Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; ) is a new religious movement. Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near the residence of Li Hongzhi.
Falun Gong emerged toward the end of China's "qigong boom"—a period that saw a proliferation of similar practices of meditation, slow-moving energy exercises and regulated breathing. Falun Gong combines meditation and qigong exercises with a moral philosophy. The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and identifies as a practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment.
Although practice initially enjoyed support from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, by the mid-to-late 1990s negative coverage of Falun Gong began to appear in state-run media. Practitioners usually responded by picketing the source involved, and controversy and tension continued to build. The scale of protests grew until April 1999, when over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered near the central government compound in Beijing to request legal recognition and freedom from state interference. This demonstration is widely seen as catalyzing the persecution that followed.
On 20 July 1999, the CCP leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign directed against the practice. It blocked Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization" that threatened social stability. Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities. , human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died within China as a result of abuse in custody. Data from within China suggests that millions continued to practice Falun Gong there in spite of the persecution. Outside of China, Falun Gong is practiced in over 70 countries, with estimates on the number of adherents ranging from roughly 40,000 to several hundreds of thousands.
Falun Gong practitioners founded a variety of outreach organizations in the United States and elsewhere, including the dance troupe Shen Yun. They are known for opposing the CCP and for anti-evolutionary views. They also operate Epoch Media Group, which is known for its subsidiaries, New Tang Dynasty Television and The Epoch Times newspaper. The latter has been broadly noted as a politically far-right media entity, and it has received significant attention in the United States for promoting conspiracy theories, such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation, and producing advertisements for former U.S. President Donald Trump. It has also drawn attention in Europe for promoting far-right politicians, primarily in France and Germany.
Beliefs and practices
Central teachings
Falun Gong aspires to enable the practitioner to ascend spiritually through moral rectitude and the practice of a set of exercises and meditation. The three stated tenets of the belief are truthfulness (), compassion (), and forbearance (). These principles have been repeated by Falun Gong members to outsiders as a tactic for evading deeper inquiry, and followers have been instructed by Li to lie about the practice. Together these principles are regarded as the fundamental nature of the cosmos, the criteria for differentiating right from wrong, and are held to be the highest manifestations of the Tao. Adherence to and cultivation of these virtues is regarded as a fundamental part of Falun Gong practice. In Zhuan Falun (), the foundational text published in 1995, Li Hongzhi writes "It doesn't matter how mankind's moral standard changes[...] The nature of the cosmos doesn't change, and it is the only standard for determining who's good and who's bad. So to be a cultivator you have to take the nature of the cosmos as your guide for improving yourself."