Follower Agency and Charismatic Mobilization (page 1)

Follower Agency and CharismaticMobilization in Falun Gong

Andrew Junker*Society of Fellows, University of Chicago

This article reconsiders sociological theory of charisma through Falun Gong, a transnational Chinesenew religious movement that was banned in China in 1999. In spite of widely shared agreement thatcharismatic authority is based on social interactions between a leader and followers, research on cha-risma and collective action has predominantly focused on the agency of the charismatic leader. TheFalun Gong case reveals, by contrast, that followers can create and pursue purposes that are distinctfrom those of the leader while still sincerely professing to align their actions with official doctrine.Through an empirical examination of the development and transformation of Falun Gong’s politicalactivism, the article discusses the theoretical possibility of follower agency and the dynamics of inter-play between followers and the charismatic leader. Data for the study are drawn from Falun Gongweb sites and interviews with diaspora practitioners.

Key words: charisma; China; social movements/collective behavior; Asian-Americans; new reli-

gious movements; transnationalism.

This article examines collective action, religious doctrine, and charisma in aChinese transnational new religious movement, Falun Gong. Falun Gong’shistory of political persecution and resistance reveals a dimension of charismaticrelations that has been overlooked in sociological theories of charisma: theagency of charismatic devotees. Although scholarship using Weber’s theory ofcharisma has widely recognized that charismatic authority is an interactional re-lationship between leader and followers, in practice most studies represent theleader as wilful and agentic and the followers as adoring and obedient. Morework needs to be done to understand the “follower” side of this interactionaldynamic. Can followers influence leaders? Can their actions set the agenda forthe movement independently from the apparent intentions of the leader? Howdoes a leader reckon with the agency of his devotees?

*Direct correspondence to Andrew Junker, Society of Fellows, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL,USA. E-mail: [email protected].

# The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Associationfor the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]

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One way to untangle the interactive dynamics of charismatic movements isto identify how leader and followers have different domains of agency, that is, dif-ferent domains in which each has the capacity to set and pursue goals. In theFalun Gong’s political mobilization, the charismatic leader controlled thedomain of doctrine, which included broadly setting goals and dictating canonicalinterpretations of events. Followers deferred to the leader’s doctrine, but, never-theless, they were the ones who acted collectively to try to advance the move-ment in the world. By virtue of their numbers and their role as followers, theyadministered the domain of collective action. Because the leader could not an-ticipate and provide instructions for the myriad of practical situations encoun-tered by followers, some free space existed in which followers set and pursuedgoals independently. This free space was a domain of follower agency.

Prevailing theories of charismatic authority overlook follower agencybecause the premise of charismatic authority is that faithful believers sincerelyintend to fulfill the doctrine of the leader. Therefore, collective action is merelya field of obedience. I argue here, however, that the issue is more complex.Decentralized, voluntaristic collective action, combined with an internal contra-diction entailed in the nature of charismatic authority to be discussed below, canlead to significant opportunities for followers to set the agenda and re-shape themovement.

This process can be observed in Falun Gong’s early transnational politicalmobilization. Followers, or “practitioners” as participants call themselves, invent-ed a form of protest, which they called “Clarifying Truth.” As political conten-tion escalated between Falun Gong and the Chinese state, Clarifying Truthbecame more and more central to the lives of practitioners. The centrality of thisform of activism posed a problem for the charismatic leader, Mr. Li Hongzhi,who had not been involved in activism and had long expressed ambivalenceabout the place of activism in his religious movement. Eventually, Li solved hisproblem by revising doctrine to accommodate the facts on the ground: he madeClarifying Truth into a canonical part of his religious doctrine. In this sense, Lifollowed the lead of his followers. Yet at the same time, he also appropriatedClarifying Truth to strengthen his authority. Li embedded activism in a new mil-lenarian interpretation of events and thus refocused attention on him as a cosmicsavior. As the dynamic unfolded, agency shifted from the leader to the followersand then back to the leader, which demonstrates how religious doctrines and po-litical practices were shaped interactively by followers and leader.

The article proceeds as follows: I consider theories about charisma andagency, describe my data and methods, provide a historical overview of the case,and then analyze the interactive evolution of doctrine and collective action, pri-marily between 1999 and 2001. During this time, the Falun Gong met fierce re-pression in China and activists responded in China and transnationally withwidespread mobilization. For evidence, I draw from materials posted on theprimary Falun Gong web site and I triangulate my analysis against interview dataand secondary scholarship.

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HOW CAN FOLLOWERS HAVE AGENCY?

Studies of charismatic authority drawn from Weber’s theory widely acknowl-edge that charisma is not a characteristic of a person but is a social relationshipin which followers attribute to the charismatic figure some kind of extraordinarystatus. For this reason, charismatic authority is understood to be interactive, withthe leader’s authority dependent on recognition by followers of her extraordinarygifts (Dawson 2011). Many sociologically engaged studies of charisma acknowl-edge this interactive principle yet in practice still focus analysis on the charismat-ic figure as the driver of the social process (e.g., Bourdieu 1987; Reed 2013;Smith 2000; Willner 1984). The interactive dimensions of charisma have re-ceived attention in studies that emphasize psychology, but these studies also havebeen criticized for being sociologically inadequate and speculative about causa-tion (e.g., Dawson 2002; Wallis 1982). In sociological studies of charisma’s inter-active dynamics, much of the focus has been on recruitment, maintainingcharisma, and institutionalization. For example, Wallis (1982) provided an ex-planation of charismatic interactions as “status exchange,” which helps accountfor the socially constructed motivations for participation in a cult. Joosse’s(2012) examination of the leader’s need to manage quotidian exposure of hisperson to followers suggests some of the performative constraints on the leaderimposed by interaction with followers. Largely unexplored in this literature,however, is the question of how the interactive relationship between leader andfollowers influences collective action. As social movements, charismatic move-ments involve people acting together in relatively under-institutionalized wayson behalf of shared collective goals. An interactional theory of charisma shouldbe able to specify how the relations of leader and followers influence collectiveaction.

In Weber’s ideal typical version of charismatic authority, for which the FalunGong might in many ways serve as an example, the leader has the authority tocommand his devotees. This authority depends on recognition by followers,which in turn depends in part on his capacity to deliver “proof” of his legitimacythrough great deeds of some sort. Nevertheless, when it comes to setting goalsand calling for action, the leader enjoys what Reed (2013) has recently termed“radical freedom” to issue commands, change purposes, and declare new realities.This extraordinary capacity to exercise will, which led Weber to remark thatcharismatic authority “knows only inner determination and inner restraint”(Weber 1958 [1946]: 246), has perhaps led both lay and academic representationsof charisma, at least in reference to collective action, to emphasize the charis-matic leader as creative and active and the followers as obedient and adoring. Inthis view, the leader has agency and the followers are instruments of his will.

