What's interesting to me about the Falun Gong is the relation I draw between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (THK) movement and the Falun Gong. In the 1800s, the THK lead the Taiping Rebellion, a massive civil war in which the THK took over Nanjing and large amounts of Chinese Territory. I believe that the Communist Party of China's arguably overly-egressive response against the Falun Gong, which yes is rightfully an unscrupulous cult, is indicative of their own insecurities about how they maintain power. There are many people in China that commit all manner of scams, being that it is a country with a wide variety of income classes - America, for one, is the same in that regard. There are many racist, homophobic, sexist and misogynistic, wild cults in other societies - but that is what comes with pluralistic societies, which China is not being that they are one-party ruled. The key question is - why does the Communist Party of China attack the Falun Gong so disproportionately aggressively over how it does to other organizations and forces within its own country who perpetrate similar ills? One is tempted to think that the answer lies within the size, strength and power of what the Falun Gong had attained in the 1990s, coupled with the historical allegory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. I believe that more than anything, the Communist Party is trying to protect its rule of the country, as well as the general order and progression of society, as is their philosophy as a vanguard socialist movement, rather than a pluralistic movement.