Published by: World Tibet Network News, Tuesday, Jun 11, 1996

By THOM BEAL

BEIJING , June 11, 1996 (UPI) -- China bristled at what it saw as hypocrisy when the U.S. State Department took it to task in a 1995 human rights report for harassing religious groups and arresting their leaders.

Those "religious groups," the Chinese government argued in a lengthy rebuttal, were doomsday cults engaged in criminal and anti- government activities, and that was why security forces brought them to heel.

"The United States itself has cracked down on doomsday cults in an extreme way," Beijing said, citing the 1993 FBI siege of the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas.

While the exchange pales compared with recent bitter disputes between China and the United States over nuclear proliferation, copyright piracy and Taiwan, it shows that two very different nations share at least one common problem.

Beijing's ire underscored its conviction that rural religious groups, sects and secret societies are among the gravest threats to social stability and Communist Party rule.

Chinese sectarian religions, some dating back several centuries, were banned and driven almost completely underground after the Revolution.

But more than four decades of state atheism and purification campaigns have failed to diminish popular folk religion and a widespread belief in the power of heroic leaders, faith healers, sorceresses and fortune tellers.

The loosening of party control over the Chinese countryside during the economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s inspired the sects to a more public profile.

China's current crackdown has been especially harsh on the Yiguandao, or Way of Unity, which grew out of dissent against the Qing dynasty in the late 19th century. The Yiguandao flourished, then nearly perished in a violent 1951 government campaign that provided the impetus for developing China's modern prison system.

When disciples met secretly in Beijing this month, they spoke in hushed, bitter tones of their experiences in the prisons of north central Shaanxi province, where the sect has always been strong and a thorn in the government's side.

"We are now free," said one member, a farmer released in November after serving a five-year jail term for participating in what he said was a protest against high taxes. "But there are still others in jail, some for more than 40 years."

Although Yiguandao disciples are in prisons throughout China, a majority remain in Shaanxi No. 1 Prison near the town of Weinan and Shaanxi No. 2 Prison near Fuping, both about 920 kilometers (552 miles) southwest of Beijing.

Over the years, their numbers have dwindled. Hundreds were executed, while others committed suicide, died of illnesses brought on by the harsh conditions of prison life, or died of old age, the farmer said.

At No. 2 Prison, where inmates work 16-hour shifts assembling water pumps or stitching "Shanghai" brand black cloth shoes, Yiguandao disciples who once numbered in the thousands now total only a few hundred.

At No. 1, where fewer than 120 Yiguandao members remain alive, prisoners toil in the foundry welding "Weinan boilers."

One of the earliest post-reform warnings of the revival of sects and secret societies came in 1985 from China's Ministry of Public Security.

In a secret report to senior party officials, the ministry warned that traditional or neo-traditional sects had "re-emerged in every region and province of China with the exception of Tibet."

The government identified 70 groups, including the Yiguandao, whose numbers had swelled in various regions under militant anti-Communist leaders.

One of the biggest cases of officially suppressed sectarian activity ever monitored in China involved 1,148 Yiguandao members, who in 1978 formed the "Fraternal Army of the Soldiers of Heaven."

A police account of the case alleged that members had "vilified" Communist Party members as "devil people" and socialism as a "realm of evil devils."

Like many of China's secret societies, the Yinguandao was a product of the 1880's Boxer Movement, a wave of Chinese nationalism that sought to purge the country of corrupt government and the influence of the Western powers.

Wang Xuemeng was initiated into the famous White Lotus Society before breaking in 1883 to form the Yiguandao in Shanxi province.

Wang was reputed to have extraordinary powers, according to Chinese historians. He was a spiritualist, fortune-teller and faith healer, with an ability to perform complex mathematical calculations, which he displayed in public, drawing thousands of spectators.

Unlike other groups that inveighed against the excesses of the Qing Dynasty and the foreign legations, the Yiguandao did not advocate violence. Instead, the group evolved into a devout religious sect espousing the ideals of spirituality, purity and self-discipline.

The sect can be found in nearly every province in China. Its beliefs and rituals draw from a variety of religious traditions, including the Daoist, Buddhist, Islamic and Christian.

Central to Yiguandao is millenialism, the belief that the end of the world is near, with justice due to the righteous.

Some scholars attribute the recent revival of sects to the growing economic disparity between a poor, politically impotent, agrarian China and the power and affluence of its cities.

Others point to a pervasive moral crisis in China, which has sparked an intensive search for national identity and an alternative publicly accepted set of moral values.

"When state-sponsored definitions of Chinese identity fail, popular alternatives such as Yiguandao arise to fill some of the space where an identifying core should be," said Perry Link, professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University.

Leading members of the Yiguandao not only bear out those analyses, but attest to the sect's deeply-held belief that Chinese society needs a thorough overhaul.

Member Yang Biao, who was arrested four times since 1951 for counter- revolutionary activities, was reported by Chinese security police to have said:

"Present-day society seems rotten to the core. The people at the top spend all their time competing for power and influence. Those in the middle specialize in increasing their wealth and property, and those at the bottom excel only at stealing from others."

"We must therefore carry out the universal transmigration of the myriad of souls," Yang was quoted as saying.