I'm not a Falun Gong practitioner, but Falun Gong practitioners have obviously taken a strong interest in my work over the years and I've often been an embedded reporter with them. They'd often say to me, Ethan, you have to hurry up on your research. Why is that, I asked? It's because the leadership's changing, Xi Jinping is coming in, and this kind of thing. They used to say this about Hu Jintao. That was quite a while ago when we was coming in. I didn't have to hurry my research it turns out, because this has remained as a problem. In fact, when I thought I was writing it, I thought I was probably writing history because I wondered how the Chinese, given this level of exposure, could continue to do this. But to my complete surprise, they are.
On October 21st, 2014. See this statement in context.