EndCCPWorld.com

Luo Gan (1935– )

Overlord of the extralegal Falun Gong persecution apparatus from 1999 to 2007. Chosen to helm the 610 Office at its creation on June 10, 1999, he took over the Central Leading Group for Dealing with Falun Gong in 2002 while serving as secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Under his nine years running the political-legal system, the 610 Office grew from a provisional body into a permanent ministry-level organ, and persecuting Falun Gong became routine business for the police-prosecutor-court system nationwide.

Born

July 1935 (Jinan, Shandong)

Tenure

June 1999 – 2007, inaugural political chief of the Central 610 Office; 2002–2007, head of the Central Leading Group for Dealing with Falun Gong

Positions

Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (1998–2007); member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee (2002–2007); State Councilor and Secretary-General of the State Council (1993–1998)

Key crimes

Created and commanded the 610 Office; eight years as day-to-day overlord of the crackdown; exported Masanjia's torture "experience" nationwide

1. From German-trained engineer to political-legal "czar"

Luo Gan was born in July 1935 in Jinan, Shandong. In the 1950s he was sent to study mechanical engineering in East Germany, then worked in the machinery industry back home — a technocrat by training. In the 1980s he entered the State Council's general office, became Minister of Labor in 1988, and in 1993 a State Councilor and Secretary-General of the State Council — the chief steward of the government's inner workings. In March 1998 he took over the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, commanding the police, prosecutors, courts, justice ministry, and state security: China's political-legal "czar." At the 16th Party Congress in 2002 he entered the Politburo Standing Committee while keeping the political-legal portfolio, until his retirement in 2007.

His relationship with Jiang Zemin dated to the early 1990s, when Luo, as Secretary-General of the State Council, was Jiang's chief of staff — deeply trusted. When the Falun Gong crackdown came in 1999, Jiang needed the entire political-legal system mobilized, and Luo was the obvious choice: without the political-legal chief's nod, no police department, court, or prison moves.

Sources: "610 Office," English Wikipedia; Jamestown Foundation, "The 610 Office: Policing the Chinese Spirit."

2. June 10: birth of an extralegal organ

Origins: On April 25, 1999, more than 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered near Zhongnanhai, and Jiang Zemin was enraged, calling Falun Gong a grave threat to CCP rule — "something unprecedented in the country since its founding 50 years ago." On June 7, Jiang told the Politburo to create a special leading group to "get fully prepared for the work of disintegrating Falun Gong."

How it unfolded: On June 10, the "Central Leading Group for Dealing with the Falun Gong Problem" was established with Li Lanqing as head; beneath it sat the office — the 610 Office. The English Wikipedia records that "Luo Gan was selected to helm the office," whose mission was to study, investigate, and develop a "unified approach to resolve the Falun Gong problem." The WOIPFG report confirms the leading group was "led by Li Lanqing, Ding Guangen, and Luo Gan," with the 610 Office established beneath it. On June 17, the 610 Office was formally placed under the leading group.

Results: An organ with no legislative basis and no document defining the scope of its powers was born. It was authorized "to deal with central and local, party and state agencies," drawing on all their resources (UCLA professor James Tong). After the July 20 crackdown began, it morphed from a provisional body into a permanent, ministry-level organ — and "610" became shorthand for extralegal persecution. The name itself comes from its birthday: June 10, 1999.

Sources: "610 Office," English Wikipedia; WOIPFG, "Report on the 610 Office" (February 1, 2011).

3. Eight years of daily command (1999–2007)

From 1999 to 2007, Luo Gan was the 610 system's de facto supreme chief. Falun Gong materials accuse him of "personally planning" the defamation and framing of Falun Gong and of using "every speech at various meetings to incite political and judiciary departments to step up the persecution." He regularly toured the provinces to "inspect" and "press the battle," and — the accusation runs — "whenever Luo Gan conducted an inspection somewhere, the arrest, torture and death toll of Falun Gong practitioners in that area would increase drastically" (per Minghui.org, October 2004). These charges come from Falun Gong sources and cannot be independently verified case by case, but they fit the power logic of the office: when the political-legal chief shows up in person, no locality dares hold back.

