CHINA TRIED TO QUASH CALTECH STUDENT EVENT.

Byline: Usha Sutliff Staff Writer

PASADENA - The Chinese government asked Caltech to squelch a student-sponsored Falun Gong event as part of China's worldwide effort against the spiritual movement, a school official said Wednesday.

On Friday - two days before the Caltech Falun Club was to present a workshop on campus - school officials said they got a call from a man representing the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, who asked that the event be canceled. Falun Gong was outlawed by China in July.

Hall Daily, California Institute of Technology's assistant vice president for government and community relations, said he told the consulate representative that it was a student-organized activity not sponsored by the school.

``I explained to him that . . . students have a right to have activities on campus using certain facilities and that, despite the fact that the Chinese government was concerned about the legality in its own country, it's an issue of free speech in this country,'' Daily said. ``He said he regretted that. I said I'm sorry he regretted that and that was pretty much it . . . it was a very polite conversation.''

Falun Gong was founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, a former Chinese government clerk who now lives in New York. Falun Gong blends slow-motion exercises with ideas borrowed from the martial arts, Buddhism and Taoism. Practioners believe the combination of meditation and exercise improves their health and morality.

But Xue Bing, press consul for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, said Falun Gong is a cult.

``Basically, this is a cult which is anti-human being, anti-science and anti-society,'' Bing said, comparing the group to the Branch Davidians.

The Davidians engaged in a standoff with the FBI in 1993 in which 81 people died.

According to Bing, the consulate learned of the Falun Club event at Caltech through a newspaper ad and called Caltech to express concern.