The Beijing leadership viewed Falun Gong’s swift rise during the late 1990s as more than just another fitness craze. By mid-1999, estimates suggested upwards of 70 million practitioners across China, gathering in parks at dawn for group exercises and moral study sessions. That kind of grassroots momentum, running parallel to the Party’s own mass-mobilization machinery, rang alarm bells in Zhongnanhai.

A turning point arrived on April 25, 1999, when around 10 000 Falun Gong adherents quietly assembled near the central leadership compound to petition for official recognition and an end to press hostility. Though entirely peaceful, the sheer scale and coordination of the demonstration spooked authorities, who feared an organized movement outside their direct control. This incident became the flashpoint: over the next few months, Beijing declared Falun Gong an “evil cult,” accusing it of destabilizing society and undermining Communist Party authority.

Under Jiang Zemin’s watch, a sweeping propaganda campaign painted Falun Gong not only as a threat to social harmony, but as an ideological rival. State media ran daily exposes, while security forces detained thousands of practitioners. Clinics offering meditation or health guidance were shut down, websites were blocked, and a nationwide hotline encouraged citizens to turn in friends or family who practiced. The message was clear: unity could not tolerate any competing loyalty.

Fast forward to today, and China’s grip on spiritual and civil spaces has only tightened. From the social-credit system to big-data surveillance, any assembly or belief system operating independently of the Party faces steep penalties. International human-rights groups still raise alarms over Falun Gong detainees, and the story remains a vivid example of how rapidly a popular movement can run afoul of an authoritarian regime’s zero-tolerance stance. The saga underscores a broader lesson: whenever a government perceives its monopoly on ideology to be at risk, the hammer often comes down—and rather swiftly, too.