Across those eight years, the persecution hardened from campaign into routine: 610 offices landed at every provincial, municipal, county, and township level, and in universities, government organs, and major enterprises; "transformation" quotas cascaded downward; labor camps, prison sentences, and brainwashing sessions became standard procedure. The crackdown no longer needed a July-20-style general mobilization — it had become the daily business of the police-prosecutor-court system. And turning political tasks into institutional inertia was exactly what Luo Gan, as political-legal chief, did best.

Sources: Minghui.org, October 24, 2004, "Washington DC: Falun Gong Practitioners Gather in Front of Chinese Embassy"; "610 Office," English Wikipedia.

4. 2002: taking the commander's baton

At the 16th Party Congress in 2002, Li Lanqing left the Standing Committee and Luo Gan entered it, taking over as head of the Central Leading Group for Dealing with Falun Gong (the English Wikipedia dates this to 2003; this page uses 2002, following the post-congress handover). Supreme command of the anti-Falun Gong campaign thus passed formally from the "education vice premier" to the "political-legal czar" — name and reality finally unified.

The handover brought no letup. The years around 2002 saw persecution deaths climb: Falun Gong tallies count 740 persecuted to death by the end of 2001 (see the Wang Maolin dossier in this series), and once the campaign went "routine," torture in labor camps, prisons, and brainwashing centers continued unabated. A change of commander without a change of policy shows the crackdown was never one man's whim — it was the system's decision.

Sources: "610 Office," English Wikipedia; Minghui.org, "Crimes Committed by Wang Maolin" (August 22, 2021, citing the death tallies).

5. The Masanjia tours: exporting torture "experience" nationwide

Per Falun Gong materials, during Liu Jing's directorship of the 610 Office (2001–2009), Luo Gan and Liu Jing repeatedly traveled together to Masanjia labor camp to "personally inspect" the progress of "thought reform" against practitioners, then promoted Masanjia's torture methods "throughout the province, and even to the whole country" — causing savage persecution to spread through detention centers, labor camps, and prisons across Liaoning and the rest of China (per Minghui.org, October 2004).

The Masanjia model's core was the "transformation rate": practitioners were forced to write the "three statements" (confession, repentance, breakaway declaration), and those who refused got the treatment — electric batons, the "stretching bed," sexual abuse, prolonged solitary confinement. The authorities, meanwhile, held Masanjia up as an "advanced model," with the Justice Ministry awarding it a "First Class Hero Collective" and guards pocketing bonuses. As the supreme chief of the political-legal system, Luo Gan bears leadership responsibility for turning torture into "experience" — not because he didn't know, but because his blessing is what made torture count as experience.

Sources: Minghui.org, October 24, 2004; WOIPFG, "Compilation of Falun Gong Persecution Cases" (200-en.doc).

6. Numbers: three accounts of the crackdown's scale

Sources: Minghui.org reporting over the years; Ethan Gutmann, The Slaughter; U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing, "Falun Gong in China: Review and Update" (2011).

7. Assessing responsibility: why he is the overlord

Luo Gan served the longest of the four men profiled here: from the 610 Office's founding on June 10, 1999, to his retirement in 2007 — eight full years. He was its creator, its daily commander, and finally the leading group's head. His name is on every chapter of the persecution machine's résumé. Li Lanqing ran it for three years, Wang Maolin for two, Liu Jing for eight but only from 2001 — Luo Gan alone was there from the first day to the last.

What made him singular was the title "secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission." The 610 Office was nominally a coordinating body, but Luo held the knife handle of the entire political-legal system: police, state security, courts, procuratorates, prisons, labor camps. The 610's orders flowed unimpeded not because of the 610's seal, but because of Luo Gan's authority as political-legal chief. Without him, the 610 would have been an empty shell; with him, it became the "super-agency."

He retired in 2007, and the persecution did not stop — Zhou Yongkang took over. But the "610" model — a Party small group standing above all law — was something Luo helped create and personally raised. That debt is his. Retirement is no absolution, and time is no eraser.

