In several regions, including Weifang, a mid-size city in central Shandong province, adherents say they now can practice their faith at home. Public practice of Falun Gong still means jail time and an almost guaranteed beating. Other Chinese regions continue to enforce the ban with apparent brutality. But winning, at least in some places, a measure of freedom to follow their beliefs marks a major victory over the [Chinese government], which declared earlier this year that Falun Gong constituted an unprecedented threat to [Chinese authority] and that its members would be treated with a "firm hand."

The significance of the party's failure to crush Falun Gong is as simple as it is profound. It illustrates the increasing inability of the party and government to carry out their will in the face of concerted and determined opposition. The campaign against Falun Gong has been particularly intense precisely because of the group's open challenge, which some Chinese sources have described as a test of Chinese leaders authority.

Zeng Qinghong, head of the party's organizations department, said early in the crackdown that it would constitute an important test of the party's mettle. If so, it appears the party has failed so far. Falun Gong's organization remains tight; members communicate using e-mail, pre-paid phone cards and code. And they have not appeared fearful of police in interviews over the past few months.

Security forces have sometimes responded with brutality. At least 26 practitioners are believed to have died in police custody and an estimated 3,000 people have been sent to labor camps. Chinese law allows police to dispatch people for three years of "thought reform through labor" without using the courts. And the courts, controlled by the [Chinese government], have sentenced dozens more to jail terms of 10 years or more.

But Falun Gong practitioners continue to protest in Tiananmen Square, in the center of Beijing, and they continue to arrive with petitions at the offices of the State Council, China's cabinet, just a few blocks away.

"In the beginning, the authorities even came into our homes, but slowly things have opened up," said Sun Xiaomei, a 37-year-old Falun Gong follower from Weifang. "We have won these rights by ourselves. No one gave them to us. But our stubbornness and faith are going to win."

Sun, who was a schoolteacher before she was fired from her job this summer because of her beliefs, is another example of someone who apparently accepted the crackdown only to return to the Falun Gong fold. She was arrested on July 20 last year, two days before China officially banned Falun Gong. Like thousands of her comrades across the country, she was taken to a stadium and then moved into a hotel. Police and government agents demanded that she sign a form saying she would stop practicing. Sun agreed.

On July 26, Sun was told that her mother and sister, who had practiced Falun Gong for about five years, had committed suicide together because they refused to accept Beijing's ban on the sect. Their deaths shocked her, she said, but convinced her that she must continue with Falun Gong.

"People are asking what kind of power can resist the power of the party," she said. "People who were not interested before are interested. In the beginning, they believed the TV propaganda. Now they are asking us."

Falun Gong has attracted people from a cross section of Chinese society--old party members, young Western-trained scientists, senior People's Liberation Army officers, bureaucrats, teachers and millions of people living on the margins of Chinese society. In all, at least 10 million people are believed to have practiced Falun Gong in China.

Others have criticized the way in which the crackdown has been carried out... Now, many people express exasperation with the crackdown and sympathy for its victims.

Falun Gong followers say their successes in some regions have come at a horrible cost. On March 2, for example, police arrested Zhang Zhenggang, a 36-year-old bank worker and Falun Gong organizer in the city of Huai'an, in eastern Jiangsu province, shortly after he returned home from Beijing, where he had gone with a letter signed by 100 practitioners demanding that the [group] be legalized.

On March 25, Zhang's wife, Zhang Zhaoyun, also a Falun Gong follower, was at home when a call came from a friend telling her she should hurry to the Huai'an No. 1 People's Hospital. According to an account from relatives, police had brought her husband there, and doctors were operating on him. A doctor came out and showed her a bandage soaked in blood from his head. Her husband had lapsed into a coma, the doctor said, but his blood pressure was stable so there was some hope.

Police at the hospital were surprised to see Zhang's wife and did not let her see her husband, but she pushed her way past an officer.

"His head was wrapped in bandages," one witness recounted. "There was blood soaking through them. His eyes looked like they were popping out of his head."

On March 30, Zhang's blood pressure began to slide. About 50 police officers came to his room, and Zhang's wife was called out to a meeting with a police official, relatives said. The police official told her that Zhang Zhenggang was already dead. She disagreed and struggled to leave the room to return to her husband's side. Police stopped her and took her husband away to the crematorium.

The relatives charged that the police ordered hospital workers to take Zhang off life support. Police officials in Huai'an have said they were not aware of the case.

Despite her husband's demise, Zhang Zhaoyun continues to practice Falun Gong, family members said. She is raising the couple's 12-year-old daughter by herself. Like her husband, she was fired from her job at the Bank of China. She sold his motorcycle to raise a little cash. Still, relatives said, Zhang is proud of belonging to Falun Gong.

"She puts it on her resume," one said, "so, of course, she can't find a job." (8/23/00 13:42)