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CB: A bit of confusion in this NYT reporter's thinking. There is no contradiction between advocating scientific methods and advocating Marxism. In fact, they sort of go together, especially in relationship to religion.
>>> furuhashi.1 at osu.edu 02/05/01 01:46AM >>>
New York Times 5 February 2001
Chinese Professor's Attack on a Sect Led to a Face-Off
By ERIK ECKHOLM
BEIJING, Feb. 4 - In the spring of 1999, Professor He Zuoxiu, an elderly theoretical physicist whose avocation is debunking pseudoscience, hoped to provoke some debate with a short article warning about the "deceitful lies" of certain "qigong" meditation sects. One called Falun Gong, he charged, led a student into mental illness.
At the time, his provocative views were not welcome in the mainstream press, and the article appeared in the April issue of "Science and Technology for Youth," an obscure magazine published by a teacher-training university in Tianjin, 100 miles southeast of Beijing.
Neither the professor nor anyone else could have imagined that the article would touch off some of China's most tumultuous events in years: nothing less than the broadest popular resistance to Communist authority since the 1989 democracy movement and the harsh government crackdown that followed.
It was anger over the professor's article that led 10,000 or more Falun Gong believers to hold a vigil on April 25, 1999, outside the leadership compound in Beijing, demanding an official apology and legal recognition. And it was that unauthorized demonstration that led the frightened authorities to outlaw the spiritual group, which had attracted millions of Chinese with its promises of physical and spiritual salvation through meditative exercises.
Mr. He, now 74, is a Chinese original. As a physicist he aided China's development of nuclear weapons in the early 1960's. Today, he said in an interview at his small apartment in a compound of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he is still collaborating with scientists at M.I.T. in the search for "dark matter" in the universe.
Yet this advocate of scientific methods is also a devout Marxist who has published essays questioning whether today's pell-mell market reforms are steering China off the true path of Marx and socialism.
"As a scientist I make my judgments based on universal laws," he said in the interview. "And Marxism is a science just like all the others."
If his orthodox Marxism is not always welcomed by the leadership, his diatribes against "evil cults" garner more official respect these days, and he has no regrets about his cameo role in the bizarre national drama of Falun Gong.
He said that the latest news, of seven apparent followers trying to immolate themselves in Tiananmen Square, only meant that Li Hongzhi, the Falun Gong founder, was even more despicable than he had asserted before. "This proves that Falun Gong is more evil than other cults," Mr. He said. "With the Branch Davidians in the United States, at least the head of the cult burned himself together with the others. Here the head wanted to sacrifice his followers to achieve his own ulterior motives."
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