Agreed. Whilst I don’t trust China’s CCP, I sure as heck don’t trust anything from Falun Gong. Those guys are running an asymmetric battle against the Chinese State and frankly they would be capable of saying anything if it helped their cause.
Interesting. The Wikipedia's declaration about them being "new religious movement" is inconsistent with the body of the article. It looks like it started as some kind of Chi Kung exercise and wellness group, but it got big very fast and Chinese Government got concerned about their popularity. Then, under CCP persecution, it escalated and morphed into a full-blown political dissident movement. Initially viewed favorably by the press as a dissident movement. Now, Wikipedia article is very unfavorable because The Epoch Times misalignment with press. Ok, I think I understand.
I wouldn't trust either the CCP or Falun Gong to speak my weight, they are both power structures and they are both engaging in all kinds of PR exercises to put themselves in the best light. But to Falun Gong's credit: I don't think they've engaged in massive human rights violations so they have that going for them. But there are certain cult like aspects to it and 'new religious movement' or not I think that the fewer such entities there are the better (and also fewer of the likes of the CCP please).
One attempt involved a battleship “accidentally” firing onto another battleship where both Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping were visiting.
https://jamestown.org/program/president-xi-suspects-politica...
Biased source, but she’s able to get a lot of unreported news from the mainland.
https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2021/9/20/deleted-repo...
I will try to find more sources but Google is just shit these days. See my other comment for more.
A big problem is that mainland China is like the hermit kingdom. It’s a black hole for any news the CCP doesn’t want to get out