Scholars Say Society Should Leave No Room For Cults

Xinhua News Service, August 6, 1999

BEIJING, XINHUA - A sociologist at the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has told Xinhua that China needs to take a good look at the social causes of the Falun Gong cult and to eliminate them and to promote science and rational thought.

Jing Tiankui, a research fellow at CASS's Sociology Institute, said that although Falun Gong cult is full of contradictions and lacking in common sense, its numbers grew to about 2 million in just a few years.

In this shell game, people with education were deceived by inferior people and people with a background in science were deceived by people with no background, with good being tricked by evil and truth being obscured by fatuousness, he said.

Jing took part in a CASS study on Falun Gong cult and said that its social causes need to be studied in the campaign against Li Hongzhi, its founder, and his fallacies and that because of cultural reasons there are still places where for swindlers like him can operate.

China has vigorously pushed science and technology, Jing said, but feudalism and superstition have deeper roots than science, and superstition resurfaces whenever the climate is right.

The lack of development of society has been one of the major reasons for the Falun Gong phenomenon, he said, and in some places, society is in a state of disunity and illegal organizations can take hold.