Scholars and Tai Ji Men dizi spoke at the most important yearly religious studies gathering in the Balkans.
by Massimo Introvigne
![The speakers of the session on Taiwan and Tai Ji Men.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-2.jpg)
![The speakers of the session on Taiwan and Tai Ji Men.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-2.jpg)
Strumica, North Macedonia, hosted on June 19–22 the Second World Conference for Religious Dialogue and Cooperation, organized by the UNESCO Chair in Intercultural Studies and Research and the Center for Intercultural Studies of the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, in cooperation with CESNUR and several Northern Macedonian institutions. The conference is the heir of events held annually since 2019 and is regarded as the most important gathering of religious scholars in the Balkans.
On June 21, a plenary session was devoted to “Taiwan: The Global Outreach of Spiritual Movements and Freedom of Religion or Belief Issues.” Rosita Šorytė, from the European Federation for Freedom of Belief (FOB), chaired and concluded the session.
I presented a paper introducing Tai Ji Men, an ancient Taiwanese menpai (similar to a school) teaching Qigong, martial arts, and self-cultivation, and its Shifu (Grand Master), Dr. Hong Tao-Tze. Having long operated as an esoteric school, Dr. Hong decided to propose the wisdom of Tai Ji Men to the world at large, which led him to open several Tai Ji Men Qigong Academies in Taiwan and the United States and to visit more than one hundred countries bringing a message of peace, love, and conscience.
![Massimo Introvigne’s paper.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-1-1.jpg)
![Massimo Introvigne’s paper.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-1-1.jpg)
I mentioned the role of dragons in Tai Ji Men performances, and how “the spirit of the dragon” is also considered a spirit of social harmony and justice. Thus, when Tai Ji Men was persecuted in Taiwan and harassed through ill-founded tax bills, the spirit of the dragon guided its peaceful resistance and fight for justice.
A video was then presented featuring Tai Ji Men’s beautiful performance at the 2017 Summer Universiade in Taiwan.
![The audience enjoying the video of the 2017 Universiade.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-2-1.jpg)
![The audience enjoying the video of the 2017 Universiade.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-2-1.jpg)
Jason Cherng, a former visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Tai Ji Men dizi, divided his presentation into three parts. In the first, he summarized the essential features of the Tai Ji Men case, which started as an instance of political persecution of spiritual groups that had not supported the candidate of the ruling party in Taiwan’s 1996 presidential elections. After Tai Ji Men defendants were found innocent of all criminal charges, including tax evasion, by the Supreme Court in 2007, the case continued through tax bills that the National Taxation Bureau continued to issue ignoring the Supreme Court decision. Finally, based on the tax bill for the year 1992, land Tai Ji Men regard as sacred in Miaoli was seized, unsuccessfully auctioned off, and nationalized in 2020, generating widespread domestic and international protests.
![Jason Cherng’s lecture.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-3.jpg)
![Jason Cherng’s lecture.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-3.jpg)
In the second part, Cherng discussed the notion of conscience as our innate inner moral compass, and its central role in Tai Ji Men’s worldview. In the third, in connection with the general theme of the conference, secularization, Cherng presented Tai Ji Men’s approach that includes dizi (disciples) of all religions and is not, strictly speaking, religious, yet is rooted in spirituality, as an original path to both secularization and de-secularization, which has proved beneficial to Taiwanese and international society.
Emma Chen, a dentist and Tai Ji Men dizi, presented the relationship between Shifu and dizi in Chinese tradition, starting with Confucius, in martial arts schools, and in Tai Ji Men. It is more similar, she said, to a father-children than to a teacher-student relationship. Unfortunately, she added, the specificity of the Shifu-dizi relationship was misinterpreted in the Tai Ji Men case, and the traditional gifts from dizi to Shifu were misconstructed as tuition fees of a non-existent cram school. Faced with persecution, Shifu and dizi reaffirmed their traditional relationship, Chen reported, and came together as a family.
![Emma Chen presents her paper.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-4.jpg)
![Emma Chen presents her paper.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-4.jpg)
Chen then insisted on the fact that persecution did not prevent Tai Ji Men from continuing its international outreach, which led its Shifu to visit 103 countries with his dizi. She concluded with a vivid description of the May 15, 2024, meeting in St. Peter’s Square, Rome, between Dr. Hong and Pope Francis, which dizi regard as a historical event and aptly summarizes what Tai Ji Men is all about: a global dialogue on peace, love, and conscience.
Claudia Huang, a Tai Ji Men dizi who is a former prosecutor and an attorney in Taiwan, discussed her long experience in practicing Qigong with Dr. Hong and the benefits she derived from it. She presented the Taiwanese religious context and a dangerous law proposal that would introduce more government control on religions and their finances. Huang mentioned transitional justice, i.e., the measures states implement to redress past injustices after their transition from a non-democratic to a democratic regime, and how in Taiwan it was limited to human rights violations committed before 1992, thus creating problems for those whose rights were violated after that year.
![Claudia Huang’s lecture.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-5.jpg)
![Claudia Huang’s lecture.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-5.jpg)
Huang then noted how Tai Ji Men dizi, working with others, understood that their case was part of a wider context of systemic violation of taxpayers’ rights in Taiwan. She mentioned that in recent years Taiwan passed the “Taxpayer Rights Protection Act” in 2016 and made preventing Taiwanese citizens from traveling abroad because of pending tax bills more difficult. Leading tax law scholars, Huang said, acknowledged the role of Tai Ji Men dizi in achieving these positive, although still insufficient, results.
Rosita Šorytė concluded the session with a comparison between the Tai Ji Men case and the religious liberty crisis that followed in Japan the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The assassin said he had killed Abe to punish him for his support of the Unification Church (now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), which he hated, he said, because his mother, a member, had ruined herself through excessive donations to the movement. A campaign followed against the Unification Church and “cults” in general. It led to the government’s request to Tokyo District Court to dissolve the Unification Church, and to measures against the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
![Rosita Šorytė’s conclusions.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-6.jpg)
![Rosita Šorytė’s conclusions.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-6.jpg)
Both campaigns and measures are egregious violations of religious liberty, Šorytė said, and seem to derive from the same biases against independent spiritual movements at work in the Tai Ji Men case. Even in democratic countries such as Japan and Taiwan, those who think independently are often harassed and persecuted, she concluded.
![Dizi and other conference participants visiting the Orthodox Monastery of St. Leontius in Vodocha, North Macedonia.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-7.jpg)
![Dizi and other conference participants visiting the Orthodox Monastery of St. Leontius in Vodocha, North Macedonia.](https://bitterwinter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BITTER-WINTER-7.jpg)
The conference was attended by some sixty scholars from all continents. Many did not know of Tai Ji Men and the Tai Ji Men case and followed the session with great interest. In turn, Tai Ji Men dizi took the opportunity to learn more about the rich cultural heritage of North Macedonia and the Balkans and interact with representatives of different cultures and religions.