How do we reconcile the charismatic leader’s “radical freedom” to direct col-lective action with the interactional nature of charismatic authority? One way tothink about the question is to consider charismatic authority as a form of princi-pal–agent relations. As the principal, a charismatic leader defines movement

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goals by monopolizing doctrine; as the agents, the charismatic community con-trols the means of collective action to implement the goals.1 By disaggregatingdoctrine (or goals) from the execution of collective action (or means), the prin-cipal–agent view helps us deconstruct the relations of command and obediencebetween leaders and followers.

Standard principal–agent theory, however, introduces new difficulties. First,the theory typically presumes autonomous, conscious actors pursuing known in-terests. At the heart of a charismatic community are less than fully conscious pro-cesses of emotion, symbolism, and dramaturgy. How can we bring these processesinto the analysis? Second, the classic problem of a principal–agent relationshipis that the two parties do not have identical interests; the agents will be inclinedto use the means that they control to pursue their individual, and thus divergent,interests, even potentially undermining those of the principal. But in a pure formof charismatic authority, devotees have “near-absolute trust in the leader”(Dawson 2002:81) and thus they define their interest according to the doctrinesand commands of the leader. This extraordinary degree of obedience is based onstrong emotions (Dawson 2002; Reed 2013) that may even, as some argue,involve attempts to dissolve the psychological boundary between self and other(Lindholm 1990). Therefore, it is illogical for fully devoted agents of the charis-matic leader to exploit their position in collective action to consciously pursueseparate interests from the principal, the charismatic figure. Any nonstaff follow-er who defines her interests as distinct from those of the charismatic mission is acorruption of the ideal-type. It is for this reason that Zablocki, for instance, notesthat “charismatic organizations are able to rely on agents who are fully deploy-able, even in carrying out illegal tasks” (Zablocki 1992:1148). Charismatic obe-dience is an almost pure form of taking the leader’s interests as one’s own.

Deployment of obedient agents to act in the world is, however, morecomplex in practice than these theoretical specifications suggests. First, the realworld of activity presents complex situations. When directives and doctrine areunclear about how to act in a particular context, then agents will make choicesthat reflect their own interpretations. Second, collective action varies accordingto organizational structure, with some organizational forms allowing for moreagency by participants than others. In decentralized and voluntaristic move-ments, participants enjoy higher levels of autonomy than in, for example,Leninist cells. Given these two factors, we should expect to see more followeragency when situations are novel or ambiguous and activism is decentralized andautonomous. Both of these conditions were met in the Falun Gong case: whenthe movement was outlawed in China in July 1999, the charismatic leader, wholived in New York, disappeared for about a year and with virtually no explana-tion. Practically speaking, the voice of the movement went silent. In thattime, followers confronted a vast, and for them unprecedented, landscape of

1For simplicity, I have omitted the dynamics of the leader’s staff.


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situations in which they felt compelled to act up in defence of their spiritualcommunity.

Another reason that charismatic authority entails conditions for followeragency concerns a structural ambiguity inherent to charismatic leadership.On the one hand, a charismatic leader must persuasively symbolize a set ofmeanings that resonate for her audience. On the other hand, she must alsonavigate new situations in ways that maintain her charismatic authority. If the fitis poor between the leader’s role as a symbol and the particular challenges sheconfronts as an actor in the world, then she will need to work hard at her “charis-matic performance” (Reed 2013) in order to reconcile the contradictorydemands.

The literature on charisma has commonly argued that a person succeeds inbecoming a charismatic figure because she has somehow come to symbolize foran audience a set of resonant, preexisting meanings. Dawson, in his review ofcharisma theories, states that charismatic entrepreneurs gain their followersbecause they “manage to formulate and express the inchoate sentiments deeplyheld by the people around them” (2011:122). Similarly, in the words of Kets deVries, charismatic leaders are said to “facilitate the transformation of a historicalor mythical ideal from a remote abstraction into an immediate psychologicalreality” (quoted by Dawson 2002:83). Bourdieu addressed the issue of charismaticsymbolism by combining Durkheim’s logic of collective representation withWeber’s classic theory:

Like the emblem, the word and person of the prophet symbolize collective representation that, byvirtue of the creative nature of symbolization, they contribute to constituting. The prophet em-bodies in exemplary conduct, or gives discursive expression to, representations, feelings and aspi-rations that existed before he arrived—albeit in an implicit, semi-conscious, or unconsciousstate. . . . Thus the prophet—that isolated individual, a man without a past, lacking any author-ity other than himself (“So it is written . . . but I say unto you”)—may act as an organizing,mobilizing force. (Bourdieu 1987:130)

Smith (2000) and Reed (2013) have developed this Durkheimian perspec-tive to explore how a charismatic entrepreneur in practice fashions himself asboth the articulation of, and the solution for, preexisting ideas, grievances, andwishes.

Symbolization becomes still more complex when we plot the process unfold-ing over time. Reed explores this temporal dimension by arguing that once char-ismatic leadership takes off, it enjoys reinforcing dynamics by which “the successof the leader becomes a kind of recursive, iterative justification for itself.”Whatever the leader does tends be viewed by followers as another exemplarysuccess, leading to a “spiral of performative success” (Reed 2013:266). An impli-cation, not developed by Reed, of this reinforcing cycle is that, over time, theleader is less bound to the original symbolization on which he rode to power and,through his own agency, can lead the movement in new directions. But whywould a leader revise his “symbolization” and attempt to articulate new problems


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and new solutions? A leader needs to manage her charismatic legitimacy in theface of challenges, including endogenous pressures, such as for routinization, andexogenous pressures, such as conflicts with the state. Therefore, the second im-perative faced by the charismatic leader, to maintain her authority in the face ofa changing context, drives forward a process of change that can unsettle andreshape the first imperative, to embody a set of historically pregiven meaningsthat mobilize an audience.

These complex dynamics point to considerable fluidity and ambiguity inregard to what followers are actually doing when they implement the leader’s willin any real-world context. In particular, there is a tension between what the fol-lowers take the leader to be a symbol for and whatever new doctrine or com-mands the leader issues to navigate her latest challenge. Thus, when we analyzethe collective action of a charismatic movement, we need to be on guard againstsimply reading the actions of followers as only fulfillments of the living leader’scommands. Those commands are almost certainly evolving in real time, whereasparticipants may be loyal primarily to those preexisting, latent meanings forwhich the leader’s symbolization inspired the mobilization. Follower actions con-strain or shape what performances the leader can plausibly attempt. A recursiveand interactive process unfolds between followers and the leader. As followers in-ternalize new meanings to conform to new doctrine, however, the dynamicswould essentially start over.

Such an interactive trading back and forth of agency can be observed in thecase of Falun Gong’s politicization. This article will trace the process by showinghow Falun Gong followers invented Clarifying Truth and then how the charis-matic leader later appropriated this activism in the interests of maintaining hisauthority. The leader made Clarifying Truth central to his religious doctrine,thereby following the lead of his devotees. But at the same time, he reinterpretedClarifying Truth in ways that made it easier to sustain in diaspora and that em-phasized is central position in the movement.