Sources: "610 Office," English Wikipedia; WOIPFG, "Report on the 610 Office"; Jamestown Foundation, "The 610 Office: Policing the Chinese Spirit."

8. Lawsuits abroad

On November 15, 2004, six Canadian Falun Gong practitioners sued Jiang Zemin, Li Lanqing, Luo Gan, Liu Jing, and Wang Maolin in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, seeking CAD 20 million in damages (per Minghui.org, December 2004). Luo Gan — the 610 system's "overlord" — was one of the five defendants. Plaintiff He Zhili said he hoped "those criminals leading the persecution of Falun Gong will be brought to justice in a Canadian court."

Sources: Minghui.org, December 31, 2004, "He Zhili: Requesting Justice for Thousands of Persecuted Falun Gong Practitioners."

9. How "transformation" quotas were handed down

The chain by which transformation tasks reached the grassroots is documented at several points. In January 2001 the central 610 Office mandated that all neighborhood committees, state institutions and companies make use of "transformation-through-reeducation" facilities, sparing no practitioner — explicitly including students and the elderly (Washington Post, August 5, 2001, as cited in the Jamestown Foundation's study of the 610 Office). The same year, the office reportedly relayed orders that active practitioners be sent to prisons or labor camps, and that those who refused to renounce their belief be socially isolated and monitored by their families and employers. Transformation thereby became an auditable administrative task: every locality and work unit kept a register of named practitioners, and the numbers transformed — and remaining — were reported upward on a regular cycle.

The logic of quotas later became fully explicit. Testimony before the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China recorded that the central 610 Office's renewed three-year transformation campaign of 2010 set percentage quotas for each region, requiring local authorities to take practitioners into transformation sessions and to send those who still refused to recant to labor camps. That three-stage machinery — set the quota, run the classes, send the holdouts to RTL — was not invented in 2010. The universal 2001 mandate, Masanjia's celebrated "transformation rate," and the local 610 offices' monthly and quarterly reporting were its early forms under Luo Gan. By the time he retired in 2007, the machine no longer needed fresh mobilization orders; it ran on its own.

Sources: Washington Post, August 5, 2001 (as cited in the Jamestown Foundation study); English Wikipedia, "610 Office"; U.S. CECC hearing, "Falun Gong in China: Review and Update," 2011.

10. Re-education through labor: expansion on his watch

Luo Gan's nine years atop the political-legal system (1998–2007) were also the years in which re-education through labor (RTL) was stretched to its limit by the Falun Gong campaign. RTL required no court trial: a police decision could confine a person for up to four years, which made it the 610 system's most convenient tool. CECC and U.S. State Department reporting estimated the number of Falun Gong practitioners sent to RTL in the hundreds of thousands, and recorded that practitioners formed the majority of detainees in some facilities.

Two institutional markers deserve record. First, in April 2003 the central 610 Office and the Ministry of Justice convened a conference in Hebei to promote that province's RTL "education and transformation" methods nationwide — experience-sharing at that level meant transformation had become the labor-camp system's headline metric (per judicial-system documents compiled by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong). Second, the nationwide "Strike Hard" campaign of 2001 unfolded under Luo's political-legal commission: Amnesty International counted at least 4,015 death sentences and 2,468 executions publicly reported in 2001 alone, with the true figures believed far higher. Strike Hard nominally targeted ordinary crime, but it entrenched a "heavy and fast" reflex across the courts and police — a reflex Falun Gong cases shared in full.

RTL was finally abolished in 2013, six years after Luo retired. At no point in office did he push to rein it in; under him it completed its conversion from a public-order tool into the workhorse of belief persecution.

Sources: U.S. CECC annual reports; U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices; Amnesty International Annual Report 2002 (2001 death-penalty figures); WOIPFG, "Compilation of Falun Gong Persecution Cases."

