Beijing authorities have warned Falun Gong followers not to believe talk that the sect is being outlawed and to avoid being drawn into protests.
The State Council Complaints Bureau, which handles public gripes, attacked Buddhist and qi gong sect devotees for spreading stories of mass arrests and police purges, including threats to Communist Party practitioners that they could be expelled or sacked.
A bureau spokesman dismissed the claims as 'purely fictitious rumours put around to confuse and poison people's minds'.
He denied speculation that Beijing would offer to cut the Sino-US trade surplus by US$500 million (HK$3.87 billion) in exchange for the extradition to China of the cult's American-based founder Li Hongzhi.
'An extremely small number of people with ulterior political motives have spread such rumours. They are aimed at inciting Falun Gong practitioners who are ignorant of the facts to hold large-scale demonstrations, provoke incidents, create chaos and destroy social stability,' Xinhua quoted the spokesman as saying.
The government message was given to Falun Gong representatives at a recent meeting with bureau officials.
The warning, the second to be publicised in a week, demonstrated the suspicion with which Communist Party leaders have viewed the sect since thousands of its followers staged a silent protest outside the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in central Beijing on April 25.
