The Canon · No. 114
Falun Gong
Falun Dafa
1992 CE – present · East Asian · Living · Originally China; now Taiwan, US, and diaspora worldwide
VIII. POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY — 1945 – PRESENT
How many
Claimed 70–100 million in China before 1999, a figure once cited by Chinese state sources themselves; current numbers outside China are unknown and much smaller.
Who began it
Li Hongzhi (b. 1951 or 1952), who began teaching publicly in Changchun in May 1992 during China's qigong boom.
What it is for
Cultivation of body and mind toward spiritual completion, through exercises and above all through moral improvement.
What it worships
No worship. Li is regarded by practitioners as a teacher of extraordinary standing; the practice itself has no deity and no clergy.
What it holds
Three principles: Zhen, Shan, Ren — truthfulness, compassion, forbearance. A falun, a law wheel, is said to be installed in the practitioner's abdomen and to rotate continuously, absorbing and emitting energy. Karma is a black substance accumulated by wrongdoing and eliminated by suffering and cultivation; de, virtue, is its white counterpart. Moral improvement is held to be the actual mechanism of progress, with the exercises secondary. Li's later teaching includes strongly stated positions on modern art, race-mixing, homosexuality and modern medicine that have drawn substantial criticism, and practitioners are discouraged from taking medication on the reasoning that illness is karmic.
What it does
Five sets of exercises, four standing and one seated meditation, taught free of charge — the absence of fees was central to its appeal and distinguished it from commercial qigong schools. Daily study of Zhuan Falun. No temples, no membership, no formal organisation, which is precisely what made it uncontainable and, from Beijing's perspective, alarming.
After death
Cultivation aims at consummation — the attainment of a divine level and release from the cycle of rebirth. Reincarnation across many lives is assumed, with the human birth understood as a rare opportunity to cultivate. Those who fall away descend. The framework is broadly Buddhist and Daoist, restated in Li's own terms.
Its texts
Zhuan Falun (1995), the principal text. Falun Gong (1993). Li's ongoing lectures.
Its branches
No formal branches; the practice is decentralised, with associated media and performance organisations.
Of note
Falun Gong occupies an unusually contested position. It is a persecuted religious minority subjected to documented, serious human rights abuses, and it is also an organisation whose founder's teachings and whose media arm have attracted substantive criticism. Both need stating; neither cancels the other.
Its timeline
- 1992 CE Li begins teaching; the practice spreads with extraordinary speed through parks, workplaces and state institutions.
- 1996 CE Li withdraws Falun Gong from the state-run qigong association; official pressure begins.
- <strong>25 April 1999 CE</strong> Over 10,000 practitioners assemble silently outside Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party leadership compound in Beijing, to petition for recognition. It is the largest unauthorised gathering in the capital since 1989 and it takes the leadership completely by surprise.
- <strong>20 July 1999 CE</strong> Falun Gong is banned as a heretical organisation. The 610 Office is created to suppress it. Mass arrests, re-education through labour, and documented deaths in custody follow.
- 2001 CE A self-immolation in Tiananmen Square is presented by state media as proof of the movement's danger; Falun Gong disputes the incident's authenticity, and independent verification has never been possible.
- 2006–present Allegations of forced organ harvesting from detained practitioners. The 2019 China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, concluded that forced organ harvesting had occurred on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners were probably a principal source. China rejects the finding.
- 2000s–present Outside China the movement builds Shen Yun, a touring dance company, and The Epoch Times, which grew from a diaspora paper into a large and politically aligned media operation in the United States, drawing its own investigative scrutiny.
Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.