DATA AND METHODS

My argument draws on a combination of data from the primary Falun Gongweb site, Minghui.org, and interviews from my field research. The Minghui website2 is vast, with many thousands of postings that have been archived by the siteoperators (for detailed descriptions, see Chen et al. 2010; Ownby 2008:200–7;Penny 2012:30–33). Falun Gong publications and the Minghui web site in partic-ular have been a common source for research in studies of Falun Gong (Chen et al.2010; Lu 2005; Ownby 2008; Palmer 2003, 2007; Penny 2012; Thornton 2010).

2Web address is www.minghui.org for Chinese, www.clearwisdom.org for English. Alsoexamined were the closely related sites www.minghui.ca, www.falundafa.org, and www.falundafa.ca.


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To understand the evolution of doctrine by the charismatic leadership, I readall statements (about 150) by Falun Gong leadership, including the leader andthe editorial department (bianji bu) of Minghui, posted during the period oftransnational politicization between 1999 and 2001. In addition, using titles andelectronic searches for key words, I identified and read many relevant statementsfrom the charismatic leader and other leadership from before 1999 and after2001. These materials allowed me to construct an analysis of leadership discourseduring the period when Clarifying Truth emerged. The sources document the“official” doctrine, but cannot tell us about backstage processes that influencedtheir production or how ordinary followers reacted.

To understand the protest practices of devotees, I examined postings by fol-lowers that narrated their activism experiences, examined Falun Gong materialsdocumenting the movement’s repression in China, and read scholarship andjournalism describing Falun Gong mobilization. Finally, I triangulated my inter-pretations of practitioner postings against my field notes, which has includedover 100 hours of participant–observation style visits to Falun Gong communi-ties. These visits included semistructured interviews, which were conducted ineither English or Chinese and varied in length from 20 minutes to six hours.Interviews and field visits were conducted between 2006 and 2014 in manycities, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Tokyo,Kyoto, and Taibei.

The Minghui web site is a convenient source of information, but must beused cautiously. Minghui was founded in May1999, in Canada; soon after, itbecame the central Falun Gong web site, recognized as the movement’s most au-thoritative source (Ownby 2008:200–1; Palmer 2007:252; Penny 2012:30).Minghui is an internally targeted web site, meaning that its audience is primarilyFalun Gong practitioners. Minghui keeps a downloadable archive of all of itscommunications,3 although the archive is not complete for all categories of post-ings before January 2000 and is always subject to manipulation by the web siteoperators. The archive covers all types of postings, but two special categories areavailable by direct link from the homepage: statements made by the charismaticleader and statements made by the Minghui web site editors. After Li’s own state-ments, those of the editors are understood to be the most authoritative source ofFalun Gong doctrine and policy. The web site does not identify any editor byname. Nevertheless, it is widely recounted that Mr. Ye Hao founded the site andis perhaps the most influential person in Falun Gong after Li. In contrast to Li,who never attended college, Ye’s biography suggests the picture of a capable andsophisticated administrator. He graduated from China’s second most prestigiousuniversity, Tsinghua, in 1959, and spent a career working in China’s Ministry ofPublic Security, from which he retired in 1996. His final 15 years were spent as a

3Strictly speaking, there were several related web sites in 1999 that appear to have beenretrospectively ordered and combined into the single Minghui web site.


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cadre in the Eleventh Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, which is incharge of cyber security and policing. Ye had become an associate of Li Hongzhiin the early years of Falun Gong’s rise to popularity. He migrated from China toNorth America about the same time as Li and appears to remain a major figure inthe movement.4 It is plausible to conjecture that Ye Hao has been involved inthe writing of editorial postings, if not all important postings on the web site—including even those of Li Hongzhi. My research has not attempted to uncoverthese backstage processes.

As a source for research, Minghui’s archive is rich but requires skepticismbecause it is the product of a movement engaged in a representational battle withthe Chinese state. Web site operators, for instance, have removed or altered state-ments by the leader that later became seen as problematic (e.g. Palmer2007:268). For the evidence that I present below, I have compared both theChinese and English versions and also compared statements against an indepen-dent Internet archive, when available.5 Also, I am persuaded by historian DavidOwnby who, after evaluating the validity of Minghui documents, concluded that“little in Falun Gong documentation [of persecution and of activism experiences]suggests outright fabrication” and that “the accounts found on the Clear Wisdom[Minghui] site are largely credible” (Ownby 2008:163, 194).

A major hazard of using Falun Gong sources for the current study is that thequestion of follower agency is not just academic but also political. The FalunGong community has an interest in representing activism as a result of spontane-ous coordination by followers rather than the result of the leadership sending out“secret order after secret order” and “mind control,” as represented in so muchstate propaganda (quoted by Ownby 2008:178). Nevertheless, academic studies,journalism, my own field research, and thousands of activism narratives posted byfollowers on Minghui, generally show practitioners acting voluntarily andmaking decisions at the local level in a loosely coordinated fashion (e.g.,Johnson 2004; Ownby 2008).

INTRODUCTION TO FALUN GONG

Since the political and economic reforms of the early 1980s, China has expe-rienced a resurgence of religious faith and activity. Falun Gong began in 1992 aspart of this larger trend. It was founded by a factory clerk turned charismatic

4Information for this profile was taken from a variety of pro-Falun Gong, independent,and anti-Falun Gong web sites. These details all appear consistently across the spectrum.Specific citations are: http://boxun.com/forum/200906/qglt/61558.shtml, www.hkhkhk.com/64/messages/11767.html, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fFquqkLrM, all retrieved onMay 9, 2013, and http://www.tianjian.org/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=11033, retrievedJuly 25, 2013.

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entrepreneur, Mr. Li Hongzhi. Li’s teachings were based on a set of easy-to-do ex-ercises and syncretic claims about morality, health, and the supernatural.Although Falun Gong began as a health and exercise group, it evolved intosomething more explicitly religious with the publication of Li’s first book in 1994(Lu 2005; Palmer 2007). The movement is commonly viewed by scholars as acharismatic community (e.g., Ownby 2008; Palmer 2007; Penny 2012).

As a Chinese religious movement, Falun Gong belongs more or less to whatChina studies scholars call “sectarianism” (Harrell and Perry 1982; Overmyer1981), “redemptive societies” (Duara 2003; Ownby 2003, 2008:28–42; Palmer2007, 2009), or “salvationist groups” (Goossaert and Palmer 2011). These salva-tionist communities have come and gone in China for centuries. As a new in-stance of this older tradition, Falun Gong shares many of the defining features ofother Chinese sectarian groups throughout history, including that it is led by acharismatic faith healer, involves health and moral improvement, promotes syn-cretistic religious beliefs, provides a millenarian interpretation of contemporaryhistory, and exists within a social network of co-believers linked by horizontaland egalitarian ties (Harrell and Perry 1982; Overmyer 1981; Ownby 1999,2003, 2008:28–42). Also, like many redemptive societies of the past, FalunGong emphasized the idea of “cultivating” one’s spiritual and physical self. Theend goal of Falun Gong cultivation is a transcendent state of perfection called“consummation.”

