Word: hongzhi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crackdown is revealing. Though decades of economic reforms have empowered many in Chinese society, the party retains a firm grasp on the tools of repression. But it deploys them only when it feels directly threatened. In 1992 a grain clerk named Li Hongzhi, who had once played trumpet with a song-and-dance troupe, first mingled the tenets of Buddhism, Taoism and traditional qigong exercises to create Falun Gong, a cocktail of religious beliefs and physical exercises aimed at leading its practitioners to enlightenment. The party took no action, though Li published books, sold videotapes and lectured to large audiences...
Today Falun Gong exists in China almost entirely by virtue of the Internet. A group of activists maintains ties through encrypted e-mails with Falun Gong's exiled leadership in New York City, where Li Hongzhi now lives. These leaders direct a dwindling pool of committed practitioners, many of whom live on the lam in safe houses. But even this network is fraying. "It's harder to stay in touch, and everybody seems to be watched," says New York-based spokeswoman Gail Rachlin...
...their message out through followers like a woman in her 30s who met recently with TIME. An accountant for a foreign company in Beijing, she secretly uses her firm's overseas data line to read Falun Gong's website. In early January she found an essay by Li Hongzhi called "Beyond the Limits of Forbearance." Written at the time the demonstrations were starting to ebb, the essay urged more dramatic actions against the "evil" of the crackdown. "I copied it to a CD-ROM and gave it to everyone I know," she says. Through such networks, Li's words have...
...part, Falun Gong continues to claim that it has no overarching political agenda. Still, the group has taken to describing Jiang Zemin as a "demon worshipper" infected with "Mad Power disease." And on January 1, its mysterious master, New York-based Li Hongzhi, upped the ante by releasing a curious scripture that appeared to allow violence in extreme cases when protesting ill treatment. For some Falun Gong followers, the words were a welcome call to arms. "It is not in Falun Gong's nature to be violent," says a retired teacher, who was arrested last year for her ties...
...gentle and somehow calming, and not suspecting anything, you went back the next morning. After several sessions, you were offered the book written by their "master," Li Hongzhi. It was about self-control and Buddhist enlightenment, written in a chatty style that was not hard to understand, and it cost only $2. The group would read and discuss parts of it after the exercises, so you bought a copy. What you didn't know was that you were being watched--that you and millions like you were already caught in the net of China's biggest internal security operation since...