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ABSTRACT
The paper examines the geopolitics of the Falun Gong (FLG) and how its practices challenge the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authority within the Chinese state. Drawing upon Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of discourse, I analyse the FLG’s scriptures in order to understand how its millennial ideas of ‘telling-truth/saving-life’ and ‘reviving five thousand years of civilization’ have developed since the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ban and crackdown on the FLG since 1999. Based on the FLG’s resources and my fieldwork data, this paper also demonstrates how the concepts of ‘telling-truth/saving-life’ were practised and coordinated globally. This paper presents the dynamic relationship between spirituality and geopolitics. It demonstrates how politics are spiritually interpreted and how critical spiritual discourses are converted to geopolitical practices that challenge the authority of an atheist state.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank all the FLG followers I encountered for their willingness to share their personal experiences and time with me. I learned a lot from their cultivation practices academically and personally. I would like to express my special appreciation and thanks to: Prof. Karen Till for her invaluable encouragement and academic advice throughout my research; anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive criticism; Yulan Hsieh, Yungchen Lin and Luis Alfredo Martinez for their earnest personal support. I bear full responsibility for the contents of this paper.
Notes
1. Whereas the Chinese government broadcast the footage of the self-immolation of FLG followers in Tiananmen Square on January 23, 2001 nationwide as evidence that FLG was an ‘evil cult’, FLG followers outside China denied the self-immolation and claimed that it was staged by the CCP.