Falun Gong

DISSIDENTS China's rulers can handle. Ban, shoot, suppress or denounce them.The Chinese Communist gerontocracy hunts out anything non-Chinese. That's what Mao Tse-tung said he was doing. Never mind that communism and socialism are Western cultural imports.Beijing also knows how to suppress non-Chinese ethnic majorities in Tibet and Xinjiang. Shut down their institutions and overwhelm them with ethnic Chinese migrants. Pretty straightforward.But what to do about a murky, amorphous, unorganized cult or non-cult with martial arts, healing, meditative and Buddhist components that springs from origins in China's past milleniums and touches many Chinese, even in the leadership, at the innermost core of their souls?

BEIJING -- In the largest protest Beijing has seen since the ill-fated occupation of Tiananmen Square 10 years ago, more than 10,000 followers of a quasi-religious sect surrounded the Chinese leadership compound yesterday demanding freedom to practice their beliefs.The quiet and peaceful demonstration, which broke up late last night, caught China's security apparatus flat-footed at a time when it is on heightened alert to head off just such public protests.In the past six months, the government has cracked down on democracy advocates and closed or suspended various intellectual journals and publishing houses.

WHAT the aged Communist rulers of China should worry about is the downgrading of their government's credit rating by Standard & Poor's, a nonpolitical judgment that the Asian recession has caught up with it.What does give those rulers the most anxiety appears, however, to be a movement called Falun Gong, or Wheel of Law, which keeps doing its thing despite every effort of Beijing. Its thing is breathing, exercise and meditation. Millions are doing it, many in unison, in China and throughout the world.

BEIJING -- An intensifying crackdown against the banned Falun Gong movement has sent its practitioners under cover and led Chinese authorities to schedule a rare news conference in Beijing's Great Hall of the People today to explain why they consider the group so dangerous.The repression could become a serious irritant in U.S.-China relations, a Western diplomat warned. Already, he said, "Falun Gong has become a bigger deal than Taiwan" for China's government.Its leaders consider demonstrations by the popular movement's followers a brazen and at least symbolically serious challenge to the Communist Party's authority.

NEW YORK -- Meet Li Hongzhi, the quiet man whose followers have tripped China's most sensitive security alarms, mostly by showing strength in numbers and solidarity in their morning exercise routines.On this Sunday afternoon, Li is holding court on the 25th floor of a midtown Manhattan hotel. He is 48, about 6 feet tall and dressed smartly but blandly in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie. As he rises to shake hands, one half expects him to begin discussing the advantages of term life insurance.

BEIJING -- It was a stunning moment for the Chinese leadership.Dressed in drab provincial clothes and carrying copies of their leader's manifesto, about 10,000 members of the Falun Gong meditation sect slipped into the capital in April and staged the biggest anti-government demonstration in a decade.In an act that no one seemed to have anticipated, the crowd of mostly middle-aged disciples sat cross-legged in lotus positions outside the vermilion walls of the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, silently protesting the detention of fellow members and asking for official recognition.

MASTER Li Hongzhi teaches how to channel energies. From New York, the leader of the banned meditation and exercise movement, Falun Gong, channels his own energies on the Internet.In their panic at the success inside China of this outlawed body of traditional teaching culled from China's ancient qigong exercises and meditation, the Communist rulers of China have gone bananas.Their draconian crackdown puts to the test the supreme question of the Internet age: whether it is possible to ban any idea, teaching or popular culture when computers and access to the Internet are prevalent -- as they must be in an economy as modern as Beijing wants China's to become.

BEIJING -- The Chinese government continued to press its ban on the influential spiritual group Falun Gong yesterday, detaining more members, assigning police to public parks where they exercise, and temporarily closing part of Tiananmen Square -- the nation's political heart.At least seven police arrived at Ritan Park in the capital's embassy district before 7 a.m. yesterday morning and posted signs warning people not to engage in Falun Gong. Some members came to practice, but left after spotting police, a witness said.

BEIJING -- Before a television audience of millions, retired Communist Party member Liu Shuwen confessed her sins against the state this week as thousands have done before her.A middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair, she told how she had helped Li Hongzhi, head of the now-banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, direct more than 10,000 members to surround the capital's Zhongnanhai leadership compound in April."

BEIJING -- After a week of secret deliberations, China's top legislative body issued a stringent new "anti-cult" law yesterday designed to aid the government's crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement.Yesterday, for the sixth straight day, dozens of followers were detained in Tiananmen Square, next to the Great Hall of the People, where the legislators met. Many came from other cities in the hope of persuading officials that Falun Gong was not a social threat. Instead, they were picked up as soon as they were identified by the scores of plainclothes police roaming the vast square.

