Talk:Li Hongzhi

Issues resolved

A user added a few tags to the top of the page expressing concern about the article's neutrality and reliance on primary sources. I did another reading of Li's biographies in Penny and Ownby, and pulled on some information available on other Falungong pages to improve this one. I think I have thoroughly scrubbed the page of primary sources, so that should not longer be a concern. The page is not as complete as it could be (eg., nothing is said of Li's response to the Chinese government's suppression. He gave several media interviews around that time that are hardly described at all), but on balance it seems to reflect the tone and weight accorded to different aspects of Li's life in major scholarly works.—Zujine|talk 07:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I just want to make it clear to the editing public the content changes here at Li Hongzhi. Very important phrases such as David Ownby's "both versions should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticisim" was removed, with black paint smeared all over the Chinese government version of the story, which we learn is just propaganda aimed at destroying Falun Gong. Moreover, we notice the removal of sourced material from Ownby, "According to Zhuan Falun, Falun Gong's system was developed between 1984 and 1989 after years of synthesis from general Qigong principles and advice from Masters of numerous religious and spiritual schools. It claims to have "assembled all the mystical powers, which are the essence of the whole cosmos." Interestingly, we learn that Li has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, yet no mention that such a nomination was essentially a fruitless lobbying campaign by Falun Gong practitioners, which is discussed in the CNN piece that it is sourced to.

Evidently, having been through this so many times, I do not want to make any personal remarks, or get into another edit war. As such, I will not be reverting any changes myself to avoid any sort of confrontation in this regard. But I believe the changes have seriously damaged the NPOV of the article, and needs to be scrutinized by uninvolved parties. Colipon+(Talk) 17:51, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

See talk. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 22:13, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I see further explanation is needed.

• Colipon, the phrase attributed to Ownby "both versions should be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism" is not Ownby's words. It is a paraphrase of his statement that different versions of the biographies should be taken "with several grains of salt." There is nothing especially important about this statement, and it does not explain to the reader why the biographies should be regarded with caution. In my edits, I drew on Penny to explain that both biographies serve some specific spiritual or political purpose; in the case of Falungong accounts, it is to bolster the orthodoxy of the teachings. The Chinese government's accounts seek to undermine Li's claims to extraordinary insights, and to undermine the credibility of the practice. As Penny state, it is propaganda, and because it relies on unnamed witnesses, it can only be regarded as textual fabrication (his words, not mine). Laying out the agendas of both parties, as I did is and as Penny does, is far more nuanced and instructive to the reader, as it provides guidance on what kind of skepticism they should exercise.
• If you read Penny and Ownby and measure the weight and importance that they ascribe to the official vs. Chinese government biographies, I think you will find that I did likewise.
• As to the statement "According to Zhuan Falun...." whose removal you objected to, that statement was attributed to Ownby's article Falun Gong in the New World. It was improperly attributed. Nothing approaching that content is found either in the secondary source, or in the primary source (Zhuan Falun). That is why I deleted it. However, the same essential history is told in a properly attributed way through my edits.
• Regarding the Nobel Peace Prize nomination, the article previously only mentioned that he was not nominated by the city of San Francisco. The lack of nomination is not more notable than the fact that he was nominated by other parties. The CNN article, moreover, does not assert that this was a "fruitless campaign." It was evidently fruitful in that it did result in nominations.

I am going to restore my edits to the page, as I have seen no substantial reason that they should not be included. My edits involved adding relevant history to the page, providing more clear and nuanced discussions of his competing biographies, and replacing numerous primary sources with high quality secondary sources. I think it was an improvement by any measure.—Zujine|talk 23:26, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

There was a community discussion about including Nobel prize nominations in biographies a few years ago. (here). An important conclusion from that discussion is that "Over a hundred people are nominated annually, the pool of potential nominators is vast, and there are no eligibility requirements (other than being alive)". Also keep in mind that we don't know whether Li was nominated or not in 2000, since the Nobel Prize committee doesn't release the names for 50 years. The 2001 attempt failed to get him a nomination, much less a prize, but I've kept that because that failed nomination was indicative of the controversy about Falun Gong's antigay teachings.

