What Happened to the 361 People Beijing Has Tried to Erase from History？

In late 1999, inside a sprawling steel complex in Beijing, an industrial giant that had once formed part of the backbone of China's heavy industry, an atrocity took place that crossed the very bottom line of human civilization. The victims were 361 Falun Gong practitioners, who had traveled to Beijing to peacefully petition the authorities. After refusing to reveal their real names, they were secretly transported by bus to a steel-making plant operated by the Capital Iron and Steel Group, known in Chinese as Shougang Group Company Limited. With the entire facility under armed lockdown by the People's Armed Police, they were forced at gunpoint to leap into seething molten steel, heated to more than 1,500 degrees Celsius. They were burned alive. No bodies or bones remained. 361 human beings simply vanished without a trace. For 27 years, this atrocity remained buried beneath an impenetrable information blackout imposed by the Chinese Communist regime. It was only years later, when a soldier who had witnessed it first-hand could no longer bear the weight of what he knew and broke down in a tearful confession, that the wall of silence was finally breached, allowing the world to glimpse the tip of the iceberg. Now, as the CCP's brutal persecution of Falun Gong reaches its 27th year, this is the horrifying story we want to tell. Before we begin, I just want to let you know that some of the details in this story may be difficult to hear. This is a special presentation of Final War with Catherine Hu. This is the story of a real and horrifying atrocity uncovered by the World Organization to investigate the persecution of Falun Gong, also known as WOIPFG, after nearly a decade of investigation and evidence gathering from multiple sources. In late 1999, 361 Falun Gong practitioners who had traveled to Beijing to peacefully petition the authorities were transported by the CCP in several buses to Shougang Steel Making Plant in Shijingshan District. The facility was located along the western extension of Beijing's Chang'an Avenue, just over 10 miles in a straight line from Zhongnanhai. The 4th Company of the 341st Regiment, part of the 114th Mobile Division of the People's Armed Police, had been ordered to carry out the mission in secret. By the time the practitioners arrived, the designated areas of the plant were already under lockdown. WOIPFG's investigation identified a direct witness, referred to here as Cui. When the atrocity took place, Cui was serving as a soldier in the People's Armed Police Unit assigned to the operation. Cui and another soldier were ordered to hold the Falun Gong practitioners at gunpoint and They watched as the practitioners were burned alive. Cui later recalled telling his superiors that he did not want to carry out such an order. A gun was immediately pressed against his head. For Cui, it was an order to kill that he had absolutely no choice but to carry out. For the entire week that followed, Cui could not stop vomiting. He came close to a complete mental breakdown and at one point he no longer wanted to go on living. Nearly 17 years later, in 2016, Cui was having dinner with 3 or 4 friends when he finally broke down and, through tears, revealed the horrifying secret he had buried deep inside for all those years. To this day, Cui's account remains the only first-hand testimony about this atrocity ever given by someone directly involved in carrying it out. The unit that carried out the massacre was the 114th Mobile Division of the People's Armed Police. It had previously been the 114th Division of the People's Liberation Army's 38th Group Army and was stationed in Hebei Province. The fourth company assigned to the operation belonged to the 341st Regiment. The division's senior commanders included Division Commander Niu Zhijiong and Political Commissar Ma Bingtai. After the massacre, both received unusually rapid promotions, moving from division-level posts to full corps-level positions, before rising even further to become senior generals within the People's Armed Police. Why did a massacre of such unimaginable brutality take place at the Capital Iron and Steel Company? Because it was exactly the kind of place needed to carry out a carefully planned operation of extermination. The Capital Iron and Steel Company, known as Shougang, was one of China's largest integrated steel producers. Its industrial complex covered nearly 90,000 square meters. At its peak, it employed more than 200,000 people and operated on the scale of a mid-sized city, complete with its own independent internal security system. Its No. 1 blast furnace was not permanently shut down until December 2010. Before then, it had remained in continuous operation at extremely high temperatures. A closer look at the complex reveals that it possessed three critical conditions for carrying out a state-organized mass execution in complete secrecy. First, a concealed transportation route. The Shougang complex had its own internal railway system, originally built for industrial freight. At night, or with the area sealed off, these rail lines could provide the People's Armed Police with a hidden route for moving large numbers of detainees into the complex without being seen by the public. Second, the ability to destroy every physical