But former CCP leader Jiang Zemin perceived that popularity as a threat to the regime’s rule, and launched a campaign in July of that year aimed at eradicating the practice.

Former CCP leader Jiang Zemin deemed the large number of Falun Gong adherents a threat to the communist regime in 1999 and subsequently launched an unprecedented campaign to eradicate the practice.

Chong told The Epoch Times that Xi has already purged many communist officials with allegiance to former Party secretary Jiang Zemin, and has been up against opposing forces inside the CCP all these years.

Jiang Zemin, the leader of the CCP at the time (and later the head of state), considered Falun Gong to be dangerous to the CCP since it had gained so many adherents.

Millions of Falun Gong adherents in China have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities in China, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, since July 1999, when former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin launched the persecution

Zemin, who perceived the popularity of the spiritual practice in China as a threat to the regime's totalitarian rule.

Xi’s reorganizing efforts have been repeatedly stalled by senior rivals within the political faction of former leader Jiang Zemin.

Paranoid about the number of adherents, and believing Falun Gong was a threat to its atheist ideology, in July 1999 the Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Jiang Zemin launched a large-scale persecution with the aim of crushing Falun Gong.

Under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, the CCP vowed to "annihilate Falun Gong in three months,"  with orders to "ruin their reputation, cut them off financially, and destroy their physical bodies."

"The officials, who are loyal to [former CCP leaders] Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, are in strong opposition and are trying their bests to prevent Xi’s next possible term.”

Then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, however, perceived that popularity as a threat to the regime's totalitarian rule and July 20, 1999, launched a hate campaign and violent suppression of adherents in an attempt to eradicate the practice.

But Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hard-liners, like then-leader Jiang Zemin, saw it as an afront to the atheist ideology of communism.

The persecution was instigated by former CCP head Jiang Zemin, who ordered that Falun Gong be banned and eradicated. He also ordered the establishment of the "610" Office, for the sole function of persecuting and eradicating Falun Gong.

News Analysis In the face of rising resistance against totalitarian rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced the death of former party leader Jiang Zemin on Nov. 30.

Three months after the event, then-Party leader Jiang Zemin initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eradicate the group.

Shanghai is part of a power struggle between Xi Jinping and former Party leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang established his political power in Shanghai as mayor and subsequently secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee in the 1980s. 

The CCP, led by Jiang Zemin, used all the state machinery and media to spread rumours and launch government-sanctioned persecution against Falun Gong adherents," she said. “Since then, there has been no peace in our family.

Chief Source of Donors In July 1999, under the rule of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin, the CCP launched a far-reaching campaign of persecution against adherents of Falun Gong, which continues to this day.

But just three months later, then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin ordered a nationwide campaign to eradicate Falun Gong. The day Jiang's order came out, on July 20, 1999, police knocked on the doors of Ms. Wang's and Ms. Zhao's homes. Ms.

Meng, 73, was loyal to former Party leader Jiang Zemin. Since Xi took power in November 2012, he has sought to purge officials loyal to Jiang under a sweeping anti-corruption campaign.

In 1999, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin initiated a campaign of persecution against Falun Gong.

Then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, who was intolerant of any group outside the Party’s control, launched a campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong in 1999.

During his early tenure, Xi and Wang joined hands and in the name of battling corruption eliminated many "tigers and flies"—high- and low-level corrupt officials—that sided with the former CCP head Jiang Zemin.

Former leader of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin.

However, in July 1999, former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide persecution on the practice and its followers. He declared that the CCP would “ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.”

However, Jiang Zemin, the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), perceived Falun Gong’s large following a threat to the regime's rule, and launched an unprecedented campaign to eradicate the practice in 1999.

Zhao was known to have close ties to former Party paramount leader Jiang Zemin. A faction loyal to Jiang is opposed to Xi’s leadership.

However, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a political campaign to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, including fabricating the "Tiananmen Self-immolation" case in 2001 to slander Falun Gong.

After the officially atheist Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) former leader Jiang Zemin launched a persecutory campaign in July 1999 to "eliminate" the practice, Falun Gong adherents, both inside and outside China, have been trying various—but peaceful—ways