An organization called Falun Gong has been much in the news for the past year or so, and is often portrayed as a potential threat to China's stability. The reality is considerably more complicated, and -- as is often the case in China -- very much mixed in with the country's history. PNS associate editor Franz Schurmann, professor emeritus of history and sociology at UC-Berkeley and former director of the Center for Chinese Studies, has written on and traveled widely in China.

What is this Falun Gong that is now roiling China?

It has made headlines for over a year now and seems to refer to an exotic sect that is defying the Communist authorities as students and others did in the spring of 1989. That defiance led to the massacre of Tiananmen Square.

Remarkable about the Falun Gong is the fact that it began in 1992 and, according to its founder Li Hongzhi, now numbers some 100 million adherents mostly in China but also in some 30 different countries.

"Falun" is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit expression "Dharma-chakra," the Wheel of the Law, which dates back some 1,700 years to when Buddhism spread throughout China. "Gong" means the natural and moral power one develops through long practice. Those who practice Falun Gong generally call their faith Falun Dafa, a term widely used in Chinese Buddhism meaning "Great Law."

Falun Gong is a deeply spiritual movement arising at a time many people in China and East Asia as a whole are tired of feeding a vast consumer capitalism. At the same time, a great moral void has arisen in a region where the teachings of Confucius have deep roots.

It may help to note that until the West came crashing into China 150 years ago, Chinese followed the beliefs and practices of three great religions: Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Taoism holds that the Individual and Nature are the basic realities of life. Buddhism holds that Humans and Nature are only illusions, the true reality lies beyond. Confucianism makes Humans the centerpiece of reality.

Falun Gong is clearly in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Confucianism in China today survives in social relations and political practices that also have Marxist roots. The hostility in China between a spiritual Falun Gong movement and its secular opponents goes deep and will get even deeper. As it intensifies, it could eventually endanger China's stability and progress far more than the challenges that came from the Tiananmen dissidents.

Because China is a country with some 4,000 years of written history, many Chinese think of possible parallels that could provide clues for understanding Falun Gong. One is the great Yellow Turban peasant uprising in the year 184 AD.

At the time, the Han Empire, with extent comparable to the Roman Empire, was saturated with corruption. The powerful got richer and the peasants poorer. A leader, Zhang Jiao, arose and prophesied the blue sky would soon end and be replaced by a yellow sky heralding the beginning of the Road (Tao) toward Great Peace, hence the name of his adherents. The Yellow Turban revolt marks the birth of Taoism.

Zhang fought the Imperial Army with some 300,000 soldiers and shook the 400 year old Han Dynasty to its foundations. When he suddenly died, the Yellow Turbans fell apart. But a decade or so later the Han Empire disintegrated.

Many Westerners believed China would fall when the Soviet Union disintegrated. Instead, it has become more powerful and prosperous. Yet corruption is so pervasive that many officials don't hesitate to write back to supplicants and say a proposed bribe is not enough. Many Chinese, in China and beyond, wonder whether Falun Dafa could be a reincarnation of the Yellow Turbans.

At the same time, much in Falun Dafa resembles Maoism. Mao Zedong's first publication around 1912 was on self-strengthening, a theme which is at the center of Taoist beliefs and martial arts. Mao himself discarded Confucianism for Marxism, but in many ways he resembled Zhang Jiao more than Lenin. The stories with which he inspired his peasant followers, like the "Old Man Who Moved a Mountain," were more in the Taoist than any Marxist tradition. When he was nearing death, he told his American biographer Edgar Snow, "I feel like a lonely Taoist monk."

People in China often remark on the "vacuum of faith." They mix fragments of ideologies -- Marxism for socio-economic thought, Confucianism for personal relations and capitalism for economic and technological growth -- but there is no moral core.

Those who hate Falun Dafa see it as a throwback to China's past of poverty, superstition and fatalism. "The 'Master' (Falun Gong founder Li Hong Zhi) is a master con-man," notes one bitter diatribe posted on a Chinese-language chat line. "Too bad so many fools get taken in by his deviltry. Some Americans would love it if all Chinese fell under (his) spell...America would then do its high-tech, China would forever remain far behind and the Americans could manipulate us however they wanted."

Those who love Falun Dafa, on the other hand, see it as a moral lifeboat in a sea of depravity. "Give it a try while overcoming genuine hardships or tribulations," urges a doctoral student in computer science at the University of Toronto who says Falun Gong practice has transformed him.

Quoting Master Li, he notes, "When it looks impossible and is said impossible, you give it a try and then see if it is possible. If you really make it, you will find, 'After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead.'"

Those who wonder why there is so much fuss about Falun Dafa believe that pragmatism and democracy constitute the best road leading towards a good society.