trace. Industrial steel furnaces reach internal temperatures of between 1,500 and 2,000 degrees Celsius, that is roughly 2,700 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Any human body thrown inside would be vaporized almost instantly and dissolved into hundreds of tons of molten steel, leaving no physical trace that could be recovered for forensic examination. This industrial-scale capacity for incineration offered exactly what a crime of mass extermination required, the ability to leave no evidence behind. Third, the regime's black box system of secrecy. As one of China's largest state-owned enterprises under central government control, Shougang already operated under a semi-military system of management. The CCP had long established mechanisms that allowed military and senior state enterprise officials to coordinate in enforcing secrecy. Once the operation was over, those same mechanisms could shut down every channel through which information might leak out. What could possibly have led to a massacre that crossed every boundary of human decency? To understand how the Shougang massacre could have happened, we need to go back 27 years, to 1999, the year modern China took one of its darkest turns. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice rooted in traditional Chinese culture. After it was introduced to the public in 1992, its moral principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, together with its significant benefits for health and physical well-being, attracted an estimated 100 million practitioners across China within just a few years. Just think about that. 100 million, more than the CCP's entire membership at the time. From government officials to ordinary farmers, from intellectuals to members of the military, people across every level of society embraced Falun Gong from the heart. That kind of widespread, deeply personal acceptance stirred the deepest fears of a CCP regime founded on atheism, especially in Jiang Zemin, the party leader at the time. In Jiang's eyes, Falun Gong had become a vast community beyond his control. Driven by political panic fueled by extreme jealousy, Jiang launched a nationwide campaign of mass arrests against Falun Gong on July 20th, 1999. That day marked the beginning of a brutal campaign to crush nearly 100 million peaceful people of faith. That is how July 20th became a day of remembrance. After the nationwide crackdown began, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who refused to renounce their faith traveled to Beijing to peacefully petition the government. They hoped the authorities would listen to the people and reverse the orders for violent suppression. Instead, nearly every petitioner was arrested. Prisons across China quickly filled beyond capacity. Schools, hospitals, and stadiums had to be urgently converted into temporary detention centers. And still, there was not enough room. This created unprecedented fear within Jiang faction. They worried that if this independent force within Chinese society continued to grow, it could directly threaten the survival of the regime. Jiang then issued secret orders across the country. It doesn't matter if they are beaten to death. Eradicate Falun Gong within three months. These were not political slogans. They were a nationwide license to kill, reaching every police station, forced labor camp, and even state-owned enterprises like Shougang. That is how the furnaces became a tool of extermination, intended to stop the petitions and wipe out Falun Gong as quickly as possible. Over the past 27 years, countless acts of torture have taken place in labor camps, prisons, and brainwashing centers across China. More horrifying still, forced organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners became an industry and grew into the world's largest and longest-running state-run supply chain of organs taken from living people. This shattered the moral foundations of Chinese society and its bonds of trust. It lies at the root of the moral collapse and rampant corruption we see in China today. The regime then extended that damage beyond China through transnational repression, information warfare, and unrestricted warfare, eroding moral standards worldwide. Yet 27 years of brutal persecution have failed to erase Falun Gong from China. Instead, this spiritual practice, grounded in 5,000 years of Chinese culture, has flourished in more than 100 countries. Shen Yun Performing Arts now tours the world's presenting the beauty of traditional Chinese culture, the very culture the CCP deliberately tried to cut its own people off from. By holding firm to truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance in the face of extreme violence, Falun Gong practitioners have become a silent yet powerful testament to moral courage. The Shougang atrocity was not an isolated case. It was one horrifying example of a bloody persecution that has continued for 27 years, and still has not ended. 361 lives were erased without a trace. To this day, who they were, the families they came from, and what happened in their final moments remain buried in silence and darkness. Get the real story behind the CCP's shifting power games, and see where U.S.-China relations are headed next. Support the vision of a new China without communism. Subscribe now and join us in bringing the truth to light.