Falungong and Canada's China Policy

Abstract

ZHANG KUNLUN, A FORMER MCGILL UNIVERSITY visiting professor who holds both Canadian and Chinese passports, returned to China on his Chinese passport in 1996 to take care of his ailing mother-in-law. In July 2000, he was detained for one month for performing Falungong exercises in a public park. He was detained again in October, and, in November, he was arrested and sentenced to three years in a labour camp. Luckily for Zhang, family and friends in Canada mobilized, among others, Irwin Cotler, a member of parliament and human rights activist, to lobby Ottawa on Zhang's behalf. Their efforts, and the fact that Team Canada was headed for China in the near future, prompted Ottawa to put pressure on Beijing. Zhang was released, and he returned to Canada in January 2001. His wife, also a Falungong practitioner, who has only landed-immigrant status in Canada, was later permitted to leave China and rejoin her husband in Ottawa.Zhang's case had a happy ending. Nonetheless, it poses thorny problems for Canadian diplomats and foreign policy makers. Back in Canada, Zhang spoke of the torture and the death threats he had endured in the labour camp, and his case is far from unique. Human rights organizations have unanimously condemned China's brutal campaign against the Falungong, and many governments around the world, including Canada's, have expressed their concern.(f.1) Given the number of Chinese-Canadian Falungong practitioners in Canada, there are surely many similar cases among their relatives and friends, particularly if the criteria are enlarged, as in the case of Zhang's wife, to include landed immigrants. More pointedly, many Canadians are uncomfortable with limiting the expression of human rights concerns solely to cases involving Canadian citizens or landed immigrants. If a cause is just, logic suggests, it is surely just for all.But, what if the Falungong is a 'destructive cult,' as Chinese authorities so stridently insist?(f.2) A justifiable concern to see basic principles of human rights respected throughout the world might well be modified were the Falungong found to be guilty of the abuses associated with such groups as the Solar Temple. Doubts about the nature of Falungong allow China's undeniable geopolitical and economic importance to come into play. If the campaign against Falungong occurred in a country of little economic interest to Canada, Canadians could give free rein to their ethical principles without undue concern for the country's commercial fortunes. In the case of China, the unspoken question remains: is defence of Falungong worth the risk of offending China and missing out on the most important market of the next fifty years?This article will not attempt to carry out such complex calculations. Instead, it provides a description of Falungong and the context in which it emerged, which, I hope, goes beyond the summary and highly polarized depictions often found in the media. I write as a specialist in modern Chinese history, with particular expertise in the history of secret societies and popular religions. Since the autumn of 1999, I have been studying Falungong from that perspective, analyzing the writings of the movement's founder, Li Hongzhi, and doing fieldwork among Canadian and American practitioners. This overview may be of some help to those who want to arrive at their own opinion about the nature of Falungong and the Chinese government's campaign against it.My view is that while Falungong teachings contain ideas that may strike some Canadians as strange, even objectionable, there is little in their practice in Canada and the United States that supports the idea that the group is a 'cult' in the general sense of the word. The Chinese government's case against Falungong as a 'cult' is not particularly convincing and will not be convincing until the government allows thirdparty verification of its allegations of Falungong abuses in China. China has essentially reacted out of fear of Falungong's ability to mobilize its followers, an ability demonstrated in late April 1999, when some 10,000 Falungong practitioners came seemingly out of nowhere to surround Communist Party headquarters in Beijing. …