Falun Gong’s history contrasts with traditional sectarian movements,however, in that the movement enthusiastically joined China’s post-1990s surgeinto globalization. Li Hongzhi began traveling overseas to teach Falun Gong in1994 and became a legal permanent resident of the United States in 1998.Between 1994 and 1999, Li traveled frequently between major cities in theNorth America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. Inexpensive communication tech-nologies made it possible for Li to continue directing the movement in Chinathrough far reaching Falun Gong networks even when he was overseas (Palmer2007:251).

Organizationally, Falun Gong after 1996 eschewed most bureaucratic institu-tionalization, formal membership, and physical churches. Li strongly emphasizedthat Falun Gong teachings should always be free and participation entirely vol-untary. To compensate for the lack of centrally institutionalized organization,the dispersed global and primarily Chinese emigre Falun Gong communitybecame bound together through a dense, interconnected network of web sitesand informally coordinated local groups (Ownby 2008; Penny 2012).

POLITICIZATION AND THE ROOTS OF CLARIFYING TRUTH

Like many sectarian groups in Chinese history (Harrell and Perry 1982;Overmyer 1981), Falun Gong was originally apolitical but later became “politi-cized” in order to defend itself against state interference (Chan 2004; Chen et al.


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2010; Ownby 2008). Such politicization began in the summer of 1996 when Li’sbook, Zhuan Falun, became a national best seller (Chan 2004; Ownby2008:165–74; Palmer 2007:249–56; Penny 2012; Tong 2002). In June, a majornewspaper, the Guangming Daily, published a scathing criticism of the book asfeudal superstition and of Li Hongzhi as a swindler. A wider anti-Falun Gong pro-paganda campaign emerged in the media and in late July, the CentralPropaganda Department banned all Falun Gong books.

Many Falun Gong practitioners responded by defending the community’sreputation through letter writing campaigns to the publishers. Although solid ev-idence is lacking about exactly how these campaigns emerged, Palmer reportsthat they were initially coordinated by the network of local Falun Gong leadersin China. They were not, in any case, publicly called for by Li (Palmer2007:251–56). In late August, Li posted an Internet commentary that post factopraised such activism and invested it with religious signification. From the pointof view of followers and the public, this was Li’s first doctrinal reaction to follow-er activism, which he strongly endorsed as “an essential aspect of Dafa [FalunGong] cultivation.” Furthermore, he said that state interference was “a test” formovement followers: those who rose up to defend Falun Gong would be provento be the true disciples; those who were apathetic, “spread baseless rumors,” or“feared for their reputation or personal interest” would be exposed as false disci-ples (Palmer 2007:249–50).

This doctrinal decision, to appropriate the activism of followers and make itsomehow central to religious practice, turned out to have lasting and unforeseenconsequences. But most immediately, it also raised the specter of competingcentral values for the movement: what was the relationship between religiouscultivation, which aimed at the private task of personal redemption, and publicactivism, which aimed at a social change mission? Only one week after issuinghis new doctrine on activism, Li issued another commentary that curtailed hisdemand that followers defend the movement. Titled “Cultivation Is NotPolitical,” Li stressed that “cultivators” should keep away from worldly affairs. Lisaid, “other than doing a good job with his work, a cultivator will not be interest-ed in politics or political power of any sort; failing this, he absolutely isn’t my dis-ciple” (Li 2001:32). Li’s doctrine, in effect, both called for activism andattempted to curtail its implications.

In this early phase of the movement, we can already see a pattern of splitagency in which followers led the movement by innovating practices and theleader reasserted agency by issuing doctrine to interpret and redirect such activ-ism in terms of religious devotion. Furthermore, the conflicting imperatives toboth publicly defend Falun Gong against any propaganda attack and also to stayfocused on spiritual cultivation created an ambiguous doctrinal context that mayhave enhanced opportunities for follower agency; Falun Gong’s membership andactivism both increased between June 1996 and April 1999 (Palmer 2007:191–92, 252–56). During this time, anti-Falun Gong polemics continued to appear inthe media and Falun Gong practitioners in China mounted around 300


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nonviolent protest events, some with over 1,000 participants (Ownby 2008:169;Palmer 2007:254).

Initially, Falun Gong discourse came to refer to this repertoire of protest as“hufa,” or “defending the fa,” or, hongfa, which means “spreading the fa.” Theword fa is a Buddhist term originally used to translate the word dharma, or “theLaw,” and is part of the phrase Falun Gong. Throughout the 1996–1999 period,Li repeatedly emphasized that followers publicly defend Falun Gong, while simul-taneously stressing the importance that the practice of “cultivation” was nonpo-litical and was the ultimate purpose of the movement. For example, in June1998, activists conducted an especially provocative eight-day sit-in in Beijing atthe most nationally influential Chinese television station (Ownby 2008:169).Shortly after this event, Li issued (from diaspora) a commentary that reiteratedhis bifurcated logic: he simultaneously endorsed efforts to “defend the fa” but alsosaid that the purpose of Falun Gong is personal rather than political. Once again,he stated, “Dafa [the Great Dharma] should not get involved in politics. . . .Dafa is not taught for these purposes, but rather for cultivation practice” (Li2001:48–49).

The turning point in Falun Gong’s history occurred in April 1999, whenFalun Gong activists mounted a peaceful demonstration of over 10,000 protestersin Beijing. The protest was initially diffused without force by central authorities,but then, after a planning period, led to a massive state campaign to suppress themovement starting in July (Tong 2009). The grassroots community of FalunGong believers, or at least a significant loyal subgroup, responded to repressionwith tenacious, nonviolent protest mobilization both in China and overseas(Johnson 2004; Ownby 2008; Tong 2009).

In diaspora, the volume and character of Falun Gong activism can be seen inpostings to the Minghui web site, which contains tens of thousands of narrativesfrom globally dispersed practitioners recounting their firsthand experiences.6

Activities include things such as handing out literature on the street, gatheringsignatures on petitions, demonstrating Falun Gong exercises at public venues,joining in public parades, doing street theatre dramatizing torture by Chinesepolice, holding events at public libraries, putting on Chinese cultural exhibi-tions, making radio and video programs, publishing newspapers, lobbying politi-cal authorities, and writing reports to share with governments and internationalhuman rights agencies.

In contrast to the response of practitioners, Li Hongzhi responded to repres-sion by disappearing without explanation from public view for nearly a year, savefor one enigmatic photo of himself posted to the Minghui web site in lateJanuary 2000. Because of Li’s silence during this initial period of intensive practi-tioner mobilization, Falun Gong lost, for a while, a clear directing voice from itscharismatic commander. On these grounds, we should interpret follower activism

6See http://www.minghui.org/mh/fenlei/74/, retrieved on July 12, 2013.


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during this period, and the invention of Clarifying Truth, as an unusually clearexample of follower—and not leader—agency.

INVENTING CLARIFYING TRUTH: 1999–2000

Here I will trace the emergence of Clarifying Truth by first considering whatinstructions and guidance the Falun Gong leadership publicly gave to followersduring the three months between the April demonstrations in Beijing and Li’sself-imposed disappearance in late July. From the point of view of followers, thesestatements were Li’s last instructions on the eve of the movement’s full politicalmobilization and his disappearance. They show that Li retained his ambiguousstance on activism and religious practice. By contrast, statements issued by theeditors of the Minghui web site called specifically for protest mobilization, butwithout elaboration on tactics, strategy, or coordination.

