Li Hongzhi

Li Hongzhi was born on 13 May 1951 in Jilin City, Jilin Province, China (according to household registration records held by the Changchun Public Security Bureau, his birth date was originally recorded as 7 July 1952, and was changed at his own request in September 1994), and worked as a civil employee at the Changchun Public Security Bureau. On 13 May 1992 he began publicly teaching Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) in Changchun, combining qigong exercises with a spiritual framework centred on the moral principles of 'truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance' (真善忍) — a founding date that coincides exactly with his revised birth date.

In early April 1999, a youth science magazine in Tianjin published an article criticising qigong practice and mentioning that a Falun Gong practitioner had been committed to a psychiatric hospital, prompting Falun Gong practitioners in Tianjin to gather in protest, some of whom were detained by local police. On 25 April, in response to the Tianjin incident and to demand official recognition of Falun Gong's legality, several thousand to over ten thousand practitioners gathered around Zhongnanhai, the central government compound in Beijing, in what became known as the 'April 25 Incident.' Premier Zhu Rongji met with a group of practitioner representatives, and the crowd dispersed peacefully that evening without violent confrontation. It was the largest collective petition in Falun Gong's history and is widely regarded as a direct trigger for the government's ban on the organisation three months later.

Falun Gong spread rapidly through networks endorsed by China's state qigong administration before separating from the official qigong system around the mid-1990s. In his central text Zhuan Falun (published 1994), Li claimed supernatural healing powers and cosmic divine authority, and taught that practitioners should not seek conventional medical treatment. Around 1997 he moved to the United States, residing primarily in the New York area. In July 1999, the Chinese government formally banned Falun Gong, officially designating it an illegal organisation and a 'cult' (邪教). Some human rights groups and independent investigative bodies, including the 2019 'China Tribunal,' have alleged that China has engaged in systematic forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, allegations the Chinese government has denied. He has since continued issuing statements through the Minghui website and exercising significant influence over practitioner-affiliated media platforms including Epoch Times and NTD. Falun Gong practitioners and affiliated groups have since brought civil and criminal lawsuits in multiple countries against Chinese officials including Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan, alleging crimes against humanity and genocide, in an international legal campaign that continues today. International academic researchers, including David Ownby, have characterised Li Hongzhi's teachings as exhibiting several features typical of totalistic movements, including exclusive claims to divine authority and a closed doctrinal system.