Inside China’s Largest Civil Disobedience Movement, and Why You Haven’t Heard of It: Larry Liu

Dr. Larry Liu, deputy director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, sat down with American Thought Leaders to discuss dissent in China and the role that Falun Gong practitioners are playing.

A grassroots, underground movement of Chinese has been cutting through the communist regime’s censorship and propaganda machines—one pamphlet at a time. After the regime launched a nationwide campaign of persecution against the Falun Gong spiritual discipline 25 years ago, Falun Gong’s millions of adherents in China started creating secret underground print shops to expose the regime’s human rights atrocities. All across China, they secretly distribute flyers, DVDs, and brochures en masse, hang posters in public areas in the dead of night, and circulate software to their fellow Chinese so they can circumvent China’s internet blockade. Those arrested face years in prison—as long as 15 years.

So who are these people? And why is their story critical to understanding China today?