I also reworked some other changes, which had nothing to do with "scrubbing the pages of primary sources" and everything to do with aligning the page to the Falun Gong phraseology and worldview. These included repetitive use of emotive words such as "persecution", attributing the Chinese government's actions to the "Chinese Communist Party", and extensively quoting Li Hongzhi instead of secondary sources. There was also the strange mention of the awards heaped on Li by the governments of Houston, San Jose, and other Americans municipalities, for "unselfish public service for the benefit and welfare of mankind" when not a high percentage of Americans are Falun Gong members. As it turns out, they were praising Falun Gong's sit-ins and other political protests against the Chinese government, so I added that bit to the article. The "birthdate controversy" was completely bowdlerized, removing (the secondary source-recorded) mention of Li's prior attempts to change his birthdate, Zhuan Falun's listing of his earlier birthdate, and pre-"persecution" accusations that he was aligning himself with Sakyamuni. All non-primary source material from that controversy was restored.

The bifurcation of Li's "early life" into "Spiritual" and "Chinese government" sections is unhelpful. Falun Gong does not publish "mundane" biographies of Li, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia can't. Specific instances where somebody believes the Chinese government falsified its records, like the oxytocin birth — oops! that's sourced to a primary source that you added — can be discussed, but otherwise, it's enough to note the competing narratives and to attribute statements appropriately. Otherwise, I just restored some attributions to Falun Gong sources. Shrigley (talk) 00:42, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Zujine’s decision to clearly delineate between the approved, spiritual biographies and the Chinese government biographies, and will explain why. This is a biography of a living person who has two distinct life stories, as told by two different sources. The accounts are, in many places, irreconcilable. We can include details from each, with due weight, but need to properly ascribe the source of all such claims. As Bejnamin Penny writes, it is all but impossible to find sources of information on Li’s early life that are not associated with either Falun Gong or with the government (the latter having produced biographies only after July 1999 in the context of state suppression). The Falun Gong biographies are entirely spiritual in nature, and contain few details on Li’s career and education. The state biographies are concerned entirely with these things. Both narratives of Li’s life were created with specific agendas in mind, and must be described in the context of those agendas.

Shrigley has removed that differentiation and context. He also restored the statement that David Ownby says Li was born Li Lai in 1952. If you refer to the footnote that Ownby provides, however, you will notice that these details—as with all others that Ownby gives to describe Li’s career and ordinary life—are credited to Chinese government sources, and are not the result of Ownby’s own research. As Ownby writes in the footnote, “These are obviously state propaganda, produced in the context of the campaign against Falun Gong.”

Some of Ownby’s other footnotes provide for some amusement. For instance, Chinese government biographies included anonymous interviews with Li’s elementary school teachers, who are purported to recall him being a very unexceptional student. Ownby gives a good tongue-in-cheek assessment of those claims only in the notes:

“Li was born in 1951 or 1952 and would have begun elementary school in 1957 or 1958. If his third-grade teacher, to take a hypothetical example, had been forty years old in i960, she would have been seventy-nine in 1999, when the campaign against Falun Gong began. One cannot but marvel at the "supernormal powers" of the elementary school teacher who recalls the mediocre writing skills of an unexceptional student forty years earlier.”

I am not suggesting that the Chinese government’s account has no merit at all. Indeed, I think the reason Ownby drew from these bios in spite of their political agendas was that they provide details that are otherwise unavailable, since the Falun Gong biographies do not include many details of Li’s “ordinary life.” But readers should be aware of the source of all claims about Li Hongzhi, and of the possible conflicts of interests of those making those claims. I think a scrupulous interpretation of WP:BLP would lead us to the same conclusion.

Benjamin Penny, probably the most authoritative biographer of Li’s, adds similar caveats, stating that “information about Falun Gong published in the People’s Republic is necessarily part of a negative publicity campaign,” and so should be “treated with caution.” This includes information on his alternate date of birth, alternate name, places or employment, and so forth.

