Luo Gan
Party general secretary Jiang Zemin was alerted to the demonstration by CPC Politburo member Luo Gan, and was reportedly angered by the audacity of the demonstration—the largest since the Tiananmen Square protests ten years earlier. Jiang called for resolute action to suppress the group, and reportedly criticized Premier Zhu for being "too soft" in his handling of the situation. That evening, Jiang composed a letter indicating his desire to see Falun Gong "defeated". In the letter, Jiang expressed concerns over the size and popularity of Falun Gong, and in particular about the large number of senior Communist Party members found among Falun Gong practitioners. He believed it possible foreign forces were behind Falun Gong's protests (the practice's founder, Li Hongzhi, had emigrated to the United States), and expressed concern about their use of the internet to coordinate a large-scale demonstration. Jiang also intimated that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was at odds with the atheist values of Marxist–Leninism, and therefore constituted a form of ideological competition.