Commentary Falun Gong emerged in China in 1992, a time of a spiritual renewal in a land still under Communist rule, but one recovering from the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Drawing on Buddhist traditions, Falun Gong combined meditation and tai chi-style exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of “zhen,” “shan,”…

Commentary In 2016, when Chinese leader Xi Jinping delivered a speech calling for the “Sinicization of religion” in a nation of one billion, he was espousing a century-old impulse among his people while also inadvertently underscoring a persistent paradox that Chinese Communists brought with them when they took over the country in 1949—and have never…