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Falun Gong and the Future of China | 
 enlarge | Author: David Ownby
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $13.00
You Save: $16.95 (57%)
New (20) Used (6) from $13.00
Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 271262
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 312
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0195329058
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.51
EAN: 9780195329056
ASIN: 0195329058
Publication Date: April 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: An unused copy, bright, tight and unmarked. (gr)
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Product Description
On April 25, 1999, ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners gathered outside Zhongnanhai, the guarded compound where China's highest leaders live and work, in a day-long peaceful protest of police brutality against fellow practitioners in the neighboring city of Tianjin. Stunned and surprised, China's leaders launched a campaign of brutal suppression against the group which continues to this day. This book, written by a leading scholar of the history of this Chinese popular religion, is the first to offer a full explanation of what Falun Gong is and where it came from, placing the group in the broader context of the modern history of Chinese religion as well as the particular context of post-Mao China.
Falun Gong began as a form of qigong, a general name describing physical and mental disciplines based loosely on traditional Chinese medical and spiritual practices. Qigong was "invented" in the 1950s by members of the Chinese medical establishment who were worried that China's traditional healing arts would be lost as China modeled its new socialist health care system on Western biomedicine. In the late 1970s, Chinese scientists "discovered" that qi possessed genuine scientific qualities, which allowed qigong to become part of China's drive for modernization. With the support of China's leadership, qigong became hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s, as charismatic qigong> masters attracted millions of enthusiastic practitioners in what was known as the qigong boom, the first genuine mass movement in the history of the People's Republic.
Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi started his own school of qigong in 1992, claiming that the larger movement had become corrupted by money and magic tricks. Li was welcomed into the qigong world and quickly built a nationwide following of several million practitioners, but ran afoul of China's authorities and relocated to the United States in 1995. In his absence, followers in China began to organize peaceful protests of perceived media slights of Falun Gong, which increased from the mid-'90s onward as China's leaders began to realize that they had created, in the qigong boom, a mass movement with religious and nationalistic undertones, a potential threat to their legitimacy and control.
Based on fieldwork among Chinese Falun Gong practitioners in North America and on close examinations of Li Hongzhi's writings, this volume offers an inside look at the movement's history in Chinese popular religion.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Pretentious language, hard to follow narrative July 17, 2008
R. Brown
The one other reviewer (to date) of this book may well be correct in rating 5 stars from an academic viewpoint. But for the casual reader this is definitely not the book to buy.
I am fairly well read, and a college graduate with a few minor writing credits to my name. Nonetheless, I found the language pretentious. For example, the author refers to coining a "neologos", a word which doesn't even appear in my dictionary but - as far as I could determine from the context - probably translates to "coin a phrase". So why not just say that?
To make matters worse, sentences are often long and complex, making points difficult to follow. Unless you have a serious academic interest in Falun Gong, you're probably not going to want to work that hard. I began to lose interest before reaching the end of Chapter 1, skimmed a few subsections in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, then finally gave up altogether. It is rare for me not to finish a book once I've started it.
I should have taken warning by the fact that this title was not available in any public library in Ohio (I try to preview books by unfamiliar authors before I buy them). But I really am interested in the topic, so decided to risk it. However, for me at least, purchasing this book was a mistake. I would only recommend it to someone who is writing a research paper. Other readers will probably be disappointed.
A more accessible book on Falun Gong is "Falun Gong: The End of Days", by Maria Hsia Chang. Though not perfect (and somewhat trivialized by the author of this particular title), it offers less history and more about the actual beliefs of Falun Gong.
 An Important Overview by a Balanced Historian, Examining The Movement's Impact on China -- and the World May 11, 2008
David Crumm (Canton, Michigan)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As a specialist in reporting on religion for more than 20 years, I'm well aware that the toughest challenge in American news media is discerning the size, shape and scope of emerging religious movements.
New groups emerge on the global stage every year. Discerning even the most basic facts about them is incredibly difficult -- given the nature of religious authority and the lack of methods for fact checking that are commonly used by journalists in realms such as sports, business or government. This challenge is even tougher when movements emerge from countries distant from the U.S. -- in an era when American news companies are slashing travel budgets. The challenge becomes almost impossible when language barriers and powerful government restrictions are added to the mix.
That's why a globally important movement like Falun Gong rises and falls in American consciousness and its story transforms strangely over time -- if we hear anything at all about the movement, that is.
When Falun Gong emerged on the global stage in the 1990s, I was among the first newspaper reporters to write about local groups springing up in public parks. In that phase, as reporters, we enjoyed writing about this emerging story. It featured Chinese-American immigrants, many of them successful and articulate professionals in engineering and other technical fields, who devoted hours to graceful exercises and meditation in beautiful natural settings.
Falun Gong also was an international news story when the movement confronted the Chinese government in Beijing. In recent years, claims have rippled through news media about the imprisonment, torture and even the killing of followers in China. If this story intrigues you, I strongly recommend historian David Ownby's balanced overview of this movement and its impact.
Ownby clearly understands that he's stepping out onto infamously thin ice. His Preface is a cautionary note to all sides related to Falun Gong, arguing that he's trying to take a neutral stance.
Reading his 235-page overview of the movement, as best I can tell, he's done a very good job. And, what's especially important about this book, is that there's little else that's as current and as carefully documented as Ownby's volume. Knowing that many readers will want to take apart this book and "read more," he adds an Appendix on global immigration, notes on his sources, a 14-page bibliography including Web links, plus a full index to the book for quick access and cross referencing details.
Ownby himself praises the other significant choice, at the moment, David Palmer's Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China -- and makes it clear where his own interpretations tend to diverge. I would say that the biggest difference between the books, from the everyday reader's point of view, is that Palmer looks at the larger Qigong movement since the 1940s and explores Falun Gong within that context. Ownby's book is focused entirely on Falun Gong -- both in China and in the Chinese diaspora.
With rising American interest in China -- not only in relation to the 2008 Olympics, but also from every indication that China is becoming one of the next global superpowers -- understanding a catalytic movement like Falun Gong is as important as understanding, say, the role of Protestant culture in the U.S.
This also could be a good choice for small groups, if your group is particularly interested in global culture and international relations.
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