Long Debate over the US Challenge } 645
the preceding several years, appealing to the urban middle class, including
not a few cadres. Confronting repression by local authorities for unlicensed
religious activity, the group demanded official recognition. They did this by
mobilizing a very large crowd of followers to rally outside CCP headquarters
adjacent to Tiananmen Square in Beijing on the morning of April 25, 1999.
Starting with several hundred people at dawn, by afternoon there were over
20,000 Falun Gong supporters massed outside CCP headquarters.
Aside from the large numbers and good discipline of the crowd massed at
the front door of the CCP’s central leadership compound, the fact that Falun
Gong was able to assemble a large crowd at the very center of Chinese polit-
ical power without being detected by state and party internal security organs
seemed very ominous to PRC leaders. The organizational capabilities of Falun
Gong impressed and frightened CCP leaders. According to an investigation
by Luo Gan, secretary of the CCP’s Politics and Law Commission, Falun
Gong “is a highly secretive organization that includes up to 10,000 groups
nationwide.” Each group had ten members and a designated group leader.
Groups used “modern communication equipment, such as cell phones, the
internet, and long distance phones” to coordinate activities. “In sum,” Luo
Gang concluded, “the Falungong organization is vying with the Party not
only for the masses but also for Party members. It has also infiltrated key
departments. This should arouse a high degree of attention.”^16 Jiang Zemin
took the lead in advocating complete and firm repression of the group. At a
Politburo Standing Committee meeting the day after the 25 April “conver-
gence,” Jiang said:
Such a blatant, large-scale, and illegal convergence on Zhongnanhai for
the purpose of putting on a show of force and exerting pressure on the
Party and government has never taken place in the fifty years since the
founding of the New China ... Should this not have a sobering effect on
us? ... If we fail to see its political essence and do not take firm, appro-
priate and prompt action to resolve the issue, we will be committing a
mistake of historical proportions. We must absolutely not gloss over
this matter, and even less should we downplay it. ... Comrades, we must
not, under any circumstances, underestimate the appeal of Falungong,
an organization with a religious patina. ... We must not exclude the
possibility of organizations beyond our borders taking a hand in this
matter.^17
Li Peng seconded Jiang Zemin in seeing the Falun Gong “convergence” as
part of a vast conspiracy: “The illegal convergence on Zhongnanhai ... is in-
deed not an isolated incident but has substantial political background.” The
“emergence of Falungong is by no means fortuitous,” and the CCP must wage
“grave ideological and political struggle” against it. Subsequent investigation
by the MSS confirmed Jiang’s and Li’s suspicions regarding the foreign hand