On September 15, 2007, media of Falun Gong announced one after another that the Chinese edition DVD of Li Hongzhi's "preaching" for Australian practitioners on August 4, 2007 "will be formally published in both America and Taiwan in the next weekend". According to the announcement, "After the publication of tapes of Preaching at Jinan and Dalian in 1996, this will be the first time Master publishes DVD of preaching." And Yiqun bookstore in Taiwan and Tianti Books inc. in North America become the appointed distributors.
The treatment of Falun Gong towards this lection is a little mysterious. In fact, it is indeed mysterious. Up to now two followers have written "sentiment" articles concerning the preaching in Australia on the net (one in Zhengjian net and the other in Minghui Net).
Why does Falun Gong treat "preaching for Australian Practitioners" in a low profile? I think there are some secrets behind it.
Firstly, the intention of cheating money is obvious. It's a well-known fact that Li Hongzhi accumulate wealth by teaching Falun Gong. Facing with the disclosure of the society, Li Hongzhi refuted to media for his action of accumulating money by unfair means. For example, when Li Hongzhi met with western media on May 2, 1999, a reporter asked him:"Do you understand that some people are suspicious of your attitude of not earning money from more than 100 million Falun Gong practitioners? So many examples show that leaders of other religions or organizations have their own property." Li Hongzhi answered,"You can investigate this, there is no privacy. I can tell you, if I want to get rich, I will be a billionaire with one yuan from each practitioner. Every practitioner will give me one yuan, but I don't want a cent."
Li Hongzhi also refuted in his lections when teaching in various countries in different periods:
"All of you are here, I don't want a cent from you. Why you don't feel at ease when others want to give you something? Here I want to tell you one thing specially: all of you who are working for Dafa or Master should not receive anything from practitioners, no matter what reason it is. All the things transferred to Master should be handled by Master, and you should not handle, leave over, keep or open letters of Master." (Preaching at the Eastern-American Fa Conference)
"I can tell you that we are not a religion. I just teach people the 'Fa'. I will help you if you want to practice, and I will not force you if you don't want. We have no organization and pay attention to nothing. We have no regulations like other religions and we will not accept even one cent from practitioners." (Preaching at the European Fa Conference)
"Actually from another angle, it doesn't matter at all whether I have money or not. I don't pay attention to it whether I am rich or not. For example, I have 100 million practitioners, if I tell you that everyone should give me one yuan, you will give me at anytime, and then I will be a billionaire. And you can regard me as one. Some people investigated me and said I earned a lot of money by selling books. I can tell you, the remuneration of the books I published in China is several thousand yuan each time, and all together it is about 20,000 yuan or several thousand US dollar, and that's all." (Preaching at the Canadian Fa Conference).
"I will not ask for a cent from you", "I have never asked for a cent from others" (Preaching at the Singapore Fa Conference).
In fact, according to investigations and the narrations of people close to Li Hongzhi, he has taken in more than 10 million yuan from the two million domestic Falun Gong followers by teaching and selling books, material, clothes and badges of Falun Gong before it was banned.
After Falun Gong was banned by China, the channel of obtaining money in China was blocked up. However, Li Hongzhi set up bookstores in foreign countries so as to earn huge profit by selling related goods of Falun Gong to foreign followers.
During these years, Li Hongzhi also put so-called "lections", which was revised, on Falun Gong media for the "practice" of domestic and foreign followers so as to control and instigate domestic followers to confront with the government on the one hand, and to cheat the society by spreading Fa with no intention to earn money on the other hand.
Obviously, this time Falun Gong sell "Preaching for Australian Practitioners" to followers at high price is contradictory with the usual profession of Li Hongzhi.
In the "announcement", Falun Gong clarifies that the appointed selling spots are two bookstores; they are Yiqun bookstore of Taiwan and Tianti books inc. of North America.
From the advertisement of Tianti books inc. of North America we can see that this bookstore is just a tool of cheating money from followers for Li Hongzhi, "Tianti Books inc. was set up in 2007, it is a non-profit organization registered in America and it aims at providing original works, audio and video material of Falun Dafa to people who want to know about it."
