“Why is Falun Gong persecuted in China?” That’s the question considered by the Falun Gong website faluninfo.net.
There are general answers, like the fact that the Chinese government is totalitarian rather than merely authoritarian. If you’re a totalitarian government, you persecute more or less everybody.
But some are more persecuted than others, and religious groups are among those especially subject to persecution in China. If you’re the kind of group whose members resist being co-opted by the Chinese Communist Party, that may make the group and its members even more of an enemy of the state.
According to FalunInfo, the explosive growth of the movement was one red flag for the CCP, for in 1998 the estimated 70 million practitioners of Falun Gong “exceeded the 60 million members of the CCP at that time.”
But the most important of the site’s list of four reasons for CCP hostility seem to be numbers two and three, the group’s attempt to achieve “Complete Independence from Chinese Communist Control” and the fact that its guiding principles are “Incompatible with Communist, Atheist Ideology.”
“In China, all churches, temples, and even health practices are allowed to operate only under the approval and control of the CCP. And so when Falun Gong was first introduced to the public in China, it also had to be done under the auspices of the state-run China Qigong Science Research Association. . . .
“In 1996, Falun Gong withdrew from the state-run Qigong Science Research Association of China because of pressure to establish a Communist Party branch and charge fees for the practice.
“Mr. Li wanted to keep the practice free of political influence.”
