Opposing the Financial Persecution

(Minghui.org) I used to be a technical lead at a state-owned enterprise. For telling others about Falun Gong, I was arrested in 2017 and jailed for one year. Upon release, my employer terminated me. After landing a job at a private company and working there for a few years, I decided to retire. 

The subsequent application for pension at the local Social Security Bureau (SSB) took a long time with numerous difficulties. Looking back at this process, I realized I did not send forth righteous thoughts to oppose the financial persecution. When discussing this with other practitioners, I noticed some of them also lacked understandings in this area. So I decided to write down what I have experienced and learned, even though my application has not been approved yet at the time of writing. 

During Detention

After being taken to the local detention center to serve time for my faith, I began sending forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the persecution I was facing. I treated everyone I encountered there with kindness and told them about Falun Gong and how practitioners were wrongly persecuted. I refused to renounce my faith. Nonetheless, I failed to recognize the financial persecution at the time. 

“Are you able to go back and work at the same place [upon release]?” An inmate once asked me. 

“I think so,” I replied.

But in my mind, I was not sure. After all, the most important thing for me at the time was how to negate the illegal detention and get released sooner. I did not have the energy to think about my job. 

After I was released, I received a termination notice from my employer. Instead of signing the termination paperwork, I worked with other practitioners to explain to my employer why the termination was wrong. I really hoped they could learn the facts of Falun Gong in this way. Other practitioners and I did also talk about negating the financial persecution, but my mind was not clear or strong enough to make any breakthrough. 

When the internal appeals office at my workplace asked me to write a statement to renounce my belief to restore my job, I simply said no. 

Later on the financial chief of my company told me that if I transferred my personnel file out to the local SSB, I would be able to receive unemployment benefits. I said no because doing so would mean that I had acknowledged the illegal job termination. 

To make a living, I went to work for a private company, which did not pay monthly social security premiums as an employer. My personnel file was kept at my former workplace all along. 

Pension Application

According to Chinese law, women are qualified for retirement at 55. I also overheard one could retire at 50 in my situation. So I transferred out my personnel file to the local SSB and used an intermediate agency to help me prepare and submit a pension application. Thinking that I’d receive a pension soon, I resigned from my job at the private company soon afterward. After all, it was also too tiring riding a bike to the private company for work in the cold winter every day. 

But the application process was not smooth. Because the birthday in my personnel file was misrecorded as one year younger than my actual age, I was told to wait another year and resubmit the application. This left me with no income, but I wasn’t too worried because my child had a high-paying job and my family had some savings. My husband was mad that I no longer wanted to look for a job again and argued with me a few times. Although I looked within to see where I had done wrong, I did not really negate the financial persecution. 

One year later I submitted the paperwork again. Then something else came up during review. During the year when I was in jail, my former employer, the state-owned enterprise, had been paying the employer portion of the social security premium. But that year was not counted as my year of service, so the premium must be refunded. I felt that this policy was not specific for practitioners, so I accepted it without much thinking. Looking back, I realized that was a loophole for me. 

Additional issues then emerged. I was told there was personnel adjustment inside the SSB, so no one was available to work on my case. Then the SSB decided to refund the money that my former employer had paid during my imprisonment, but the transaction just couldn’t go through. There were also issues with software. Every time when a new problem arose, I tried to look within, checking if I had any attachment to money and so on. But I did not think through this entirely and oppose the financial persecution. 

Making a Breakthrough

When reading Dafa teachings lately, I started to have a clear understanding of the pension application issue. 

“Student: It seems that fellow practitioners as a whole do not pay much attention to overcoming the evil’s economic persecution, so a lot of practitioners have long been at low-paying jobs, and have thereby been limited by time and financial constraints in validating the Fa.

Master: That problem does indeed exist, but sometimes it’s our own doing or our own shortcoming of not taking everything into consideration that causes those things to happen. Dafa disciples are walking on a righteous path in validating the Fa and are saving all beings, so all aspects of that path, including financial conditions, should come together. If you don’t do well in certain regards the evil will take advantage of the gap. With anything, as long as you do it well, everything will change.” (“Teachings at the 2004 International Conference in New York”)

“Student: During this special period of Fa-rectification, some disciples in the United States have lost their jobs due to the economy…

Master: That’s the old forces’ doing. You should always remember this: I don’t acknowledge any of the interference that’s occurring among Dafa disciples today; all of the things that shouldn’t happen are the old forces’ arrangements. They see your personal cultivation as the first priority. Of course, personal Consummation is the first priority, since there’s nothing more to talk about if you can’t reach Consummation. But today’s Dafa disciples are doing something different from the cultivation ways in every other period in history, and that’s because you are shouldering a greater responsibility that surpasses your personal Consummation. Saving sentient beings and validating the Fa, these far surpass your personal cultivation, they’re even greater things. And that’s something that the old forces can’t handle correctly, and they’re interfering with you. Negate them, and face all of it with the right thoughts!” (“Teachings Given on Lantern Festival Day, 2003”)

These teachings helped clear my thoughts. After all, practitioners are following the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance to be good people. The persecution is wrong from any angle and we do not acknowledge the financial persecution and cannot allow it to happen. My income is important because with it I can have a life and prepare informational materials for people to learn facts about Falun Gong. That is, this is a process of validating Dafa. So I sat down and sent forth strong righteous thoughts to eliminate anything and everything that was interfering with my application. 

Then I went to the intermediate agency again with another practitioner. In addition to asking about my case, the staffer who received us that day was very receptive when we explained to her what Falun Gong is. Her attitude was very positive and she also agreed to keep in mind “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” She promised to check with the SSB again to get my case processed. 

Looking back the entire process, I felt I lacked solid cultivation. That included poor study of Falun Dafa teachings, failure to look within, and not sending forth righteous thoughts enough. I decided to do better in the future. 

Sometimes on Minghui I have read articles that practitioners have worked hard, but they had little money. Or their income including pension was deducted by CCP officials. I think we should be clear on this and hope this article will be helpful.