After examining what the leadership said, I turn to what the followers did. Isummarize activism in China and in diaspora and argue that practitioners weremotivated by ideals that linked their religious practices to protesting on behalf ofhuman rights and democratic liberties. These ideals, for which Li was emergingas a symbol, were undermined by the way Li later reasserted his centrality to themovement. In the final section of my analysis, I examine Li’s return and his newdoctrines, which promoted an “end of history” millenarian framing of the con-flict. Li appropriated Clarifying Truth activism as a form of spiritual cultivation,but redirected it away from human rights and toward “saving souls” before divinepunishment arrives.

Leadership Instructions for Activism in 1999Between the April demonstrations and the July crackdown, Li Hongzhi’s

public statements vacillated between grandiose challenges to the Chinese stateand self-effacing efforts to defuse the conflict. These statements also maintainedLi’s ambivalent, bifurcated stance on activism and religious practice. I carefullysearched all of the available statements from Li for some evidence that he, by hiscommand, called for the activism that came to be known as Clarifying Truth.Instead, I found that he never used the term before his disappearance nor did hemake clear statements calling for that kind of mobilization. There are two state-ments that could be construed, especially if one were engaged in Falun Gongapologetics, as Li calling for the activism that became Clarifying Truth. Yet bothof these statements still do not use the term and also express considerable ambiv-alence about political mobilization.

The first statement I found was made by Li at the end of a lecture he gave tofollowers in Toronto in May 1999:

I think the main reason that those who don’t know the truth oppose us is that they don’t reallyunderstand us. So, we can help them to understand us and come to know us—using any method


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is fine. Whether it’s through a common channel or not, let’s keep the door wide open and letthem know whatever they want to know and see whatever they want to see. If you want to findsomething out, as long as you don’t intend to make trouble for us, you can do as you please.7

Note that (1) Li did not use the specific term “clarifying truth”; (2) he es-chewed his own involvement as a commander in the practical details of activismby encouraging followers to enact agency as they saw fit—“any method is fine”;and, most importantly, (3) the gist of the statement is less a mandate for activismthan it is an effort to de-escalate conflict by saying that opposition to FalunGong is based merely on misunderstandings that ordinary efforts to communicateshould resolve.

The second example I found of Li addressing the mandate to engage inClarifying Truth activism occurred in June. In this instance, Li issued a statementto all of his followers through the Internet. He called for limiting activism to “re-porting” cases of state interference in Falun Gong activities “through the normalchannels to different levels of the government or to the country’s leaders.” Hethen exhorted followers not to lose sight of the movement’s transcendentpurpose, which was “normal cultivation practice [zhengchang xiulian] andFa-study” (Li 2005:8). This statement is quite similar to the bifurcated stancetoward activism he had taken since 1996.

These examples demonstrate that, at least as we can see from the publiclyavailable records, Li did not command followers to make political mobilization thecentral occupation of their movement. Also, Li’s ambiguous stance on the relation-ship between political action and religious mission bears remembering becauseClarifying Truth was to become, when Li was absent, a central preoccupation ofthe community. When Li finally returned, he thoroughly embraced the fusion ofpolitical activism and religious practice, even as he simultaneously appropriated itscombination within a new millenarian framework centered on his own person.

Along with Li’s direct leadership of the movement, the editor department ofthe Minghui web site also emerged at this time as a source of official Falun Gongpolicy. Minghui editorials clearly endorsed political mobilization through hongfaactivism, which it linked to religious mission:

Every disciple must quickly and bravely stand up to protect the Fa. Disciples in China and over-seas must mobilize to protect the Fa. Urban and rural disciples all must rise up to protect the Fa.[It will] make us bravely advance our spiritual cultivation and, in the midst of disaster, make uskeep our steady pace, thoroughly steeled, into Consummation.8

Such Minghui statements differed from those of Li in clearly calling for activ-ism that would come to be known as Clarifying Truth; the call for action,

7Retrieved on July 8, 2013, from http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/lectures/19990523L.html.

8Translation by the author. Retrieved on July 11, 2010, from http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/1999/7/21/3087.htm.


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however, was long on moral imperative and short on tactics. The editors calledfor overseas practitioners to “hongfa”—spread the Fa—to “make Chinese andWesterners truthfully understand the Great Fa.” Furthermore, editors strongly as-serted that Li Hongzhi was not directing activism and that it was up to each indi-vidual participant to decide how to act.9 In order to facilitate the “developmentof overseas hongfa,” the editors called on activists to write down their mobiliza-tion experiences and share them with others through the Minghui web site.10 Inthis way, Minghui became the hub for activists sharing about their experiences oftaking initiative in public politics. Between January 2000 and 2009, tens of thou-sands of such narratives were posted to Minghui, which suggests the scale of ac-tivism that unfolded as well as how frequent sharing of activism narratives mayhave reinforced mobilization within the movement.11

More Minghui editorials were occasionally posted during Li’s absence.During the late summer and fall, the editorials covered various topics, includingcommentary on the Falun Gong persecution in China, instructions on how topost accounts of hongfa activities on the Minghui web site, and an endorsementof a legal brief about the illegality of Falun Gong’s persecution.12 None of theseeditorials, however, offered further instructions about strategy and tactics ofprotest or demonstrated specific attempts to coordinate and command the move-ment’s mobilization. Instead, this period of mobilization was relatively decentral-ized and driven by locally initiated volunteer activism (Ownby 2008:193).

Followers Invent Clarifying TruthIn the year following July 1999, state repression in China involved nation-

wide mobilization of propaganda against Falun Gong, mass detentions andarrests, attempts to disable and eliminate Falun Gong organizations, preventionand repression of Falun Gong demonstrations at local and national sites, and co-ercion of individual Falun Gong practitioners (Tong 2009). In spite of the factthat many of Falun Gong’s millions of practitioners abandoned the movement atthis juncture, many also remained loyal. These practitioners responded to repres-sion with an escalation of protest activities undertaken during the previous threeyears. When word spread of the imminent crackdown on Falun Gong, loyal activ-ists in China launched dozens of protests around the country. During the first twodays of the state’s official campaign against Falun Gong, nearly 100 Falun Gong

9See Falun dafa gonggaolan tongzhi retrieved on July 25, 2013, from http://web.archive.org/web/19991012100206/http://falundafa.ca/fldfbb/notice990724.html. This statement camefrom the The Falun Dafa Research Society. Also, see Jinji xingdongchulai hufa retrieved on July25, 2013, from http://web.archive.org/web/20000522051556/http://falundafa.ca/fldfbb/notice990720.html.

10See Minghuiwang zhenggao tongzhi retrieved on March 10, 2010, from http://www.minghui.org/mh/download.html.

11See http://www.minghui.org/mh/fenlei/74/, retrieved on July 12, 2013.12See Yufa burong, yuli butong retrieved July 26, 2013, from http://web.archive.org/web/

20001212213000/http://minghui.ca/gb/shishi/0899/lawyer_081199.html.


