million through sales of his books, noting that Falun Gong practitioners purchased numerous copies of Li's works, pictures, and made voluntary donations. Ian Johnson disputes the theory that Li made any serious money from Falun Gong, and noted that during the period of Falun Gong's greatest book sales in China, Li did not receive royalties because all publications were bootleg—the texts having been banned by the authorities in 1996 in an attempt to curb the practice's growth.
Danny Schechter noted that from 1992–1994, while Li did charge fees for the lectures seminars he was giving across China at the invitation of local qigong societies, his fees were considerably lower than those of competing qigong practices, and the local qigong associations received a substantial share. Li justified the fees as being necessary to cover travel costs and other expenses, and on some occasions, he donated the money earned to charitable causes. In 1994, Li ceased charging fees altogether, thereafter stipulating that Falun Gong must always be taught for free. The practice's teachings are available for free download online.
Li Hongzhi's conservative moral teachings have attracted some concern in the West, including his views on homosexuality. During a lecture in Australia, for instance, Li Hongzhi said, "Things such as organized crime, homosexuality, and promiscuous sex, etc., none are the standards of being human." In light of Li's teachings on homosexuality as immoral, a nomination of Li for the Nobel Peace Prize by San Francisco legislators was withdrawn in 2001. The Falun Dafa Information Center states that the group welcomes gays, lesbians, and bisexuals to the practice, that they are not accorded special treatment, and that while Falun Gong teaches that certain practices "generate more karma", this does not equate to a position statement, social stance, or regulation. In discussing the portrayal of Falun Gong as "anti-gay", Ethan Gutmann notes that Falun Gong's teachings are "essentially indistinguishable" from traditional religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Some journalists have also expressed concern over Falun Gong's belief in different heavens for people of different races, and the implications of these teachings as they related to interracial marriages. Concern stems from a statement of Li's identifying such children as products of "a chaotic situation brought about by mankind" indicative of "the Dharma-ending period". The Falun Dafa Information Center responded that this aspect of the practice's cosmology "in no way amounts to an endorsement of racial purity", adding that many Falun Gong practitioners have interracial children.
Opinions among scholars differ as to whether Falun Gong contains an apocalyptic message, and if so what the consequences of that are. Li situates his teaching of Falun Gong amidst the "Dharma-ending period" (Mo Fa, 末法), described in Buddhist scriptures as an era of moral decline when the teachings of Buddhism would need to be rectified. The current era is described in Falun Gong teachings as the "Fa rectification" period (zhengfa, which might also be translated as "to correct the dharma"), a time of cosmic transition and renewal. The process of Fa rectification is necessitated by the moral decline and degeneration of life in the universe, and in the post-1999 context, the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government has come to be viewed as a tangible symptom of this moral decay. Through the process of the Fa rectification, life will be reordered according to the moral and spiritual quality of each, with good people being saved and ascending to higher spiritual planes, and bad ones being eliminated or cast down. In this paradigm, Li assumes a messianic role of offering salvation through his moral teachings.
Some scholars, such as Maria Hsia Chang and Susan Palmer, have described Li's rhetoric about the "Fa rectification" and providing salvation "in the final period of the Last Havoc", as apocalyptic. However, Benjamin Penny argues that Li's teachings are better understood in the context of a "Buddhist notion of the cycle of the Dharma or the Buddhist law". Richard Gunde notes that unlike apocalyptic groups in the West, Falun Gong does not fixate on death or the end of the world, and instead "has a simple, innocuous ethical message". Li Hongzhi does not discuss a "time of reckoning", and has rejected predictions of an impending apocalypse in his teachings. Although he expressed concern over Li's totalizing discourse and millennial themes, Craig Burgdoff writes that such concerns are tempered by the fact that Falun Gong practice does not require unquestioning acceptance of all of Li's teachings, and there is no overt emphasis on dogmatically enforcing orthodoxy, Instead, Burgdoff writes that he found "practitioners to be engaged seriously in a highly disciplined spiritual and ethical practice."
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