11. Lawsuits abroad, continued: the Spanish indictment and the Argentine warrant

Section 8 recorded the 2004 Canadian case. In 2009, two foreign courts took unprecedented steps against Luo in the same year. Everything below is a record of allegations and procedure, not a final judicial finding of fact.

Spain (filed 2003; indictment 2009). In October 2003, fifteen Falun Gong plaintiffs from Australia, China, the United States, Spain and elsewhere filed a criminal complaint in Spain's National Court against Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan, alleging genocide and torture against Falun Gong practitioners. In November 2009 the National Court decided to indict five officials — Jiang, Luo, Bo Xilai, Jia Qinglin and Wu Guanzheng — on charges of genocide and torture, allowing the defendants four to six weeks to respond; travel to a country with an extradition treaty with Spain could then have exposed them to extradition proceedings. The case rested on Spain's universal-jurisdiction legislation of 1985. In March 2014 Spain narrowed that legislation sharply, and pending cases — including the Falun Gong and Tibet cases — were archived. The indictment never reached trial.

Argentina (filed 2005; warrant 2009; reversal and reopening). On December 17, 2009, after a four-year investigation, Argentine Federal Judge Octavio de Lamadrid asked Interpol to arrest Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan on charges of crimes against humanity, including genocide and torture (allegations; Reuters, December 23, 2009). Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu accused Falun Gong supporters of abusing foreign judicial procedures to make malicious accusations. The case then reversed course: a successor judge revoked the arrest warrant and closed the case for lack of evidence (per Falun Gong reporting). In December 2010 the Federal Criminal Appeals Chamber accepted that universal jurisdiction applied and that the plaintiffs' evidence was sufficient to be credited, yet rejected the case on non bis in idem grounds because a similar case was pending in Spain. The plaintiffs appealed, supported by an amicus submission from Amnesty International, and in 2013 Argentina's Criminal High Court ruled to reopen the proceedings (Minghui.org, June 3, 2013). No trial has ever been held, and Luo was never arrested or brought before any court.

The significance of these cases lies in the record, not the outcome: judges in two countries, after examining the evidence submitted, found the allegations met the threshold for indictment — in Argentina's case, for an arrest warrant. As the 610 system's overlord, Luo's name stands next to Jiang Zemin's in both judicial files.

Sources: Reuters, "Argentine judge asks China arrests over Falun Gong," December 23, 2009; Minghui.org reporting on the Spanish indictment (November 2009) and on the Argentine proceedings (June 3, 2013); Counsel Magazine analysis of Spain's 2014 universal-jurisdiction reform.

12. The public record after retirement

After the 17th Party Congress in October 2007, Luo Gan stepped down from the Politburo Standing Committee and the political-legal commission, succeeded in the latter post by Zhou Yongkang. He has since vanished from public reporting: he has given no interview and made no public statement about the 610 Office, Masanjia, or any of the foreign lawsuits. Every major judicial step abroad — the Spanish indictment, the Argentine warrant and its reversals — came after his retirement. Retirement bought him quiet, but no acquittal: no proceeding ever found him not guilty, and no Chinese institution ever investigated him. As of October 2026 this archive has found no official Chinese bulletin on his health or whereabouts, and records nothing about his current status beyond that absence.

Sources: Xinhua reporting on the 17th Party Congress personnel changes; Reuters and Minghui.org lawsuit reporting (previous section).

13. A note on numbers: how many practitioners were there?

Section 6 tabulated the consequences; the premise deserves a line of its own. A 1998 survey by China's General Administration of Sport estimated some 70 million Falun Gong practitioners; Chinese state media used figures approaching 100 million before the crackdown, after which the official count abruptly shrank to two to three million. U.S. congressional and State Department documents generally use the conservative formulation "tens of millions." The spread — a factor of dozens — means no single figure can define the campaign's scale, but even on the lowest count the population registered, named and individually targeted for "transformation" by the 610 system (Section 9) numbered in the millions. The register system Luo presided over was designed for a population of exactly that magnitude.

Sources: U.S. CECC hearing background materials, 2011; U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom Reports; public reporting on the 1998 General Administration of Sport survey.

Contact: endccpworld@proton.me