Both of the two main third party biographers of Li Hongzhi (Penny and Ownby) note that accounts from the PRC published in or after the 1999 were propaganda produced in the context of state suppression. We should do the same, though we should take care that our tone should be no less academic.Homunculus (duihua) 04:54, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Another quick note: the oxytocin details (that it was not synthesized until 1953, and thus could not have been used in Li's birth) are also cited in Ownby, page 257. No need for a primary source there.Homunculus (duihua) 05:34, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Homunculus – Oxytocin was discovered in 1909. As early as 1911, physicians started using pituitary extract to stimulate childbirth contractions. The hormone is found unchanged in all mammalian species. That oxytocin was not synthesised until the mid-50s is not relevant and does not preclude that the naturally obtained extract was used earlier. Wokepedian (talk) 02:11, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, if sources are cherry picked like that, it is very easy to find 'evidence' of the 'orthodox' Falun Gong narrative in a third-party scholar's works, append Ownby and Penny's names, and make it seem like it is all 'neutral'. Homunculus is entirely correct in saying that 'the two narratives serve two different goals'. Yet the weighting of the language shifts entirely against the government's biography after Zujine's edit, with emotive language and all the peroxide. Like I said, I don't think it's hard for third-parties to spot the sheer ridiculousness of the POV balance shift in favour of Falun Gong after Zujine's edits, which is precisely why I didn't even bother reverting the changes. And voila!, User AgadaUrbanit, who I have never seen on any China-related articles, let alone Falun Gong, spotted it only several hours after the edits. Let this speak for itself. Colipon+(Talk) 05:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Colipon, you earlier protested the deletion of a quotation that was misattributed. Do you have any other specific objections? As I have stated elsewhere, I am only concerned with content and policy, and not in partaking of ideological battles.Homunculus (duihua) 06:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I've repeatedly ask Wiki administration to send down some non-involved editors to clean up Falun Gong. Until then, these articles will always be a mess, since disputes like this are endless. I've also repeatedly invited the supposedly 'pro-Falun Gong' editors to endorse this plan, because I think it is the only way to resolve the disputes. But sadly, the response to this has been dismal. Colipon+(Talk) 06:10, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I have always favoured the proposal for unaligned editors to be involved, which is precisely why I've invested so much in reading all the sources I can on Falungong and working to improve these pages. For the record, I am agnostic on Falungong (and in general, though I do believe in the right to human dignity and freedom from torture), but I am knowledgeable on the academic discourses, and have tried to improve these articles accordingly. As you may recall, there are no more Falungong editors around to consent to your plan. In any event, this is not the place to discuss abstract ideas about how to handle these articles.—Zujine|talk 14:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, none of my remarks were personal, so there is no need to 'clarify' whether or not you are a Falun Gong editor. I have also read both Penny and Ownby and do not find that we are giving these sources a balanced presentation on here, particularly after your earlier set of edits. Ownby was initially very sympathetic to FLG, but in his more recent book Falun Gong and the future of China he distances himself from this. I read these books several years ago so I cannot recall the contents exactly, but the gist of it was that he was very careful not to endorse 'either side of the dispute' - which is the approach that Wikipedia should take as well. Thus I raised this as a content concern. I get frustrated because like before, edit wars are occurring again, and much the same pattern of discussions are occurring again. Colipon+(Talk) 15:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Why???

Do You know Li Hong Zhi? He said That:

"I'm not Jesus, and I'm not Sakyamuni, but the Fa has created millions and millions of Jesuses and Sakyamunis who have the courage to walk the path of Truth, who have the courage to risk their lives for the sake of the Truth, and who have the courage to devote their lives to saving sentient beings” (Teaching the Fa at the Washington, D.C. Fa Conference, July 22, 2002 Li Hongzhi)

But on the other hand He said that: I am just a very ordinary man". Time Magazine. 2 August 1999. "During the Cultural Revolution, the government misprinted my birthdate. I just corrected it. During the Cultural Revolution, there were lots of misprints on identity. A man could become a woman, and a woman could become a man. It's natural that when people want to smear you, they will dig out whatever they can to destroy you. What's the big deal about having the same birthday as Sakyamuni? Many criminals were also born on that date. I have never said that I am Sakyamuni. I am just a very ordinary man." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Hongzhi#cite_note-bbc-19