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protests occurred throughout China (Tong 2009:52–53).13 The New York Times(Faison 1999) reported that “tens of thousands of Falun Gong members protestedat government offices in more than 30 cities.”

During the year following the ban, what quickly emerged in China as thecore Falun Gong protest activity was to go to government centers to petition forthe reversal of the ban on Falun Gong (Johnson 2004; Ownby 2008; Tong2009). In addition to attempting this conventional and technically legal form ofseeking redress, practitioners also mounted public displays of Falun Gong exercis-es, unfurled banners, and distributed pro-Falun Gong literature. TiananmenSquare in Beijing became the mecca of the protest movement and thousands ofactivists attempted to travel there throughout the year from locations all overChina—including from diaspora. Most Tiananmen-bound activists were inter-cepted by authorities on route. Those who did make it to the symbolic epicenterof China were immediately detained by authorities. By December 1999, Chineseauthorities stated that Falun Gong followers had had “more than 35,000 run-inswith the police” in the first five months of the crackdown (Rosenthal 1999).

In the beginning, protesters were often treated relatively lightly by authoritiesand sent home with few lasting repercussions. As protesters continued to defy na-tional policy, repression practices escalated, ranging from fines and job terminationto multiyear incarceration at Reeducation through Labor (RTL) camps, psychologi-cal hospitals, or occasionally prisons (Tong 2009). The first death in police custodyof a Falun Gong practitioner, according to Falun Gong sources, occurred onAugust 16, 1999, when a 17-year-old Heilongjiang high school student, Ms. ChenYing, died by jumping from a train when she was in police custody. Her death wasreported by authorities as a suicide.14 By the following June, when Li Hongzhi re-turned to his public speaking role, the number of repression-related deaths, accord-ing to Minghui, had increased to about 20. Later Minghui would revise that countto 69 deaths in 1999, 315 in 2000, and an annual high of 540 deaths in 2004.15

As the costs of protests increased, some Falun Gong practitioners becamemore militant. More severe policing practices—especially incarceration—evenbecame seen by some activists as a kind of martyrdom that improves one’s karmaand speeds one progress toward Consummation. The radical position of seeingarrest as a means of self-cultivation was sufficiently common that in August2000, Li Hongzhi spoke out against it:

Some students suggest that the best practice of cultivation is to get placed into a detention centeror a labor camp, or get sentenced to jail in order to validate the Fa. Students, it is not so.

13Even before repression began in July, Falun Gong activists had accelerated their mobili-zation. On June 3, for instance, 70,000 practitioners arrived in Beijing to protest, althoughthey were intercepted, detained, and expelled from the capital (Penny 2012:62–63).

14Retrieved on April 25, 2013, from http://library.minghui.org/victim/i2.htm.15See http://library.minghui.org/category/32,95,,1.htm#G4, retrieved on April 26, 2013.

For a discussion of the validity of Minghui’s documentation of repression, see Chapter 5 inTong (2009).


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Stepping forward to validate the Fa using many different approaches is a magnificent act, but thisabsolutely does not mean that you have to be arrested by the evil.16

Outside of China, the picture of Falun Gong protest in diaspora was muchless lethal and dramatic but followed a related trajectory. A day after the Chinesegovernment’s moved against Falun Gong on July 19, activists in North Americamounted demonstrations and lobbying efforts in Washington, DC, targeting theChinese embassy, the U.S. Congress, and international organizations and otherembassies.17 In the year of Li’s absence, overseas activists followed a pattern ofdecentralized, voluntaristic activism in a wide range of countries, including theUnited States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, England, New Zealand,Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, and Russia.18 Activism included soliciting supportfrom non-Chinese governments and international agencies; sit-ins, protestmarches, letter campaigns, and petitions to Chinese authorities in embassies andconsulates; press conferences; publishing and propaganda dissemination; FalunGong conferences; participation in the UN HRC meeting of April 2000 (forwhich was coordinated a simultaneous new wave of Falun Gong petitioners toTiananmen Square); and a U.S. campaign to have local city governments offi-cially endorse “Falun Dafa Day” or “Falun Dafa Week.” In addition, many activ-ists, both Chinese and non-Chinese, also traveled back to China to “petition” atTiananmen in the style described above.

This efflorescence of public activism within the religious movement took placewithout publicly visible coordination by a centralized Falun Gong authority.Ownby notes that activism in diaspora at this time consisted of “largely self-directed, self-motivated initiatives” that were “decentralized, uncoordinated, anddispersed in time and space” (Ownby 2008:193). Collective action was coordinatedmuch more by a spirit of shared identity and purpose than by formal organizationalmanagement. Innovation in protest tactics were made by grassroots activists on theground and communicated to one another through the Internet, especiallyMinghui, rather than by a leadership core guided by Li. In other words, the activ-ism involved here was the product of practitioner agency—of practitioners settingimmediate goals, inventing practical routines for meeting them, and enactingthose practices. In aggregate, this was the invention of the repertoire of collectiveaction that came to be known within the movement as “Clarifying Truth.”

Interpreting Clarifying TruthSuch robust mobilization demonstrates that activists strongly felt a shared

moral imperative to engage in activism. Was this moral imperative an expression of

16Retrieved on March 15, 2013, from http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2000/8/12/9118.html.

17Falun Dafa dashiji nianjian, retrieved on April 26, 2011, from http://zhengjian.org/zj/falunwitness/123,114,344,1.html.

18Ibid.


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obedience to Li’s bifurcated doctrine on activism or was it instead motivated bysome underlying ideal for which Li had become a symbol? It may not be possible tosatisfactorily answer such a question, but two points are worth noting. First, eventhough Clarifying Truth fit within the scope of Li’s doctrine and followed prece-dents from the movement’s earlier history, the situation of repression when Li dis-appeared in late summer 1999 was radically new. Activism in China involved newtargets, new goals, new dangers, and new forms of protest. Activism outside ofChina was essentially untried and had to be invented according to different oppor-tunities, resources, constraints, and for non-Chinese audiences. InventingClarifying Truth was a collective, diffusely coordinated, voluntary, and creativeprocess. Rather than followers implementing specific, repeated, and temporally co-ordinated commands from the charismatic leadership diffused through a chain ofcommand or from a single pulpit, follower creativity unfolded according to thepragmatics of people getting done what they felt was morally necessary to do withwhatever resources and possibilities were at hand. This was urgent, ad hoc, and attimes all-consuming activity. It would be reductive and inaccurate to seeClarifying Truth as the mere fulfillment of commands from centralized leadership.

