Inside The Falun Gong

The meditation sect is electrifying China--and terrifying Beijing's leaders

What does it take to become an outlaw in China? Promote democracy, organize an illicit labor union--or spend an early-morning hour in a park moving your hands around the shape of an imaginary wheel.

It was so easy to get pulled in. A friend might have mentioned that a new group was gathering in the local park to do a form of traditional qigong exercises. One morning you found them, 20 or 30 people, under the yellow-and-red banner of Falun Gong--the Law of the Wheel Breathing Exercise--doing the slow-motion exercises to music from a tape recorder. There was no fee,...

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