References

possibly add a section on Li Hongzhi's opposition to homosexuality

if i may quote the sister article of Teachings of Falun Gong

Li Hongzhi's conservative moral teachings have caused some concern in the West, including his views on homosexuality, democracy and science. The founder taught that homosexuality makes one "unworthy of being human", creates bad karma, and is comparable to organized crime. He also taught that "disgusting homosexuality shows the dirty abnormal psychology of the gay who has lost his ability of reasoning", and that homosexuality is a "filthy, deviant state of mind." Li additionally stated in a 1998 speech in Switzerland that, "gods' first target of annihilation would be homosexuals." In light of Li's teachings on homosexuality as immoral, a nomination of Li for the Nobel Peace Prize by San Francisco legislators was withdrawn in 2001. Although gay, lesbian, and bisexual people may practice Falun Gong, founder Li stated that they must "give up the bad conduct" of all same-sex sexual activity.

since most of these are direct quotes, i think it would be notewhile to add such content on any sections related to his beliefs/controversies 98.59.80.64 (talk) 04:56, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

As shown above in the "Why is the page semi-protected?" section,this section was already discussed and deemed too heavily emphasized. Also, please state your sources for your "direct quotes" above. 92.200.207.67 (talk) 03:40, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Braslow piece in Los Angeles Magazine

In March 2020, Los Angeles Magazine published a piece by Samuel Braslow which exposed Shen Yun practices and their ties to The Epoch Times. In May 2020, The Epoch Times filed a defamation suit against the magazine. In September 2020, the magazine published a retraction.

We already talked about this, which people can see at Talk:Falun Gong/Archive 45#References to article retracted by Los Angeles Magazine should be deleted. The result of the discussion was to keep the Braslow article. The concern voiced was that the Braslow article "cannot be considered a reliable source" because it was retracted by the magazine. The counter argument was that the reason for retraction was financial rather than factual; the magazine did not want to pay for a court battle. Braslow's archived article is still considered to be an accurate report about Shen Yun and The Epoch Times, despite the aggressive lawsuit and meek response. Binksternet (talk) 17:19, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree with Jackupdike's points. There's no evidence that LA Mag retracted due to financial reasons rather than factual errors. On the contrary, there is evidence that LA Mag retracted because of misinformation, such as the article saying that Li founded ET, but the New York Times says John Tang did, and that the feature image of the LA Mag article is a Shen Yun dancer in MAGA hat cartoon, but in fact Shen Yun is not pro-Trump at all, hence their praise from many Democrat politicians and celebrities like Carolyn Maloney [1] and Donna Karen [2].Thomas Meng (talk) 20:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

The Talk:Falun Gong/Archive 45#References to article retracted by Los Angeles Magazine should be deleted argument about "Do not delete a citation merely because the URL is not working." (WP:DEADREF) has nothing to do with what we are talking here. I agree with Thomas. Nivent2007 (talk) 21:12, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Binksternet, we shouldn't reward legal threats. Also, Thomas Meng, you've been here long enough to know that stuff like this isn't a good idea per WP:CANVASS. MrOllie (talk) 20:20, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Do any Wikipedia policies or guidelines say if a retracted article can be a RS? Llll5032 (talk) 21:45, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I couldn’t find a specific answer to that question when I looked the last time this came up, but the Reliable sources/Perennial sources page says: “Context matters tremendously when determining the reliability of sources, and their appropriate use on Wikipedia … even very high-quality sources may occasionally make errors, or retract pieces they have published in their entirety.” The clear implication is that retracted articles should not be used even if they came from an otherwise reliable source. JackUpdike (talk) 23:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It’s unclear to me how this thread started, since I don’t see any reference to the retracted LA Magazine piece in this article. Is someone proposing to add it now? I asked previously what basis there is for the claim that LA Magazine retracted the piece based on financial considerations, and to my knowledge no one has provided any support for that claim. It seems self-evident to me that a retracted article does not qualify as reliable. And as I explained in the previous thread referenced above (in Archive 45), that particular retracted article included several objectively false assertions. I don’t understand how any fair-minded editor can defend continued citation to the article. JackUpdike (talk) JackUpdike (talk) 23:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

@JackUpdike: LA Mag's piece is removed from this article, but this discussion is a centralized discussion conerning LA Mag's inclusion in other relevant articles as well, such as Shen Yun and Falun Gong.

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 October 2024

Change "[...] was officially accused to be a doomsday cult." to "[...] was officially accused of being a doomsday cult."

The existing sentence is grammatically incorrect. AMMM1990 (talk) 18:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

 Done Thank you for spotting this! Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)