What is Falun Gong and why does the Chinese Communist Party want to suppress it?

(The Conversation) — I joined members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement at Chatter Park in Hong Kong on May 13, 2000, as they celebrated World Falun Dafa Day . The annual event commemorates the anniversary of the day the group claims its leader, Li Hongzhi, first made Falun Gong practices public.

Under the hot midday sun, surrounded by police and camera-clicking journalists, we performed the five main Falun Gong body exercises.

Falun Gong, which translates as “Practice of the Law Wheel,” is also known as Falun Dafa, which means “The Great Law of the Law Wheel.” It is a spiritual movement that combines bodily exercises with lessons to help practitioners endure hardship and act ethically in what its teachings consider a spiritually polluted world.

In my conversations with the Hong Kong group’s organizers, they explained that their choice of a well-known, centrally located park for the exercises – and their invitation to journalists to cover the event – was intended to signal to Hong Kong residents and the wider world that the movement remained active despite the ban on its practice in mainland China .

As an anthropologist of Chinese religion , I conducted field research…