Hugo Peng did his best to talk sense into the young men, all wearing the same red vests, who were obediently draping their large red People’s Republic of China flags across his banner on the evening of March 30. Along with three colleagues, he was hoping to catch the eye of Xi Jinping, the visiting Chinese head of state, as he cruised past in his motorcade and into the Washington Marriott Wardman Park hotel that evening.
Xi, who just came from Prague, is in Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit and a one-on-one meeting with President Obama. Chinese leaders have for over a decade often been beset by two crowds when they travel abroad: those, clad in bright red, organizing a welcoming party; and those offering a protest.
But for the last few years, one of the largest groups engaged in protests, has delivered a slightly more nuanced message: rather than protesting directly against Xi Jinping, they’re calling on him to bring to justice his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who in 1999 launched the bloody suppression of the Falun Gong spiritual practice.
Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese mind and body discipline that includes five meditative exercises and the moral precepts of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, was feared to have become more popular than the Chinese Communist Party by the late 1990s, which experts think partly precipitated the massive persecution.
But the decision to launch a mass campaign against such a large group of people was highly controversial in the Party leadership at the time. In recent years, many of those involved in the campaign have been investigated and imprisoned.