The price of "preaching for Australian Practitioners" DVD disk in this bookstore is as high as 15 dollars. According to the investigation, the price of an empty DVD disk is from 0.15 to 0.2 dollar in the market. We can count the profit of every disk and thus see the essence of the so called "non-profit organization" registered this year.
The author investigates from the internet that besides Yiqun bookstore, there are another bookstore named Fengfu also sell this DVD in Taiwan, the prices of the two bookstores are:
Yiqun Fix price (Taiwan Yuan) 250; Preferential price 225; And the price is 200 if one buys more than 10 .
Fengfu Fix price (Taiwan Yuan) 250; Preferential price 200.
As all we know, the producing cost of DVD of movie stars is much higher than "lections" of Li Hongzhi. However, the price of former is just about 20 yuan (RMB). It seems like Li Hongzhi actually doesn't want to obtain one cent or one yuan from his followers, he just wants to obtain a profit hundreds and thousands times of the cost.
This time although Li Hongzhi teaches nonsense to Australian followers, he chooses to sell his DVD in North America and Taiwan. The reason is that there are relatively more followers in these two areas and he wants to earn more. If the selling place is in Australian, he cannot earn much even the price is 1,000 dollar.
Secondly, it is to calm down the faction strife in Australian. The public publication of "Preaching for Australian Practitioners" also confirms the faction strife among Australian Falun Gong organizations which spread on the Internet not long ago. As to the faction strife, friends on the net have made a "conclusion" and the author want to say no more here. Although the author doesn't eyewitness the performance of Li Hongzhi during the "lections", the "sentiment" of one follower in Minghui Net can show the fact. That is, followers are more and more suspicious, and their talks with Li Hongzhi become more and more confronting. What is pitiful is that this follower from New Zealand cannot understand the emotion of Australian followers and attribute their confrontation with the Master to "the Party culture" (a word produced by Falun Gong, which means "the culture produced by CPC"). He says, "It's right to speak out the problem in the first place. But they don't respect the Master. We all say that we should respect the Master and the Fa, but their tones are wrong, and this is the poison brought by the Party culture." （http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/9/30/163592.html）。
The author wants to tell the follower from New Zealand, when you find you are cheated some day, you will feel too ashamed to show your face about your "respect towards the Master"!
Facing with the furious Australian followers, Li Hongzhi has to make use of his sweet words and continues to delude them.
Thirdly, it is to respond to the saying of "illness" on the net. Showing up publicly at this time, Li Hongzhi may have the intention to respond to the saying of "brain cancer" on the net. Not long ago several websites released the message that "Li Hongzhi has been diagnosed as malignant middle-advanced gliomas". If this information is true, then it will bring destructive harm to Falun Gong. The author believes that this information has some influence in the followers. Therefore, although Master Li said that "I never see or hear" the reports about him on the net (Preaching at the 2007 New York Fa Conference), he chooses to show up at this time no matter whether he gets the illness or not, in case the organization he has elaborated will dismiss before he "raises to the heaven".
Fourthly, it is to delude obsessing followers and continue to control them. The purpose of this lection is to solve the existing problems within Australian Falun Gong organizations. However, selling and spreading the "lections" against the problems of one area to followers in other places, it also shows that Falun Gong organizations in other places have the same problems too. The "lections" of Li Hongzhi in recent years reflect that the inner contradiction of Falun Gong organizations is getting severe. The author believes that, with the continuous exposure of "consummation" swindle produced by Li Hongzhi and the openness of contention about inner interests in Falun Gong organizations, Li Hongzhi's force of controlling Falun Gong organizations with heresies will be weakened. In recent years, Li Hongzhi emphasizes in his lections that follower should "believe in the Master and believe in the Fa", and the purpose is to ask his followers not to be suspicious of him and "Falun Dafa". Frankly speaking, the purpose is to ask his followers to keep accepting his cheat. The author thinks the lection in this time has no exception. We can know something from the sentiment of a follower from Taiwan, "Master says we should be merciful towards common people, fellow practitioners." "We should firmly do three things well, and we should bear Dafa in our mind only." (http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2007/9/30/48649.html)
According to the announcement of Minghui Net, the publication work in Mainland China does not begin. However, according to the present situation, Li Hongzhi has no way to accumulate money from followers in Mainland China like he did before.
(Kaiwind, October 12, 2007)