Second, practitioners themselves appear to have been puzzled about how tounderstand their own activism in relation to Li’s teachings. On the Minghui website during the winter of 1999–2000, practitioners discussed the problem of howto relate Li’s teachings to protest activism, and especially to the liberal democrat-ic ideals that activists in diaspora frequently invoked. For example, in December1999, a practitioner posted an essay describing how she (or he) had “neverdreamed that cultivation would have anything to do with going to petition at theconsulate, lobbying Congress, and appearing on television. When doing thesethings, I have even wondered if this is cultivation at all.” But, through the practi-cal experience of activism, she concluded that protecting “Chinese practitioners’human rights and constitutionally granted freedoms of conscience, association,assembly, and expressing opinion” was itself a form of self-cultivation that “theMaster,” Li Hongzhi, specifically called for and even omnisciently arranged.19 Shejustified her conclusions by extrapolating from a well known and very generalteaching by Li about how practitioners must participate in the world of “ordinarypeople.” Li’s original discussion had nothing specifically to do with mobilization indiaspora for democratic freedoms. What matters for the analysis here is that theauthor’s reasoning was only necessary because there were no clear commands fromthe charismatic leader telling her to engage in the protest actions that she feltmorally compelled to do. The way she reasoned herself to a solution retrospectivelyattributed agency to Li, but this assignment of agency was itself an act of making Liinto a symbol of her own moral commitment. This gap between what Li specificallyhad preached and the moral motivations that organized Clarifying Truth allowed

19Translated by this author. The gender of the posting’s author is unspecified. Retrievedon July 10, 2013, from http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2000/1/8/497.html.


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participants to fashion their own understandings of their activism according to thebroadly shared ideals upon which their solidarity was built.

SAVING SOULS, NOT CITIZENS: 2000 AND BEYOND

A pivotal change in official Falun Gong discourse began in late February2000, when the Minghui editors posted a statement that freshly cast the repres-sion of Falun Gong in apocalyptic terms. The statement, which may have beendirected by Li Hongzhi, compared the persecution of Falun Gong to the persecu-tion of Christianity in the fourth century and to the persecution of Buddhismafter Shakyamuni’s lifetime, and embedded all of these persecutions into a cos-mology of good and evil facing off in history. The editorial described the protestefforts and sufferings that Falun Gong followers had experienced since the move-ment was banned and stated that such activism helps practitioners advancequickly toward “consummation.”

In the nearly ten months since April of last year, the Great Dharma has created a rich cultivationenvironment for all true cultivators of the different conditions and different levels. This hasallowed all committed and true cultivators to quickly soar and fleetly progress towardsConsummation in a brief span of time.20

Unlike earlier Minghui editorials, this statement did not mention mundaneexplanations for the persecution, such as jockeying for power within the Chinesestate, and did not make any claims about human rights and rule of law. FromFebruary 2000 onward, Minghui editors and later Li Hongzhi consistently ad-vanced cosmological and millenarian interpretations.

In June 2000, Li Hongzhi posted his first public comments since disappearingnearly a year earlier. Li’s comments show that he returned to public as a more thor-oughly apocalyptic preacher than when he had left (Palmer 2003). In effect, Li didwhat many charismatic leaders have done when external authorities threaten thecommunity’s integrity: he emphasized to his followers his own indispensability byframing the conflict with transcendent, paranoid, and totalizing polemic (Dawson2002; Robbins and Anthony 1995; Robbins and Palmer 1997). In June, Li claimedthat the persecution reveals that the world has entered a cosmic period of historicalcleansing, called the Era of Fa-Rectification (zhengfa shiqi):

What’s unfolding at present was arranged long ago in history. Those disciples who have steppedforward to validate the Fa in the face of pressure are magnificent. . . . Those disciples who havecome through the comprehensive and most rigorous tests have laid a rock-solid foundation forDafa in this world, have displayed in the human world the true manifestation of Dafa, and at thesame time have consummated their own most magnificent positions. The evil will soon be

20See Zaijie yaoli, yongmeng jingjin published on February 23, 2000, and retrieved onOctober 10, 2010, from http://www.minghui.org/mh/download.html. Translation by author.


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completely eliminated, the vile ones in the human world will receive due retribution, and sins canno longer be allowed. (Li 2005:14)

This passage demonstrates not only Li’s apocalypticism, but also hisstrategy of appropriating Clarifying Truth: he praised practitioners for “steppingforward” into public activism, but he also embedded their activism in a newly de-veloped millennial narrative of a purifying, apocalyptic age. Two days later, Liposted another influential apocalyptic statement in which he criticized practi-tioners who are too attached to “cultivation” and not willing to sacrificeenough—including giving their own lives—for the ultimate cause (Penny2012:182–83).21

During the three months following Li’s June statements, Minghui editorsissued new commentaries that further developed Li’s apocalyptic views. Thesestatements reinforced Li’s centrality for the movement by claiming that, during Li’sabsence, he had engaged in cosmic battle and succeeded in destroying “huge evilelements . . . using his powerful energy potency.”22 Also, the editors offered a fullyrevised belief system pertaining to “self-cultivation” in which they declared thatthat “personal cultivation,” which Li only a year earlier had emphasized as the ulti-mate concern of practitioners, was no longer appropriate during the apocalypticage. Instead, the most important activity of followers was “Fa-RectificationCultivation.” In practice, Fa-Rectification Cultivation still included the standardFalun Gong exercises and studying Li’s teachings but now it also made canonicalthe mandate to carry out Clarifying Truth as a core activity on the path to salva-tion.23 Official doctrine therefore had come to fully fuse cultivation and activism,as practitioner discourse had already been tending before February 2000. Yet theofficial doctrine also went further than prior practitioner discourse by embeddingthe fusion of activism and cultivation into a millenarian framework.

Li Hongzhi’s final step in appropriating Clarifying Truth was to re-define themeaning and ultimate purpose of activism. His innovation was to declare thatthe overarching goal of Clarifying Truth was to “save” the souls of others ( jiudu,jiuren).24 In Li’s first public appearance since seclusion, which was at a FalunGong conference in October 2000, in San Francisco, he preached that ClarifyingTruth allows members of the bystander public “to know the facts and get rid oftheir previous views and evil thoughts” that they were “fooled” into believing “bythe venomous fabrications and deceitful lies” of the Chinese Communist Party

21For Li’s statement, see http://www.minghui.org/mh/fenlei/217/zip.html, retrievedJanuary 7, 2009.

22Retrieved on July 15, 2013, from http://en.minghui.org/emh/articles/2000/7/19/7647.html.

23See http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2000/8/10/3041.html and http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2000/9/25/1589.html, which were retrieved on July 15, 2013.

24The Chinese term does not contain the metaphysical term “soul,” but otherwise itsFalun Gong usage is similar.


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(CCP). Only by correcting the views of “ordinary people” can practitioners savemembers of the public from being “weeded out in the future” time of reckoning.

Our clarifying the truth to the world isn’t any sort of political struggle. . . . I’m telling you thatthis is your mercy, and you are truly saving the future people! (Applause) If those people’sthoughts don’t turn around, think about it, they’re done for. I think you should, as a student [ofthe Dafa], a cultivator, do these things from the perspective of mercy, too. Inform people of thetruth, tell them about it—this is also rescuing people.25

Li’s new doctrines emphasized Clarifying Truth as a means of “saving”people at the apocalyptic moment of history rather than as a means of makingclaims on political authorities or securing the collective and individual rights ofmovement participants. He continued to develop and maintain this doctrine inhis later preaching. As a result, in the years to follow the Falun Gong movementevolved into something more millenarian and less overtly political than wit-nessed in 1999 and early 2000.

