Hu Jintao and the Falun Gong
Blayne Bradley
Recently Hu Jintao Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and head of the Central Military Commission began a 5 Nation tour beginning with The United States visiting first Seattle to talk with Bill Gates and other major businessmen before continue to Washington D.C to speak with President George W. Bush. When meeting with George W. Bush there were many events that was making this a bad day for the President of China, the Americans refused to have a state dinner and instead had a luncheon and a host of other breaches of diplomatic protocol.
However none of this could possibly be as bad as when a political Falun Gong activist Wang Wenyi, shrieked at Hu from her vantage point among the press. After a surprisingly long interval, Wang was escorted away by security, leaving Bush embarrassed and Hu less than pleased at being insulted so publicly at a moment of considerable gravity.
What did she yell at him? “Bush stop him” and “Hu your days are numbered!” who is this woman? She is a reporter for the Epoch Times, an Anti-CCP newspaper and the mouthpiece for the Falun Gong. My humble opinion on this matter is what she did is wrong, why? Because freedom of speech has limits, coming onto restricted grounds to yell at a foreign world leader is wrong.
But what is the underlining issue here? The issue is that there is an organization that is attempting to slander the government of the People’s Republic of China, spreading a variety of lies and misconceptions about China and what goes on within China. Why do they do this? Because Falun Gong is a cult, their leader Li Hongzhi believes that he is a God and that by practicing Falun Gong’s meditation techniques you can heal cancer, never have to have to go the hospital, and gain x-ray vision.
The People’s Republic of China doesn’t like cults, especially cults that deny citizens surgery on the belief that this “God figure” can somehow heal them, at first the PRC tolerated them as a religious group like any other in China partly because it was saving money on health care according to former President Hu Yaobang, but a number of incidents made the government change their minds, beginning with a public awareness campaign and then outlawing them all together for being a cult that practices witchcraft.
Next we have the Epoch Times itself, a newspaper that had dedicated itself to slandering the Chinese government, diminishing the accomplishments of the Chinese people and enlarges every single issue and problem within China as being the party’s fault, not considering outside factors and demonizing the CCP for events that have happened more then 50 years ago, and have no bearing today on China’s economic growth or rapidly improving public image and democratization efforts.
China has many problems but also great potential and one should research all the data before leaping to conclusions, the economic and demographic issues in China is something that greatly needs to be studied and attacking its government and insisting that its government be violently overthrown, that all trade ceases, military disarmed etc as the Falun Gong keep insisting upon will only hurt China greatly not hurt it, and I hope that those being deceived by Li Hongzhi come to their senses before someone gets hurt.
