A failed crackdown

When the mainland government launched its crackdown on the Falun Gong sect, it intended to stop the movement in its tracks. But a year after the Beijing leadership was shaken by the appearance of 10,000 silent devotees at the Communist Party's headquarters in Zhongnanhai to protest against official persecution, the sect continues to flourish.

The government's panic reaction after the Zhongnanhai demonstration has given greater momentum to the movement's crusade. Falun Gong followers are aggrieved that beliefs they see as healthy, benign and non-political should be labeled an evil cult. They use peaceful demonstrations as the only way to publicize injustice against thousands of fellow members serving prison sentences, and who according to reports are as undaunted behind bars as the daily protesters in Tiananmen Square.

There is no escape for the government from this embarrassing situation. It has vilified the movement so thoroughly that it could not backtrack even if it felt inclined to. Social control remains its driving force. However apolitical Falun Gong followers claim to be, they represent the most formidable challenge to authority since the democracy movement in 1989.

Rioting farmers and disgruntled workers have failed to make as powerful an impact as the silent legions of Falun Gong followers, mainly middle-aged ladies, calmly carrying out physical exercises and talking about spiritual purity. That is because the sect's teachings point up a malaise and address a spiritual void in China that economic reform cannot fill.

However illogical and superstitious Falun Gong doctrines may sound to non-believers, they appeal to the generation born and raised during the Mao era, whose guiding force was once the Communist Party, and who have lived to see the old certainties overturned, with nothing to replace them but materialism.

The sect has offered a substitute that the government has not been able to supply. It offers a path that does not depend on money, or influence or success. In that, it is not unlike many other religions flourishing in China and elsewhere.

Persecution will not bring it to a halt. Eventually the government may recognize the best guarantee of social order is individual freedom.

-- The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong