How many prophets have warned
Humanity knows great decay
Retreat from the ranks and levels of the Chinese Communist Party
And wait for the moment till the Great Law will guard peace.
The message was stamped onto a 10-Yuan bill and in China it makes the note practically worthless. The message comes from the Fa, the abstract arm of Falun Gong. The movement was introduced in 1993 as a spiritual order. By 1999, tens of millions of Chinese people were practicing Falun Gong. The group became so immensely popular among the population that it frightened the Communist party. Since then, the Party has gone to great lengths to suppress the movement. Recently, it has been reported that member of the Falun Gong have been imprisoned, sent to labor camps, and even executed. But life in the Middle Kingdom is bad all around. Just look at Weibo, the Chinese Twitter; if you are retweeted more than 500 times on the site and your message contains things the CCP believes are inappropriate, you could spend years in jail.
As for the Yuan bill, even Chinese people outside of China were afraid to accept the currency, due to rumors of rendition of troublemakers in foreign “China Towns”. Maybe the note is a sign of change or maybe it is just a reminder of the power of the CCP. Either way the question remains, where are the stamps coming from and will it ever make a difference.
Source: Vice.com
Note that (briefly) Mrs Wei in Country Driving was briefly an adherent. There are numbers of “gongs” in China, Falun Gong faces challenges in that it encouraged members to keep in touch with each other, and so is feared as a possible source of national instead of local … problems … and also because the head lives in Long Island, not in China.
The CCP’s response sounds eerily similar to Stalin’s treatment of any threats to his power, either real or perceived. These power grabs have nothing to do with building a better society, though Stalin tried to justify such occurrences as necessary for the advancement of Communist Russia.
If nothing else, this article should make us all appreciative of the freedoms we have in the US. People seem to have less and less faith and pride in our country, but no matter how annoyed you are, it could always be worse. Also, it is nice that I can get 500 retweets without going to jail…