But from the start FG was always an eclectic amalgamation of qigong and Daoism, with some elements of Buddhism thrown in. It wasn't some sort of Buddhist splinter group, but just took a a few Buddhist concepts and grafted them to a larger belief matrix.
The funny thing was that FG practitioners in China were mainly middle-aged folks, housewives and grandmas in tennis shoes, who wanted some discipline and tradition and spirituality in their lives. Fill in that Market-Leninist void. Very unlikely villains, and their attention to politeness and neatness actually dovetailed nicely with then leader Jiang Zemin's call for "spiritual civilization." So they should/could have been natural allies of the gov't, but like most authoritarian gov'ts, China doesn't permit any large organizations and alternative power centers to form. If FG was less organized, decentralized, without a single leader, it might have flourished with official approval.
otherwise, thanks for that FG info. I wasn't aware they had veered so far right, and had become big Trumpeters and r-w conspiracy theorists. I think I caught a little of that, but as I say my interactions with ETimes mostly faded the past two years.