Falun Gong (UK: /ˌfɑːlʊnˈɡɒŋ,ˌfæl-,-ˈɡʊŋ/ , US: /-ˈɡɔːŋ/ )[1] or Falun Dafa (/ˈdɑːfə/; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.[2][3] 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 427-acre (1.73 km2) compound in Deerpark, New York, near the residence of Li Hongzhi.[4][5][6]
Falun Gong administers a variety of outreach organizations in the United States and elsewhere, including the dance troupe Shen Yun and far-right newspaper The Epoch Times. They are known for their views against the Chinese Communist Party and their anti-evolutionary stance.[7][8][9] They also operate Epoch Media Group, which is known for its subsidiaries, New Tang Dynasty Television and The Epoch Times. The latter has been broadly noted as a politically far-right[23] media entity that 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, and has also drawn attention in Europe, promoting far-right politicians, primarily in France and Germany.[5][24][14][25]
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[citation needed]. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment.[26]
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.[26]
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,[27] 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.[28] As of 2009[update],[needs update] human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died within China as a result of abuse in custody.[29] Data from within China suggests that millions continued to practice Falun Gong there in spite of the persecution.[30][31][32] Outside of China, Falun Gong is practiced in over 70 countries, with estimates on the number of adherents as of 2008[needs update] ranging from roughly 40,000 to several hundreds of thousands.[33][update]