My name is Baigen Li (李百根). I served as a regimental-level colonel in the Second Artillery Force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

In 1997, I left the PLA and joined the Capital Planning Commission as the deputy director of the Beijing Exploration and Design Management Department. On November 26, 1999, 4 months after the CCP started its campaign against Falun Gong, a “Falun Gong Situation Report Meeting” was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The meeting was attended by over 3,000 high-ranking officials from the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CCP, Work Committee for Offices Directly Under the Central Committee of the CCP, State Organs Work Committee of the CCP, military units stationed in Beijing, and the Beijing CCP Committee. Among the attendees were military commanders at or above the division level, central-level CCP officials, and Beijing municipal bureau-level officials. The meeting was hosted by Li Lanqing, Ding Guangen, and Luo Gan. Li Lanqing, then-member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee and head of the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Handling the Falun Gong Issue, gave a speech titled “Several Problems in the Struggle Against Falun Gong.” I was in the meeting. Even though my rank did not qualify me to attend the meeting, the supervisor of my work unit forced me to attend so that I could be “educated” because I had publicly admitted that I would continue to practice Falun Gong.

In that meeting, I heard Li Lanqing said that since the start of the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, Falun Gong practitioners had kept coming to Beijing to appeal. Li also said that from then on, the persecution must be intensified and must “destroy them politically, bankrupt them financially, ruin their reputation.” These sentences were not recorded in the meeting minutes and were communicated only verbally.

The description above is based on my personal experience.

Baigen Li

March 27, 2019