China’s Misguided Crackdown

What better way for China’s leaders to get ready for the 50th anniversary of the Communist Revolution on Oct. 1 than with a show trial to reaffirm that whatever else may have changed in the People’s Republic, intolerance of dissent endures.

Orders have been issued to try the leading members of the Falun Gong movement and to punish them harshly for what officials insist was an effort to overthrow the government. On April 25, more than 10,000 members of Falun Gong surrounded a government compound in Beijing to demand official recognition. The regime was caught by surprise and clearly alarmed. On July 22 it banned Falun Gong, accusing it of corrupting people’s minds and subverting national stability.

The movement may have 10 million or more members in China, including more than a thousand identified as government officials. Along with ordering prosecution of its leaders, the government is waging a campaign to force those adherents to end their ties with Falun Gong.

Falun Gong has no visible political agenda. A blend of Buddhism and Taoism, it emphasizes traditional relaxation exercises and leading a moral and abstemious life. As so often with social movements with religious elements, it has emerged and gathered strength at a time of sweeping social change and widespread longing for spiritual satisfaction.

The threat to “social stability” that the government sees apparently stems from the sect’s ability to give its members a sense of fulfillment that the regime can’t provide.

The trial of Falun Gong leaders will lack the high drama of the bloody confrontation between the government and thousands of its critics in Tiananmen Square a decade ago. But it will offer yet more sad evidence of how China’s rulers continue to equate nonconformity with political sabotage, and of their determination to use the full might of the state to punish dissent.