BEIJING - Every morning these past several months, I was reminded that, for the first time in Olympic history, China is poised to win more medals than any other nation. Each time I walked down my stairs, in fact, I was reminded. It was in plain view, right on my wall. Not an exact medal count, but an unavoidable symbol. Last fall, on an earlier visit to Beijing, I was greeted outside my hotel by a Chinese college student. Like most people I've met here, he was exceedingly gracious and friendly.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Chinese President Hu Jintao told an audience at Yale University yesterday that China's rapid economic development is not a threat to the United States and that the two countries' shared strategic interests should inevitably make them partners. Yale was his last stop on a four-day visit to the United States meant to quell Washington's concerns about China's growing trade surplus and increased political muscle, as well as to build business ties. His speech to an audience of about 600 students and professors was also broadcast live in China except for a brief question-and-answer session in which Hu was queried about whether China views the United States as an ally or adversary, and if China's economic development comes at the cost of political rights.

WASHINGTON -- Chinese President Hu Jintao promised President Bush long-term economic reforms yesterday but offered no immediate concessions on the trade and security issues that threaten the two countries' relationship. Hailed with a 21-gun salute on a sunlit White House lawn, Hu declared that China was committed to overhauling gradually the export-driven economy that has piled up a $202 billion trade surplus with the United States and brought calls in Congress for protectionist retaliation.

BEIJING - The defection of a senior Chinese diplomat in Australia who claims he helped oversee a vast spy network has cast a spotlight on China's espionage activities at a time of increased global trade tensions and concern over Beijing's military spending. Chen Yonglin, the first secretary of the Chinese Consulate General in Sydney, chose a particularly embarrassing moment to go public against his employer - a rally last month in Australia marking the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

NEW YORK - Cendana Wirasari Adiwarga sat perfectly still, her eyes shut tight as Quincy Sun dragged a toothpick soaked with fake blood across her plump left cheek. "There, all done," Sun said, appraising her handiwork. Adiwarga's smooth skin had been transformed into a garish tableau of bloody cuts and bruises. Adiwarga then rose to take her place inside a metal cage, where she planned to sit for three hours on a blustery late October morning opposite a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

BOSTON - Liberals, conservatives, anarchists, fundamentalists, peace-seekers and war supporters all found reason and space to protest in Boston this week - but peacefully, and in relatively small numbers. "From the get-go we had expectations of the worst and that hasn't happened," said David Estrada, a Boston police spokesman. "We've been very fortunate." Local, state and federal law enforcement officials convened on Boston with riot gear and crowd control training in anticipation of massive, rowdy protests.

Before 9 / 11, China's rise was the most important international story on the planet. China is home to the world's largest population, 1.3 billion people. It has one of Earth's fastest growing economies and at least 30 long-range nuclear missiles. Ambitious leaders in Beijing envision becoming Asia's indispensable power. While Iraq and terrorism preoccupy the United States, China continues a steady climb that could force a redrawing of the world's geopolitical map. Now Communist in name only, China is an unwieldy hybrid: an increasingly market-driven economy overseen by an authoritarian regime awash in corruption.

Sharon begins visit to India, a longtime ally of Palestinians NEW DELHI, India - Ariel Sharon began a landmark visit to India yesterday, intent on cementing defense deals and fortifying his country's friendship with a longtime Palestinian ally during the first visit here by an Israeli prime minister. Pakistan, India's neighbor and chief rival, immediately warned of the "dangerous consequences" of a military alliance between Israel and India, knowing that Sharon hopes to seal the $1 billion sale of an advanced airborne radar package.

BEIJING - The world's leading psychiatric association voted yesterday to send a delegation of experts to China to look into charges that Chinese psychiatric hospitals are being used to silence political and religious dissidents. Officials of the World Psychiatric Association, which is meeting in Yokohama, Japan, said that Chinese health officials had been cooperative. A preliminary fact-gathering delegation is scheduled to travel to China next spring. But the resolution fell far short of steps proposed by human rights advocates and some psychiatrists, who insist that systematic psychiatric abuses in China are rampant, perhaps even more severe and widespread than they were in the former Soviet Union.

UNDER Communist Party rule, the Chinese people have made friends all over the world, or so the relentlessly employed party slogan goes. The people of China, indeed, have many true friends -- certainly more than their government, which is all too happy to rely on foreigners kowtowing before its considerable weight. The world recently got a look at how that can play out shamefully in -- of all places -- Iceland, where Chinese leader Jiang Zemin visited last weekend. Tiny Iceland, a wealthy, tranquil place, boasts an admirable history of democracy and free speech, dating back to the founding of the world's oldest parliament in 930. But these traditions were put on hold in the days leading to Mr. Jiang's visit.