A 46-year-old man named Zhang Hongbao from Harbin, China is facing an uncertain fate in a cramped U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services detention cell in the U.S. territory of Guam. On one hand he is just another illegal immigrant, joining thousands of other Chinese who have attempted to settle in the United States without proper papers. On the other hand, Zhang is anything but your ordinary immigrant. He's a wealthy businessman and the leader of Zhong Gong, a mass qigong (traditional Chinese exercise) movement in China that claims some 38 million followers.
Zhong Gong recently declared itself the most serious organized opposition to the Beijing government.
"The Chinese communist dictatorship considers Zhong Gong, an organization with a large number of members and a leader who has anticommunist ideas, as a potential political threat and is very frightened. In the words of the Chinese communists, if the flag of Zhong Gong changed, it would be the biggest opposition party in China."
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