“LET’S EXECUTE CONFUCIUS AND LAOZI!”

Yuan Zhiming, who helped create one of the most important TV shows of 1980s China (“River Elegy”), is now one of China’s most influential pastors. In this Q&A for the NYRB, he and I discuss China’s spiritual future, why its foreign policy seems based on mistrust and the zero-sum mentality that afflicts so many people.