re: Religion: Falun Gong (Charles Ridley, US)

JE: I know, I know–this morning I said no more Falun Gong posts for awhile. But I always want to know what Charles Ridley has to say. So this is what Charles has to say:

I will have to leave the question of the degree of suppression of the Falun Gong to those better informed than I. It does appear that the Chinese government has chosen the Falun Gong as its major domestic enemy at the present time. As I noted in my WAIS ‘09 talk, the government most likely feels the necessity of indentifying an “enemy” within the society as a rallying point so that people will have a ready target for their discontent. In earlier days, it was landlords and other “rightists” who were the targets.

The primary fact about the Chinese government is that it is extremely authoritarian. The history of the regime since 1949 has been one of persecution of those seen to be on the wrong side of regime values, a tendency that led to a high level of slaughter of innocent citizens.

A major difference now is that the eyes of the world are on China, which means that any persecutions inside its borders must be handled without undue publicity. Whether the nature of the beast has changed is another question.

My own personal and very anecdotal evidence suggests that people are well indoctrinated into a belief that the Dalai Lama is an evil man, and, I suspect, on the idea of the “civilizing” character of the regime in dealing with the “decadent” culture of Tibet.

At a personal level, because of my past publication history, I was a bit nervous about undertaking my trip to China this past summer. When I applied for my visa I wondered of they would check on me and deny me entry. And I even wondered if I might be challenged once I was in the country. That can be chalked up to paranoia, of course.

When I get to analyzing the school books, one of the approaches I will take (and have undertaken in the past) is to look for contradictions between the values the government wishes to inculcate and the behavior of the government.

One of the problems deriving from actual visits to China is that the Chinese are very charming and most visitors returned enthused. One acquaintance of mine who spent last year in China has informed me that he “loves that country” and prefers Chinese to Americans. (He has also taken a dislike to Japan, after having spent three years there studying Japanese.)

I must conclude with the caveat, that in spite of my doctorate in Chinese studies, I have had virtually no experience, excluding my visit in July, of the country and do not think of myself as a “China expert.” I merely investigate one aspect of the culture, namely education, and that only from a “documentary” basis as I lack the experience of observing Chinese schools in action and have no way of knowing what actually happens in moral education and language classes. Thus, in practice, I am merely an amateur.

JE comments: Amateur, schmamateur. Don’t be so modest, Charles! Your on-the-spot readings of Chinese textbooks at the WAIS conference was one of the most impressive demonstrations of the entire weekend.