Where does Falun Gong get all its money?
The quick answer to why Falun Gong is such a big deal in China: Falun Gong was tolerated by the CCP authorities until the summer of ’99, when a crowd of 10,000 or so Falun Gong adherents had a demonstration in front of Zhongnanhai, after which the CCP did a complete turn-around and said that FG was an evil cult. The reason why the CCP was so concerned was not for any sort of Marxist ‘religion is the opiate of the masses’ reason, but for the simple fact that the Public Security Bureau had no idea that they were planning such a large demonstration. In their view, any group that could organize such a large number of people outside the scrutiny of the PSB was a clear threat to the CCP’s control of Chinese society. I’ve talked with several friends in the mainland and many people have said that they had a friend or a relative who practiced FG before the crackdown, but they thought of the FG belief system like a fad, and certainly nothing worth risking their (and their families’) neck over. A
