FALUN GONG/Falun Dafa

[GeneChing]

HIS HOLINESS
The Canadian beauty queen barred from entering China met with the Dalai Lama


Anastasia Lin at the departure hall of Hong Kong Airport in November 2015. (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)

WRITTEN BY Josh Horwitz
May 03, 2016

Anastasia Lin, the Canadian Miss World candidate and activist, recently returned to Toronto from a trip to India during which she visited the Dalai Lama.
On April 28 Lin posted a photo of herself dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing in McLeod Ganj, a part of India with a large Tibetan population and where the Tibetan government-in-exile resides. The following day she posted pictures on Facebook of a ceremony she attended at the Dalai Lama Temple:


(Facebook/Anastasia Lin)

And of herself on her way to meet the Dalai Lama:


(Facebook/Anastasia Lin)

Lin says that her trip was arranged with the help of Yang Jianli, a US-based activist who participated in the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. She tells Quartz that during the course of her meeting with the Dalai Lama, the two discussed how to combat indifference among people toward the human rights of minority groups.
“I asked him what does he think is missing to get people to care,” says Lin. “His Holiness said that through educating people, human nature will get us there. It was a very vague answer. I guess I’ll have to grow a few years older to understand that.”
Lin moved to Canada when she was 13 years old. She became a human rights activist as she entered adulthood, publicly voicing support for the Falun Gong movement (she is a practitioner), Tibet, and other causes. She drew international media attention last November when she was denied entry into mainland China from Hong Kong, where she was boarding a plane to represent Canada in the 2015 Miss World contest.
At the time, the Miss World Organization did not respond to media enquiries surrounding Lin’s effective barring from the competition—perhaps due to its close ties with the government in Sanya, the Chinese city that’s hosted the contest six times since 2003.
Lin says that she has accepted Miss World Canada’s invitation to compete once again in this year’s competition. She tells Quartz that she doesn’t harbor any ill will toward the London-based Miss World Organization after last year’s incident, but wishes more businesses would stand up for their principles when possible.
“How many business have we seen stand up to China in the past decade? Probably Google, but who else?” she says. “I know it’s difficult for a business when they don’t have some kind of power backing in the form of a government. If they don’t say anything, it’s sort of accepted by the world. But if they do, they’ll make history.“

Way to win points with the PRC.

[GeneChing]

Anyone who has seen Shen Yun will understand. I haven't seen it myself as way too many who have have commented on its heavy-handed propagandist content. Anyone here seen it yet?

New York dance troupe says China banned shows over Falun Gong links
The troupe has accused China’s government of forcing cancellation of shows in Seoul because of its links to a spiritual movement Beijing calls an ‘evil cult’


Falun Gong practitioners in Sydney, Australia. The Chinese government maintains that the dance troupe is ‘a political tool’ of the movement. Photograph: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images
Alan Yuhas @alanyuhas
Friday 6 May 2016 15.02 EDT Last modified on Saturday 7 May 2016 10.02 EDT

A New York-based dance troupe has accused China of forcing the cancellation of its shows in South Korea over its links to a banned spiritual movement that Beijing calls “an evil cult” intent on “mind control”.

Shen Yun, a performing company affiliated with the Falun Gong movement, accused China’s government of shutting down their shows in Seoul. The Chinese government maintains that the troupe is “a political tool” of Falun Gong.

This week a Seoul court let a theater cancel four shows by the company, which provided a translation of the court order. The venue, KBS Hall, is owned by Korea’s national broadcasting company, one of the few companies Beijing lets air foreign television in China.

The court order cited a letter from the Chinese embassy in Seoul, which warned the theater about “a huge loss” should China revoke broadcasting rights. Shen Yun also provided a copy of the January letter, written on embassy letterhead.

The legal battle over the shows began when the company that booked Shen Yun asked the courts to let the troupe perform over the theater’s cancellation.

In reply to a request for comment, the Chinese government in Washington sent a link to a page about Shen Yun’s links to the “anti-society cult” Falun Gong, and said the movement’s founder, Li Hongzhi, ordered the performances.

According to the troupe, a Seoul court said on 19 April that they could perform, but then reversed its decision on 4 May after another letter from the Chinese embassy.

“They’ve sent these kinds of letters around the world many times before to theaters and to government officials,” said Leeshai Lemish, “master of ceremonies” for the company. Lemish said that not only had thousands of tickets sold for the four planned performances, but that the company would now have to endure travel and hotel costs for its 80-some members.

Falun Gong was banned in China in 1999, and human rights groups have for more than a decade criticized Beijing for repressing practitioners and mischaracterizing the movement with the “evil cult” language.

Lemish also said that the letters follow a pattern of harassment and intimidation by Chinese government officials, dating back to the company’s inception in 2006. Most of these attempts to shut down performances have gone in vain, he said, and a handful have seen documents leaked to the public.

In 2008, for instance, China’s consulate general in Los Angeles wrote a letter to a local official saying that certain dances “defame China’s image in the international community and undermine the development of US-China relations”. The local government rejected the call to cancel the performances.

Beijing’s outposts abroad have also taken their opposition to Shen Yun public over the years. In 2009 China’s consulate in Chicago called the troupe “a political tool” of “evil cult Falun Gong”.

The consulate then described some of Shen Yun’s songs and dances, which mimic qigong – slow, meditative exercises practiced by many Buddhists and Taoists. Consulate officials accused Shen Yun of “propaganda” that uses a message of compassion and peace to disguise “the truth and to realize their evil purpose of exerting mind control over them”.

In 2000 the embassy in Washington DC accused Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, of tax evasion, and said his prophecies drove people so “insane” that they “even committed suicide or killed their loved ones”.

The consulate also objected to Shen Yun’s publicizing “the ‘persecution’ on Falun Gong”.

Chinese adherents have said that thousands of practitioners have been detained, abused and even killed since 1999. Beijing has repeatedly rejected visa requests for practitioners living abroad, including for Shen Yun.

“We’re very open about the fact that there’s a connection between Shen Yun and Falun Gong,” Lemish said, admittedly that “several performers are practitioners” and that shows do “depict the persecution of Falun Gong and the courage of Falun Gong practitioners”.

But he insisted that those sections are “not the majority of the performance”, but rather “just a part of the legends and genesis of Chinese culture as it goes through different dynasties, cultures, ethnic groups, into contemporary China”. The troupe’s mission, according to Lemish, is to “revive this lost heritage, a very spiritual world”.
“They’re opposed to it because we’re putting on stage something that they’ve spent the last 17 years pretending isn’t happening,” he added.

Lemish also said that the troupe has felt fewer attempts to cancel shows in recent years, perhaps because of western officials’ tendency to ignore censorship demands. The letters were indicative of the communist party’s tense and often confrontational relationship with religious groups, he said, as well as “the long arm of Chinese censorship” that seeks to silence the Dalai Lama, artist Ai Weiwei and others.
“All of this is actually quite funny if you’re not stuck in a hotel and supposed to be performing.”

[mawali]

In my local area, they seem to own the college/university circuit as most of the performances occur at those sites. Sometimes they are booked with, and through performing arts venues.
As I mentioned in an earlier thread, yes, I used to go to their 'meetings" but the propaganda was so thick that I see them in a different light today.

[GeneChing]

Keep in mind, this is Epoch Times, a Falun Gong associated press.

This Chinese Woman Was Subject to Medieval-Style Torture in Prison for 3 Years
By Frank Fang, Epoch Times | May 16, 2016 Last Updated: May 16, 2016 10:02 pm


Wang Yuqing, of Qitaihe City in China’s northern province of Heilongjiang, tells how she was tortured in prison in China between 2003 and 2006. (Minghui.org)

For nearly three years, a Chinese woman withstood abuse and torture from prison guards and her fellow inmates for refusing to give up her faith.

Wang Yuqing, 43, of Qitaihe City in China’s northern province of Heilongjiang, was incarcerated at Heilongjiang Women’s Prison from September 2003 to March 2006, according to Minghui.org, a clearinghouse for information about the persecution of Falun Gong in China.

During this time, she was “handcuffed from behind, held in isolation, handcuffed and hung up, and tortured by other means,” according to an account by Wang that was only recently published to Minghui.

Wang was imprisoned for practicing Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline that combines slow moving exercises with teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice has been persecuted since July 1999, when Chinese Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin ordered a sweeping suppression of it because he felt threatened by Falun Gong’s popularity. According to official figures, there were an estimated 70 million Falun Gong practitioners just before the persecution.

Soon after arriving in Heilongjiang Women’s Prison, Wang Yuqing was shocked to learn that inmates sometimes carried electric batons and were made to help the prison guards persecute Falun Gong practitioners. During one so-called “physical training session,” Wang and other practitioners were forced to run in circles under the watchful eyes of baton-wielding inmates. When the practitioners got tired and slowed down, the prison guards and other inmates would hurl batons, water bottles, and verbal insults in their direction.

Initially, Wang refused to put on prison uniform or answer roll call because she believed that she had committed no crime in keeping her faith. To make Wang renounce her belief, the prison guards handcuffed her right arm over her shoulder to a bed frame, and got other inmates to violently force on her prison uniform.

In another insistence, the prison guards handcuffed one of her hands to a lower bed frame, and the other hand to the higher bed frame of a bunk bed. In this position, Wang couldn’t sit, stand, or squat.

For seven months in 2004, Wang was made to occupy a tiny prison guard office with 30 other Falun Gong practitioners, and at least one practitioner was denied the use of the bathroom and had to relieve herself in that room.

Wang’s family members were allowed to visit her, but she was forbidden from telling them about how she was being mistreated in prison. “You will be denied family visits if you continue saying those things,” Wang recalled a prison guard telling her when she tried to inform her elder sister about her sufferings.

Most chillingly, the prison guards had at the end of 2004 instructed five inmates to forcibly pin Wang down so that they could draw her blood. Investigators of live organ harvesting allegations note that the Chinese authorities are known to draw blood from Falun Gong practitioners to build up an organ donation bank for transplant surgery.

According to Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, a global humanitarian watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., the number of Falun Gong practitioners that have been subjected to forced organ harvesting is estimated to be more than 100,000.Wang Yuqing, of Qitaihe City in China’s northern province of Heilongjiang, tells how she was tortured in prison in China between 2003 and 2006. (Minghui.org)

[GeneChing]

September 6, 2016 11:04 pm JST
Falun Gong battle moves to US court
KRISTIANO ANG, Contributing writer


A woman passes a row of newspaper vending machines, including one for Epoch Times, on a New York street. (Photo by Kristiano Ang)

NEW YORK - Intriguing details are emerging about a civil lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court in Brooklyn in search of an answer a decades-old question: Is the Falun Gong a religion or a cult?

The complaint stems from a series of alleged incidents as far back as 2008, when the Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance (CACWA), a group whose members have been praised by Chinese state media, was incorporated in New York.

The federal court lawsuit was filed in March 2015, but certain details have only recently become available following a lower court decision to make public select documents related to the case on the grounds that the public's right to access the information outweighs the plaintiffs' desire for privacy.

In the suit, 11 Falun Gong members and two individuals who say they were mistaken for adherents allege that at least four people associated with the CACWA have engaged in an "ongoing campaign of violent assaults, threats, intimidation, and other abuses" to deprive them of their rights to practice and promulgate Falun Gong beliefs.

The Falun Gong is a Buddhist and Taoist-tinged practice that includes qigong exercise and meditation; it was outlawed as a cult in mainland China in 1999, but the alleged incidents took place thousands of miles away in Flushing, a Chinese enclave in the New York City borough of Queens.

The lawsuit has attracted the attention of U.S. constitutional scholars and human rights activists because its ramifications could extend beyond the metropolis. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to free speech and says, among other things, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The 13 plaintiffs consist of U.S., Chinese and Hong Kong citizens who reside in the U.S. states of New York and Maryland and in Canada. In their complaint, they say that the four named defendants, two men and two women, all of whom are believed to reside or work in Queens, along with other unknown persons, engaged in behavior that included death threats and beatings that led the plaintiffs justifiably to fear imminent bodily harm or death.

They list more than a dozen incidents where one or more of the defendants are said to have struck them, harassed them or threatened to "strangle all of [them] to death" when they were handing out Falun Gong materials, participating in a Lunar New Year parade, or just walking down the street.

In one instance, a plaintiff alleges that she was told that "the United States cannot protect you," and that she was on a Chinese embassy blacklist and would be "disappear[ed]." Another plaintiff said he was surrounded by a mob of Chinese Communist Party loyalists and CACWA members who raised their fists and yelled "Down with the evil cult" at him.

The plaintiffs seek an injunction against the defendants that would prevent them from coming within 15.24 meters of them and the Falun Gong spiritual center in Flushing, situated in a bustling spot in the neighborhood's main thoroughfare. They are also asking for financial damages.

Terri Marsh, the plaintiffs' lawyer, declined to make her clients available for interviews. She and her co-counsel, Joshua Moskovitz, did not respond to repeated requests for further comment.

Defense lawyer Tom Fini called the lawsuit an attempt by the Falun Gong to suppress those who disagreed with their beliefs. "My clients want the right to say that the Falun Gong has irrational beliefs, but that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with each other," he said in an interview.

Aliens and levitation

Among the "irrational beliefs" he cited were claims made by Li Hongzhi, the Falun Gong's U.S.-based founder, that aliens had introduced computers and airplanes to human society and that he could levitate -- a power also claimed by the celebrity magician David Copperfield.

Fini has attempted -- unsuccessfully -- to subpoena Li, a reclusive figure who is believed to reside in New York state and has been spotted at Falun Gong events in Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

Fini also called the allegations of violence exaggerated, saying that they were, at most, scuffles on the street. "It's not unlike how Trump supporters get into scuffles with young people voting for Bernie," Fini said, referencing U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders, the runner-up for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. "No one gets hurt or goes to the hospital."

Once tolerated by the Chinese authorities the movement was classified as a "cult" and outlawed by President Jiang Zemin, the predecessor but one of current Chinese President Xi Jinping. Human rights groups such as the International Coalition to End Organ Pillaging in China say Beijing's crackdown includes measures such as forced organ transplants.

Falun Gong beliefs are still practiced and proselytized by the overseas Chinese community in places such as Taiwan and the U.S. Shen Yun, an affiliated dance group, performs at major venues such as Carnegie Hall in New York, and kiosks distributing the Epoch Times, a pro-Falun Gong newspaper, are commonplace throughout Manhattan, the heart of New York.

The New York Falun Gong adherents say that the CACWA's actions are an extension of the Chinese government's continuing crackdown. They assert that the CACWA is an offshoot of that campaign and that Michael Chu, the co-chairman of the alliance and one of the named defendants, also leads a Chinese state body that "monitors" the behavior of overseas Chinese communities. The Chinese consulate general in New York did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Chu, a Taiwan-born immigrant, is a prominent figure in the Flushing community, nicknamed the "Mayor of Flushing." A flattering New York Times profile and an article in China Daily, China's English language mouthpiece, detailed how Chu created and leads a neighborhood watch group that works with the police to maintain safety in Flushing.

The Epoch Times has branded Chu a servant of Beijing and a purveyor of hate. The pro-Falun Gong publication also alleges that Chu's neighborhood watch collaborates with the CACWA.

Fini said it was ironic that "instead of being happy that everybody has freedom, the Falun Gong's biggest problem is being called a cult." He said the case is not about religious freedom, arguing that the Falun Gong freely publishes a newspaper in the U.S. and is unhindered in carrying out activities such as an annual parade in midtown Manhattan.

"It is ridiculous to suggest that my clients are interfering with their rights to practice [their religion]," he said. "This case is about free speech rights that are part of the tradition of our nation. Welcome to America."

"Down with the evil cult"

[wolfen]

"Down with the evil cult" ...a religion or a cult?

For many ,neither. As many people know the Falun Gong was kicked out of China for being a major political opposition to the CPC dictatorship. Still today that is the reason many outside China support Falun Gong, nothing to do with chi gong or religion.

The question could well be , "Is the CPC an atheist religion or an evil cult?"

So the following article decides to attack the Falun Gong instead of the CPC, the reason that they chose the CPC side is being that CPC has a lot more money and guns than Falun Gong. However, the article could have just as easily attacked the CPC because.....

NEW YORK - Intriguing details are emerging about a civil lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court in Brooklyn in search of an answer a decades-old question: Is the Falun Gong a religion or a cult?
...

The 13 plaintiffs consist of U.S., Chinese and Hong Kong citizens who reside in the U.S. states of New York and Maryland and in Canada. In their complaint, they say that the four named defendants, two men and two women, all of whom are believed to reside or work in Queens, along with other unknown persons, engaged in behavior that included death threats and beatings that led the plaintiffs justifiably to fear imminent bodily harm or death.

They list more than a dozen incidents where one or more of the defendants are said to have struck them, harassed them or threatened to "strangle all of [them] to death" when they were handing out Falun Gong materials, participating in a Lunar New Year parade, or just walking down the street.

In one instance, a plaintiff alleges that she was told that "the United States cannot protect you," and that she was on a Chinese embassy blacklist and would be "disappear[ed]." Another plaintiff said he was surrounded by a mob of Chinese Communist Party loyalists and CACWA members who raised their fists and yelled "Down with the evil cult" at him.

The article could have just as easily attacked the CPC because.....
because...
Because everything listed there, is widely known to be the tried and true tactics of the CPC. The CPC was doing exactly this to Chinese dissidents worldwide long before the Falun Gong even existed. They did the same thing to Chinese protestors and dissidents all over the world post 6-4, 1989 Tiananmen (second) massacre. It was then that the attitude of the CPC came out that they generally thought all Chinese belonged to China, the overseas Chinese must toe the line as well as Prison Camp China. "One Chinese people, one China, One PLA , One CPC".
...
So of course they funded the CACWA to persecute the Falun Gong and most probably threw in a few of their agents. Why wouldn't they? There is no off switch on a tiger.



I hope to see the Shen Yun 神韻 next year. The brochures look lovely. What's the big deal with propaganda? How can propaganda against a totalitarian state that operates behind a wall of darkness be "heavy handed"? Can the propaganda be worse than the reality? Maybe, but why care? Reality is bad enough...
So Jiang Qing had the Model Operas, Revolutionary Operas and Shen Yun is the Counter-Revolutionary Opera.
I wouldn't care Either way, I just watch performances in context.
North Americans are deluged with propaganda 24/7 from a lying deceitful MSM, not used to it yet? Maybe they could just post trigger warnings for the New Age Snowflakes that the propaganda will not be their regularly scheduled propaganda.

Lemish also said that the troupe has felt fewer attempts to cancel shows in recent years, perhaps because of western officials’ tendency to ignore censorship demands.

Laughworthy. Let's see - pulling news stories, (down the memory hole never existed), firing reporters, cancelling planned documentary series.. some of the things I've noted. Our totalitarians are almost as bad as their totalitarians. For the sake of business interests Western Governments have kowtowed to CPC censorship requests, doesn't matter which party is in power, it's the Globalists (power elite) behind it.
...
Shen Yun lost performing venues with a PC Government in Alberta which was doing business with the CPC for one example.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/...rticle4216409/

Alberta ousts Shen Yun Performing Arts from two provincially owned venues

VANCOUVER — The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, May 16, 2012 7:52PM EDT

After going public with allegations of improper treatment at Calgary’s Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Shen Yun Performing Arts has been told by the province to find another venue for its shows, which had been planned for the provincially owned Jubilee auditoria in Calgary and Edmonton next year.

...

Yang said that while they don’t have evidence, they believe the unseen hand of the Chinese government is behind the ban, twisting the arms of Alberta politicians to squelch dissent by proxy.

I know where the evidence is. It is where it usually is , it is buried face down in the Taklamakan desert with it's hands tied behind it's back and a bullet in the back of it's head. I mean really! Evidence!. The same globalists that own the Canadian media are the ones doing business investment (oil and real estate) with the Chicoms and other unsavory folk like the Russians (Russian Mobsters) , Islamic foreign Finance (media investments).
So you have to ask the wolves for the evidence of who ate the chickens.

I would guess that they were being hassled in the first place because of the CPC. The mandate of a democratic government would be to protect its own citizens and artistic groups from foreign interests rather than do the opposite. What dreams may come.

Way to win points with the PRC. ... Re: The Canadian beauty queen barred from entering China met with the Dalai Lama

Why would opponents of the CPC want to "make points"? You don't make points with a superior ruthless enemy, you crush them or they crush you or you stay out of the way. So when dealing with a stronger enemy mostly you can just kowtow to them or try to be invisible.
The Gong Dynasty has ruled China for over 65 years with an iron fist. So nobody is crushing the CPC so if somebody wants to openly criticize the CPC they have to do it from the outside of the country. The most usefulness of that is just to keep the memory alive or make a reminder to people what the CPC really is. Not that Westerners care too much these days as their own democracies are collapsing and they don't seem to care enough to show up for their own future.
But it is a small effort to keep the memory alive, Torch-carry-worthy.


If you are going to criticize China then you would want to be barred or else you might end up in one of those black prison holes in Beijing. I would suspect that the idea was to get barred from entry. Being invited in would be like the scene in Goodfellas where Jimmy is sending Karen down the alleyway most likely to get whacked .
Something like .."Yeah just go down the alley , go in the open door and choose some dresses"...
...
No don't go down the alley. Don't make points with the CPC, don't go into foreign dictatorships like Iran, China etc, oppose from the outside and exercise your second amendment rights in America.


.

[bawang]

magic wheel cult is an example of the fading of the past and failure of the upholders of the past. magic wheel began as a white lotus offshoot meant to instigate and cause chaos, but with the aim of ultimately restore idealistic aspects of feudal chinese society. it ended up both being money scamming AND collaborating with foreign influence to destabilize china. this is a great shame to white lotus and i doubt theyll ever recover but who knows.

white lotus these days are creating christianity themed cults. magic wheel is old news now

[GeneChing]

Barred from China and silenced in the US, this beauty queen isn't backing down
By James Griffiths, CNN
Updated 3:24 AM ET, Tue January 10, 2017

Hong Kong (CNN) Anastasia Lin just wanted her father to see her face.
Prevented from taking part in Miss World 2015 when China refused to allow her to enter the country, where the final was being held, she tried again this past December.
The Canadian was under no illusions about coming home with the 2016 crown. Getting on stage would be enough: the Miss World final is broadcast around the globe, including in her native China, where her father has been harassed and prevented from leaving.
In the end she appeared on screen for all of six seconds, during her introduction. For the rest of the show she was tucked away at the back of the crowd of contestants, or at the corners of the stage.
"It was really too naive to think that my father could see me," Lin said.
If she is slightly bitter, it's with good reason. Her sliver of screen time was bought with months of practice and rehearsal, and, most painfully for an outspoken human rights activist, her silence.
During the competition, Lin said she was placed under a communication blackout and forbidden from speaking to journalists, part of what analysts say is a pattern of western companies cooperating with China to silence critics overseas.
Miss World chairwoman Julia Morley said the organization did "our best to assist Miss Lin and have done absolutely nothing to prevent her doing everything she wanted to do."



Good little Communist


Chinese students wearing the uniform of the Young Pioneers.

Lin, 26, was born in China's Hunan province. As a child, she wore the iconic red scarf of the Young Pioneers and vowed to "struggle for the cause of Communism."
One of her duties in the state-run youth organization was to corral other children to watch propaganda broadcasts, which at the time were intently focused against Falun Gong.
The spiritual movement, which has roots in the ancient Chinese meditative martial art qigong, exploded in popularity in the 1990s, growing to an estimated 30 million members by the end of the decade, according to the US State Department.
In 1999, after upwards of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners staged a peaceful demonstration in Beijing -- the largest mass protest the Chinese capital had seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre a decade before -- the movement was banned and a brutal crackdown launched, with tens of thousands of people arrested.
Now a prominent spokeswoman against the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, Lin said she was largely unaware of the crackdown at the time. It wasn't until she moved to Canada at age 13 that she "learned that what were told in China was completely different to reality."


Contestants on stage during Miss World 2016 in Washington DC.

Speaking out

"I didn't start as an activist at all," Lin said.

As a teenager, she was focused on acting and modeling, eventually studying theater at the University of Toronto.
It was there that she was approached by a Chinese producer who was looking for someone to play the role of a student killed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Thousands of children died during the disaster, as shoddily built schools collapsed on top of them.
"He said they couldn't find anyone to play this role, because it was too sensitive," Lin said. "I jumped on the opportunity."
Similar offers quickly followed: "At one point I really had a monopoly on these types of roles."
At the same time, she began competing in beauty pageants to raise her profile and get on-camera experience. She placed third in Miss World Canada in 2013, going on to win the competition outright in 2015.
That's when the trouble started.

Blocked

As Canadian champion, Lin was due to take part in Miss World 2015, to be held that year in Sanya, on China's southern island of Hainan. But as the event approached, her visa request went ignored and she was left hanging, unsure if she could take part in the competition.

She also began receiving distressing messages from her father, who still lives in China. Lin said he was approached by security officers and told that if she didn't "stop her political and human rights activities" her family members would be arrested.
These threats did not stop her speaking out -- "my personality is that I can't really hide things" -- but she and her father no longer talk due to fears for his safety.
Many activists have made similar allegations. Ilshat Hassan, president of the Uyghur American Association -- which advocates for members of China's Turkic-speaking Muslim minority -- told CNN last year that his family has faced repeated harassment over his activism. "Just months ago my mum says please stop what you're doing, or don't call us," he said.
Determined to at least try and take part in Miss World, Lin flew to Hong Kong -- where Canadians do not require a visa to enter -- and attempted to get a flight to Sanya.
"They declared me persona non grata and prevented me from boarding the plane," she said.
Her denial of entry was quickly reported worldwide, massively raising her profile, and earning her a denouncement in the state-run Global Times, which accused her of lacking "reasonable understanding of the country where she was born" and warned her against "being tangled with hostile forces against China."


Miss Puerto Rico Stephanie Del Valle (center) reacts after winning Miss World 2016.

Silenced

Given a second chance to participate in Miss World 2016, Lin vowed to toe the line, not wanting to be denied a place in the final again. "I wanted to do things by the book," she said.
Nevertheless, she chose as her "Beauty with a Purpose" project to shine the light on organ harvesting in China, a topic with which she had become familiar with after acting in the Canadian film "The Bleeding Edge."
In June, a report by former Canadian lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights lawyer David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann claimed, based on publicly reported figures by hospitals, that China was still engaged in the widespread and systematic harvesting of organs from prisoners, including prisoners of conscience.
Arriving in Washington DC, Lin received multiple media requests. Keen to play by the rules, she said she forwarded them all to Miss World officials, only to have them all initially denied, though several were later granted.
Lin said she was also angrily rebuked after an official spotted her chatting with a reporter in the lobby of her hotel.
"They said I was breaking rules, telling lies," she said. "I felt like a criminal."
During this period, at least six other contestants were allowed to give interviews.
After Miss World allowed her to give press interviews, Lin said she was still carefully monitored when talking to reporters.
Morley said that all contestants were chaperoned and denied that Lin was prevented from speaking in any way, saying she "had full access to any interviews without exception."

Censorship

Western companies and governments are facing increasing pressure from Beijing as it attempts to sideline overseas critics, said Amnesty International researcher Patrick Poon.
CNN has previously reported how Beijing has reached across borders in its hunt for dissidents, working with cooperative governments to deport critics back to China.
Economic pressure has also been brought to bear on companies that depend on revenue from China.
Last week, Apple removed the New York Times from its Chinese app store on the grounds the paper's app "(violated) local regulations," a move anti-censorship activist Charlie Smith characterized as "actively enabling infringements of human rights."
"Foreign governments and foreign organizations should rethink whether what they have been doing in kowtowing to China's influence means that they compromise (dissidents') freedom of expression and freedom of movement," Poon said.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
Miss World's Morley denied Lin's accusations that her treatment was related to pressure from Beijing, pointing out that this year's competition, unlike Miss World 2015, did not have any Chinese sponsors.
Despite her experiences, Lin said she was grateful to the competition for giving her a platform.
"It's not Miss World's fault they're so nervous, they're a vulnerable pageant organization," Lin said. "The entire world is economically tied to China."

There are a few more embedded vids that I couldn't cut&paste, assuming you want to know more here.

[GeneChing]

Let's see if this protest will get any press. Please post here if anyone sees anything notable.

At Mar-a-Lago, Falun Gong Practitioners Appeal to Chinese President: 'Bring Jiang Zemin to Justice'
-- Rally calls for an end to 18-year persecution of Falun Gong in China

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Florida Falun Dafa Association
Apr 04, 2017, 14:38 ET
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PALM BEACH, Fla., April 4, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While President Trump hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago on April 6-7, Falun Gong practitioners and supporters will gather on Bingham Island, Palm Beach, to appeal to President Xi to end the 18-year long persecution of Falun Gong and to bring the architect of the persecution—former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin—to justice.

TIME: April 6 & 7, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
LOCATION: Bingham Island, Palm Beach, Florida

Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual discipline which consists of moral teachings, meditation, and qigong exercises. Practitioners strive to live their lives based upon the principles of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. Falun Gong's popularity rose to 70 million practitioners by early 1999, and initially enjoyed the support of the Chinese government due to its health benefits. However, it made some Party members uneasy over the fact that it outnumbered the Communist Party membership. Its revival of traditional values and emphasis on spirituality were perceived by some communist hardliners as a threat to the Party. In July 1999, then-Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin launched an intensive, nationwide campaign to "eradicate" Falun Gong, reflecting the Party's atheism and intolerance of independent, civil society groups.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained extra-judicially in labor camps, detention centers, black jails and prisons, where torture and abuse are routine and death often occurs. According to multiple sources, including Freedom House, the U.S. State Department and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Falun Gong practitioners constitute the largest group of prisoners of conscience in China.

Last June, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed H.Res.343, a resolution that condemns the Chinese Communist regime for harvesting the organs of living Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners of conscience. A Feb. 2017 Freedom House report "found credible evidence suggesting that beginning in the early 2000s, Falun Gong detainees were killed for their organs on a large scale."

President Xi inherited this persecution from his earlier predecessor. Amid his anti-corruption campaigns, President Xi sacked several key perpetrators of the persecution, though ostensibly on corruption charges. While these steps were in the right direction, the persecution still continues. Since 2015, 200,000 Chinese have filed legal complaints charging Jiang with crimes against humanity. Practitioners appeal to President Xi to accept the will of the people to bring Jiang Zemin to justice and end this 18-year brutal persecution.

Among the victims of the persecution is Tampa resident Iris Lu, whose mother was recently sentenced to six years in prison in China for distributing Falun Gong materials. Ms. Lu and other victims of the persecution will be available for on-site interviews.

SOURCE Florida Falun Dafa Association

[GeneChing]

Spiritual movements
China labels Falun Gong a cult, but some Vietnamese still follow the banned practice
By: Bennett Murray - Photography by: Sasha Arefieva - Posted on: January 15, 2018 | Featured
Despite Hanoi banning the Chinese spiritual practice of Falun Gong and labelling it a “counter-revolutionary” cult, hundreds of members still meet in Vietnam’s capital

On any given evening in the Vietnamese capital, about 100 men and women can be found in Hanoi’s Lenin Park carrying out their daily meditative exercises. Relaxing ambient music plays from a loudspeaker as they go through the series of stretches and breathing exercises prescribed by the teachings of their spiritual leader, Li Hongzhi.

The scene appears peaceful, innocuous – but these are Falun Gong members, a group officially banned as a “counter-revolutionary” cult in communist Vietnam. But its members say Falun Gong provides apolitical spiritual salvation. And, despite a lack of scientific evidence, Falun Gong members are convinced that its practices, steeped heavily in traditional Chinese medicine, are a panacea for illness.

“Thanks to the Falun Gong, many people are able to cure themselves from diseases such as cancer or heart diseases,” said Trong Ngoc, a 57-year-old architect who, like many Vietnamese practitioners, discovered Falun Gong online. “Through Falun Gong books, I learnt a lot, including life philosophy and human life philosophy, and the most important is that I can find the real meaning of my life.”

From acceptance to banishment

Founded in China in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong draws heavily on the concept of qigong, a pervasive concept in traditional Chinese medicine that states humans contain a life force known as chi. Maintaining a healthy balance of chi is essential in many Chinese spiritual and medicinal practices, including acupuncture.

Falun Gong embraces those practices in an all-encompassing philosophy, which also draws from Buddhism and Taoism, recorded in the Zhuan Falun, a book by Li that serves as the group’s core spiritual commands.

While initially embraced by the atheistic Chinese government, the movement, having attracted tens of millions of members, quickly grew intolerable to the ruling Communist party.


The exercises performed by the Falung Gong practitioners are aimed at balancing chi and incubating spiritual cultivation

Beijing, which has frequently found itself in antagonistic relationships with religions, particularly loathes non-hierarchal spiritual practices. It prefers religions with clearly defined leaderships, such as the Beijing-controlled Chinese Catholic church, through which the government can issue edicts.

Li stubbornly refused to go along with the government’s attempts to organise Falun Gong in line with its wishes and, in 1998, the movement was deemed “heretical” in China. Falun Gong members, who numbered about 70 million at the time, found themselves on the wrong side of the law and mobilised a rare mass protest movement.

The demonstrations were the last straw for China, which cracked down on Falun Gong in the late 1990s. To this day, public discussion of Falun Gong is taboo and practitioners are regularly imprisoned and, according to unverified allegations from some rights groups and foreign governments, executed for organ harvesting.

Li himself lives in self-imposed exile in the United States.

Falun Gong in Vietnam

The Communist party of Vietnam toed the line of its neighbour to the north and also banned Falun Gong. But followers say enforcement is fairly lax.

“The government is not very welcoming to practising Falun Gong in Vietnam, but me personally, I have not had much trouble,” said Tran Tri, a 48-year-old stock broker.

Hoang Huong, a 35-year-old engineer, said police have tried in the past to prevent Falun Gong from gathering in the parks. “The police interfered and brought pressure to bear upon park managers, then the park managers did things such as build a fence and pretend that it was the area for children to play football,” she said, adding that Falun Gong members responded by dividing into multiple, smaller groups in parks across the city.


Tran Tri, a 48-year-old stockbroker, practises Falun Gong breathing exercises in Hanoi’s Lenin Park

But Nguyen Ha, a 39-year-old economist, works in a government office while openly practising Falun Gong. Ha said no one cared that she was a member of what is technically deemed a banned cult. “I’m a government official, and in my organisation I share about the beauty of Falun Gong,” she said.

As Falun Gong has no formal organisational structure, practitioners are unsure of how many Vietnamese count themselves as members. Unverifiable estimates among members range from 30,000 to 50,000, with many said to be practising at home alone.

Most Falun Gong members interviewed were part of the burgeoning Vietnamese middle class, with practitioners saying that Falun Gong was well suited to white-collar life.

The main Falun Gong ritual is a daily, two-hour meditative exercise routine similar to tai chi. It is usually performed either in the early morning or after work, and can be practised alone or in groups.

Stretches, controlled breathing and meditation predominate the daily exercises, which can put practitioners in a trancelike state in the midst of the routine.

The exercises, which Falun Gong members believe balances chi, are meant to incubate spiritual cultivation throughout the rest of the day.

“In Falun Gong they teach us how to cultivate during our normal life,” explained Tri, adding that spiritual cultivation, the essence of Falun Gong teachings, can be found in day-to-day situations. “If I go to the office, that is not cultivation, but if someone says something bad about me [at work], how I deal with that is cultivation.”


Falun Gong practitioners in Lenin Park, Hanoi

Ha said that while her family does not follow Falun Gong, the practice has nonetheless improved her home life. Prior to joining in 2013, she said that living with her husband’s parents, as is common in Vietnam, was threatening her marriage due to constant conflicts.

“I thought of divorce a million times a day, because I was very unhappy with my family,” she said.

Upon adopting Falun Gong, however, Ha said she was able to reconcile her differences with the in-laws, much to her husband’s delight, as she learned to better manage her anger through qigong. While her husband is not a member himself, Ha said he supports her spiritual life.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Is it a cult?

While Falun Gong dismisses accusations that it is cult-like as Chinese propaganda, some Western critics have also described it as a cult. The US-based Cult Education Institute considers Falun Gong a cult with Li as its leader, arguing that he employs “mind control” techniques on followers. Critics have also accused Li of racism and ****phobia.

But André Laliberté, a political scientist at the University of Ottawa who specialises in Chinese religions’ impact on politics, said the cult label does not carry weight among scholars.

“For the Chinese government, Falun Gong is a cult; many people who practise say it is a spiritual practice; scholars would say it is a religion,” he said, adding that the key components typically associated with cults have not been observed within Falun Gong.

“I don’t believe in the therapeutic virtue of Falun Gong exercise, but I think the [Chinese] government overreacted against those people, often retiree women, who found that meeting to practise these exercises was a nice way to socialise and stay fit,” said Laliberté.


Although the practise is officially banned in Vietnam, members say they get little trouble from authorities

He added that he was unaware of any evidence suggesting that followers are pressured to stay in the practice, while Li himself is no cult leader: “Li Hongzhi lives in exile somewhere in the US, and he has retreated: he is not a charismatic figure.”

In Vietnam, there are few signs of Falun Gong operating as a cult by standard definitions. Members are disorganised with no clear hierarchy, while Li remains a distant, abstract figure.

Vietnam’s Falun Gong do, however, tend to forsake modern medicine in favour of qigong practices – with inconclusive scientific efficacy. All practitioners interviewed by Southeast Asia Globe confirmed they now rely solely on Falun Gong for their health.

“I think Falun Gong and other qigong practices share the same concept: while you practise you can exchange energy inside and energy outside,” said the stock broker Tri, adding that he has not used medicine since the 1990s and has never been seriously ill since.

He also pointed out that it is not just Falun Gong practitioners in Vietnam who forego medicine in favour of traditional practices, adding that he had already abandoned it during his days as a devout Mahayana Buddhist.

Traditional medicine, said Laliberté, is a fact of life throughout East Asia.

“You can’t help getting upset when you juxtapose the horror stories of people denied medical treatment because they could not afford it, cases of medical malpractice etc, and then hear public denunciation of people who prefer to rely on faith healers and alternative practices such as qigong,” he said, adding that Chinese Falun Gong had never seen themselves as enemies of the state.

“People who practised Falun Gong in the 1990s thought they were helping the government by encouraging people to do exercise that would keep them in good health, physically and mentally. Imagine their dismay when they were denounced as a cult,” added Laliberté.

Ultimately, said Tri, Vietnam’s Falun Gong want to be left alone and not treated as a threat. Their spiritual practices, he said, are of no interest to the state.

“We try to tell the truth… why we do this, and why we should not be treated like this.

This article was published in the January edition of Southeast Asia Globe magazine.

Still a tough call. We don't really go here beyond this thread. One of the very first projects of the Tiger Claw Foundation was supporting a play “Antigone Falun Gong” by Cherylene Lee. That drew such a backlash that we had to add the qualifying statement "This was a political commentary play and was not connected to any Falun Gong organization."

[GeneChing]

Persecution in China
60-Year-Old Woman Arrested, Detained Without Trial for Carrying Brochures
By Janita Kan FEBRUARY 23, 2018


Ning Tingyun, 60, has been held against her will for over four months in a detention center in Yushu, China, for carrying brochures containing material sensitive to the Chinese Communist regime. (Screenshot via minghui.org)

A 60-year-old woman was arrested and detained without trial after a police officer found brochures in her possession during a random identification check in Yushu, China. The brochures contained material considered sensitive to the Chinese regime.

Ning Tingyun was on her way to visit her daughter in Shanghai from her home in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. She was stopped by a domestic security police officer when passing through Yushu railway station in Jilin Province on Oct. 15, 2017, reported Minghui.org, a website that documents cases of Chinese state persecution against adherents of the Falun Gong Buddha-school spiritual practice.

The officer carried out an identification check on the woman without producing the proper documentation—an action considered illegal under China’s own legislation. According to Article 15 of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Resident Identity Cards, a police officer may only examine a resident’s identity card “after producing … law-enforcement papers.”

During the check, Ning was flagged as a Falun Gong practitioner in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) database. The officer then proceeded to search Ning’s belongings.

The officer found that Ning was carrying brochures that document the injustices experienced by ordinary Chinese citizens for being associated with Falun Gong. Falun Gong has been a sensitive topic in China since 1999 when then CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a systematic campaign to vilify and destroy the spiritual practice and its estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents.

Ning was arrested and taken to a detention center where she remains in custody. Her case has been sent to the court, but as of mid-February, a trial had still yet to be conducted.

The Crackdown


People practice the Falun Gong, also named Falun Dafa, exercises in a park.

After China’s leadership announced its crackdown on Falun Gong in 1999, Ning was one of thousands who traveled to the CCP’s Central Appeals Office in Beijing to appeal for her right to freedom of belief to be respected, as protected under the Chinese constitution.

However, before Ning could share her personal Falun Gong experience with the government, she was arrested and sent to Jiamusi Forced Labor Camp for one year. Her name was placed on a police blacklist.

After her release from the labor camp, Ning experienced constant harassment from police officers, Minghui.org reported. During one incident, her home was raided by police officers who confiscated her Falun Gong books as well as 2,000 yuan ($315) in cash. She was told it was because she did the Falun Gong qigong exercises out in public.

Ning has also been arrested multiple times for discussing with others the brutality of the CCP’s persecution of her faith.

Ning was first introduced to Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), in 1998 when she was plagued with health problems. She noticed a change in her health after starting the practice at her local park.

Other Falun Gong adherents like Ning have experienced the same type of harassment from police officers in China.

Wang Huijuan, an elementary school teacher who is currently residing in New York, was arrested and detained after Chinese domestic security police found fliers and DVDs exposing the CCP’s disinformation that it spreads to justify its persecution of Falun Gong, reported The Epoch Times.

Wang was held at a detention center and was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison. There, she endured brainwashing, interrogation, physical restraint, beatings, force-feedings, sleep deprivation, and psychological torture in a process the CCP does for the purposes of “thought-reform.”

As for Ning, the 60-year-old’s family members remain extremely worried for her welfare. This Chinese New Year, Ning’s family is waiting desperately to hear any news about her condition.

Frank Fang contributed to this report.

Have I ever mentioned the time I was searched at Beijing airport? They were checking all the magazines I brought for porn. Security completely scattered all the contents of my luggage all across the floor, all my clothes and stuff, and looked at every page of every issue I brought. There's just nothing like entering a country and watching security look at every pair of your underwear.

[David Jamieson]

Next time, bring the unwashed pairs and let them have at it!

[GeneChing]

Confucius Institutes need its own thread, distinct from the Soft, soft and MORE SOFT thread I hijacked for it.

CONFUCIUS INSTITUTES: CHINA’S BENIGN OUTREACH OR SOMETHING MORE SINISTER?
A new documentary paints the image of a non-profit organisation using the guise of education to subvert academic freedom worldwide; others see it as a benign introduction to the Middle Kingdom’s culture, from Chinese food to tai chi
BY ALEX LO
14 JUL 2018



Soft power or sharp power? It’s almost inevitable that such catchy phrases are being used to describe the phenomenal worldwide spread of China’s Confucius Institutes in the past two decades. At last count, they have been set up in more than 140 countries and territories around the world, raising alarm among people already critical of China’s rise and global reach.

Are those institutes benign vehicles for China’s projection of soft power to promote its language and culture, and to improve its international image; or Trojan horses sent to subvert academic freedom and autonomy of teaching institutions at their host countries, and perhaps even to spy on people and recruit agents?


For Doris Liu, a Chinese-Canadian journalist and filmmaker, it’s clearly the latter.

“First, there is the human rights discrimination. Second, it’s academic independence,” she said in an interview with This Week in Asia. “Our fundamental values are at risk or damaged. The institutes teach propaganda by sneaking it into our campuses.”

After an investigation over three years, Liu has produced In the Name of Confucius, a new hour-long documentary that claims to expose such threats posed by the institutes in Canada, the United States and elsewhere.


Doris Liu conducts an interview for her documentary film 'In the Name of Confucius'. Photo: Doris Liu

However, you cannot get a more different response from famed US sinologist David Shambaugh, hardly an apologist for China.

“I see them as quite benign and devoted to their primary mission of teaching language and cultural studies,” he told a panel at the Brookings Institution in March. “Whether it’s film, cooking, tai chi, whatever.”

He said the concept of soft power was coined by US political scientist Joseph Nye in the late 1980s, but more recently the term sharp power, which is used to describe manipulative diplomatic policies, has emerged.

“I personally am still trying to wrap my brain around this term and that concept and whether it applies to China, with a question mark.


David Shambaugh. Photo: internet

“My sense is that it does not apply yet to China. What I see China doing is more what I would call public diplomacy with Chinese characteristics or journalism with Chinese characteristics,” said Shambaugh, who is director of the China Policy Programme at George Washington University.

Whether it’s foreign aid across Africa, investment in South America, or the Belt and Road Initiative, every global move made by contemporary China has come under intense scrutiny and criticism.

The Confucius Institutes have been no different. In many ways, the controversy has been worse since the first institute was opened in South Korea in 2004.

In April, Texas A&M University became the latest North American institution to end its partnership with a Confucius Institute under a cloud of controversy. There have been others over the years worldwide, in countries such as Sweden, France, Germany and Denmark.


Undergraduate student Moe Lewis, left, shows her watercolour painting of peony leaves at a traditional Chinese painting class at the Confucius Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, US. Photo: AP

Despite the often sensational news reports about the closing of Confucius Institutes at those schools, it all amounts to a closure rate of less than 3 per cent, and it’s hard to generalise why it did not work out at schools in those nations.

Liu studied the cases of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Toronto District School Board, the largest school board in Canada, which were the primary focus of her documentary.

In the Name of Confucius has been headlined or featured in indie and documentary film festivals in Canada, Taiwan and the US, and at a human rights forum in Tokyo. It paints a sympathetic portrayal of Sonia Zhao, a Falun Gong follower and former institute teaching assistant whose human rights complaint with Ontario authorities helped shut down the institute at McMaster in 2013.

But in an interview with This Week in Asia, Zhao admitted her intention, and the goal of her Falun Gong supporters, was to shut down the institute from the start rather than simply addressing her personal grievances.

“We wrote to McMaster at first to shut it down, but they didn’t reply, so the tribunal [the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario] was the last option,” she said.


Protesters rally against the so-called contamination from the Confucius Institute in Toronto, Canada. Photo: Doris Liu

“I hope this could (have) a chain effect on other universities in Canada, and was hoping they could shut down too.”

After working a year at the institute, Zhao brought a complaint against the university to the tribunal. The bone of contention concerned a clause in her contract with Hanban, the Chinese national office responsible for the worldwide operations of the organisation and which is part of the mainland’s Ministry of Education.

It states that mainland instructors such as Zhao were hired to teach the Chinese language overseas and could not engage in “illegal activities”, such as being a member of the outlawed Falun Gong religious group. Her complaint alleged discrimination on the grounds of creed, which is illegal in Canada.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Sonia Zhao, a Falun Gong follower, filed a human rights complaint against the Confucius Institute in Ontario, Canada. Photo: Doris Liu

“I was not on my own, I had a lot of people helping me [with the case]. I gave them what I could give,” she said. When asked who “they” were, she admitted they were Falun Gong members in Ontario.

At the time of her hiring on the mainland, she was a postgraduate student specialising in teaching Chinese as a second language.

She taught a year at the institute at McMaster until her contract expired. The tribunal case that followed led to a settlement between Zhao and the university. Its details were never disclosed, but shortly after the two sides settled, the university shut down the institute. Zhao also filed successfully for residency in Canada as a refugee on the grounds that she faced persecution if she returned to China.


Sonia Zhao, a former instructor for the Confucius Institute, said she was trained to avoid politically sensitive subjects such as the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Photo: Reuters

In speaking to This Week in Asia, she claims the institute was engaged in spreading “propaganda” in that only positive views of Chinese culture and China were allowed to be presented and instructors were trained to avoid politically sensitive topics such as Tibet, Taiwan independence and the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The institutes focus on teaching Mandarin, Chinese cooking and calligraphy, and celebrating Chinese culture – as sanctioned by the communist state. Many continue to operate across Canada, despite the McMaster case and a statement in 2013 issued by the Canadian Association of University Teachers calling on all tertiary institutions in cut ties with the organisation.

Most have resisted. Many public schools across Canada also have “Confucius classrooms”, which operate on a smaller scale than the institutes.

However, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) decided not to proceed at the last minute with Confucius classrooms. In 2014, the board was ready to roll out its own programme until a public campaign forced the board to drop the initiative. Former board chairman Chris Bolton, who backed the partnership, had to resign. The board also had to refund the Chinese more than C$200,000 (US$152,000) as an advance subsidy.


A protest against the Tornto District School Board’s affiliation with the Confucius Institutes. Photo: Doris Liu

The successful campaign, in which Zhao and other Falun Gong members took part, is included in the film In the Name of Confucius. Of particular interest is a statement presented to TDSB by Michel Juneau-Katsuya, former head of the Asia-Pacific division of the Canadian government’s Security Intelligence Services. It was full of the most alarming allegations, though no evidence was offered to support his claims, other than his own “professional” experience.

“The Chinese Government and especially the Chinese Intelligence Services are behind this project and these groups,” he said.

“Confucius Institutes have been at the forefront of that intelligence war. To understand the true intentions behind Beijing politics, it is necessary to comprehend how a language school fits into their master plan.”

This included recruiting spies, cultivating agents of influence and the monitoring of dissidents in the Chinese diaspora.



There appears to be a good deal of hysterics and rhetoric against Confucius Institutes in Canada and elsewhere, and because of the global backlash, those institutes often clam up instead of becoming more open and transparent. For example, the Confucius Institute of Toronto and Seneca College did not respond to multiple requests for an interview and comment for this article.

The institutes and their host institutions might have run a smoother public relations operation. After all, Shambaugh estimated China spent US$311 million in 2015 on the language and culture programme, amounting to US$2 billion over 12 years. There are about 5,000 Confucius instructors teaching almost 1.4 million students worldwide. Each institute is provided, usually free of charge, with trained mainland instructors, reading materials and about US$100,000 a year.


A Nigerian student learns to write “I love my home” at the Confucius Institute of the University of Lagos. Photo: Xinhua

China could be spending more than US$10 billion a year on its overall soft power push, Shambaugh said.

Other countries, of course, have state-supported institutions that promote their own language, culture and image: British Councils, France’s Alliance Française, Germany’s Goethe Institute, Italy’s Dante Alighieri Society and Spain’s Cervantes Institute. There is no doubt that those long-standing Western cultural institutions were the original model for Confucius Institutes. But there are several key differences.

While those western institutions take funding directly from their national governments, they operate mostly independently. They also own or rent their premises, classrooms and offices.

But Confucius Institutes deliberately embed their operations and teachings within the host country’s universities, colleges and/or public schools by partnering with them. Local instructors are rarely hired, preferring instead those trained and contracted on the mainland before sending them overseas.

The institutes are globally managed by the Hanban, which is part of the Ministry of Education and is headed by Xu Lin, a vice-minister-level official who sits on the State Council. Such tight control has raised suspicions among those critical of the Chinese government.


Though the terms of her settlement were not made public, the Confucius institute ceased operations in Toronto after Sonia Zhao filed her complain. Photo: Sonia Zhao

Not all China specialists are so suspicious, though.

“On Confucius Institutes, it’s a subject I’ve followed very closely,” Shambaugh said.

“There’s a kind of McCarthyite undertone I sense that is there … I thus far don’t see evidence that they are being politicised. There have been a couple of cases – there’s certainly a lot of publications, a lot of controversy. There have been a couple of closures … But there are nearly 200 Confucius Institutes in the United States. We’ve had less than five controversies, that tells me one thing.

“Secondly, there’s a lot of assumptions and innuendo I find in the reporting. One assumption is that a Confucius Institute … somehow affects the curriculum of Chinese studies the way China is taught on campus: absolutely wrong.

“There’s a complete firewall between Confucius Institutes that teach language and the Chinese – the rest of the faculty and the curriculum on every university campus, across the country. So they have no impact on how Chinese studies are taught, so that’s a flawed assumption that a lot of journalists leap to. They tend to take a couple anecdotal cases and string it together and say here’s a case.”

Shambaugh recommends greater transparency in the way the institutes are operated jointly with their host universities. He said oversight meant the host institution needed to make sure Chinese employment contract conditions did not conflict with the laws of host countries.

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“The contracts between recipient universities and the Hanban are kept confidential by request of the Hanban,” he said. “It’s kept under lock and key in the president’s office of the university. That’s not appropriate.” ■

It's really all about Soft Power. The Falun Gong angle is fascinating.