The millenarian direction into which Falun Gong evolved over the lastdecade can be observed in many ways. In 2004, for example, practitioners starteda campaign called “Quit the Communist Party.” Although formally quitting theCCP has been a protest tactic in other settings, the Falun Gong version is pri-marily oriented toward saving people from divine punishment on Judgment Day.One can “quit” the communist party online or at a “Quit the Party ServiceCenter.” Quitting appears to have no legal or institutional consequence. But byregistering your dis-affiliation with all communist party organizations, one re-ceives a registration document that can be used as proof to preserve oneself fromultimate punishment when the CCP meets divine retribution.26 By December2012, Falun Gong media claimed that nearly 130 million people had quit variouscommunist party organizations through the campaign. Some portion of thesenames includes posthumous “quitting” made by Falun Gong practitioners onbehalf of those who died before the opportunity to quit the party arrived.

Interviews with practitioners I conducted in North America, Japan, andTaiwan also reveal that practitioners now understand Clarifying Truth activismas the work of “saving” others. For instance, in Tokyo (July 2007), I interviewedan older female Chinese activist who told me how she made phone calls everyday into China trying to convince people to quit the CCP. She said that it wasnot a political tactic to weaken the CCP but a millenarian project. “We want tosave people,” she explained, “God is going to destroy the CCP and we are tryingto save as many people as we can before that happens.” Similarly, at a daily FalunGong vigil in front of the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, I was told (August

25Retrieved on July15, 2013, from http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2000/11/5/9115.html.

26See Dajiyuan zhengzhong shengming retrieved on December 5, 2012, from http://tuidang.epochtimes.com.


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2010) by a Chinese emigre activist that her primary motivation for her dailyactivism was to “save people” ( jiuren). Similar comments were made to me by arepresentative of the Falun Gong newspaper, Epoch Times, in Los Angeles(August 2010), and in several interviews with Taiwanese practitioners in Taipei(September 2013).27

The millennialism of contemporary Falun Gong only emerged after the in-tervention of leadership in 2000, but clearly spread and took hold of the move-ment. Li’s “spiritualization” (Melton 1985) of events served that second of thetwo performative imperatives faced by a charismatic leader—to safely navigatenew situations that might disconfirm his authority. Reframing activism in acosmic narrative put Li at the center of the movement. In addition, Li’s reframingof activism made the mobilization in diaspora more sustainable, since it shiftedattention away from the Sisyphean task of trying to change Chinese state policy.As a consequence of this “spiritualization” of the Falun Gong mission, the liberaldemocratic potentialities inherent to Clarifying Truth activism atrophied.Apocalyptic rhetoric re-focused activism on devotion to Li Hongzhi and largelydiscarded discourse about justice, rights, and rule of law.28

CONCLUSION

This article has used the case of the Falun Gong to explore interactional rela-tions between a charismatic leader and his followers in the flow of collectiveaction. I have argued against a one-sided view of charismatic relations in whichthe leader is agentic and the followers are merely obedient. Conditions of uncer-tainty, organizational decentralization, and a structural ambiguity within charis-matic leadership all allowed followers to collectively set and pursue themovement’s agenda. Follower agency led to the invention of a Clarifying Truthactivism. Before Falun Gong’s charismatic leadership appropriated ClarifyingTruth within a millenarian framework, follower agency had been mobilizedaround this-worldly goals, such as stopping the persecution, and was even linkedto ideals such as protecting human rights in China.

Independent follower agency, however, was contingent on Li Hongzhi’spublic disappearance during the first year of China’s state campaign against FalunGong. When Li returned to the movement, he used his control over doctrine toreestablish his charismatic authority in a vastly changed context. One change inthat context was the way practitioners fused religious practice with political ac-tivism under the label Clarifying Truth. Li appropriated this fusion by claimingthat Falun Gong had entered an apocalyptic battle and Clarifying Truth was ameans to save the souls of nonbelievers before the end of history. As these doctri-nal innovations secured his continued authority, they also directed followers

27August 28, 2010.28Some Falun Gong organizations, however, have remained focused on human rights.


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away from justice and human rights claims that had initially inspired activismand for which Li had been emerging as a symbol.

From this case, then, we can draw several helpful observations about the in-teractional dynamic of agency in charismatic relations. First, follower agency ispossible and can have real effects for a movement. The nature and strength of fol-lower agency in Falun Gong was demonstrated best when the charismatic leaderdisappeared. It was during this period that the community transformed itselffrom a movement primarily aimed at personal-level goals of self-cultivationto societal-level goals of influencing the public and changing homeland statepolicies.

Second, the relatively free expression of follower agency in this case was con-tingent on the absence of the charismatic leader. This might seem like a highlyidiosyncratic circumstance, but theory suggests otherwise. Considerable researchon charismatic authority has shown that charismatic leaders usually attempt tomaintain their charismatic appeal, which Dawson calls “this crucial element ofmystery,” by deliberately segregating themselves from followers. Similarly, thestaff of a leader shares a “strong incentive to limit the exposure of the leader”(Dawson 2002:86), which can in some cases even lead to “the virtual sequestra-tion of the leader” (Joosse 2012:191). Therefore, in addition to various contin-gencies that may silence the voice of a leader, even the internal dynamics ofcharismatic authority may constrain a leader’s capacity to command and encour-age conditions of follower agency.

Third, the interplay of agency between followers and leader does not,however, unseat the prevailing notion that the power relations of charismaare asymmetrical. When Li returned, he was successful in appropriatingClarifying Truth for a millenarian frame that reinforced his central importancefor the movement. As far as I can tell, the “spiritualization” of the movement oc-curred without any community-wide debate about the costs of abandoning themore liberal democratic framings that had circulated in the winter before Li’sreturn.

A final observation is more tentative, given the difficulty of making strongclaims on matters of symbolism and subjective motivations. Over the course ofthese events, there appears to have been an evolution in what it was that Li sym-bolized. When Li was absent, the actions of followers indexed a set of ideals forwhich Li was taken as a symbol even though, when Li returned, he readily under-mined them. I have gestured here at an exploration of this possibility by notinghow some practitioners were linking Li to human rights and democracy and,more broadly, practitioners were interpreting Falun Gong doctrine in a more this-worldly manner than Li would later come to emphasize. The broader point isthat research on charismatic movements ought to be sensitive to the gap thatexists between the ideals for which a leader is a symbol and whatever latest com-mands he issues as new doctrine. The agency of followers needs to be examinedboth independently of a leader’s doctrine and within the context of leader–fol-lower interaction.


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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Philip Gorski and the anonymous reviewers for helpfulcomments on earlier versions of this article.

FUNDING

I began this paper as a graduate student at Yale University, where I received aJohn F. Enders Research Grant from the Graduate School and support fromCouncil on East Asian Studies of the MacMillan Center. Research on the Minghuiweb site was supported in part by a Doctoral Dissertation Research ImprovementGrant (0961624) from the Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program ofthe National Science Foundation. Additional field research was supported by theUniversity of Chicago.

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