Falun Gong
religious movement originating in China
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a new religious movement founded by Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. The movement was built on interest in qigong with additional religious and moralistic dimensions, and includes claims that its practices can cure illness, including serious or terminal illnesses, without modern medicine. It gained popularity in part through its health claims and practitioners' beliefs in their effectiveness. Falun Gong has its global headquarters in Dragon Springs, a 173-hectare (427-acre) compound in Deerpark, New York, United States, near the residence of Li.
Falun Gong emerged from the Qigong fever era in China in 1992, combining meditation, qigong exercises, and moral teachings rooted in Buddhist and Taoist traditions. Its central text Zhuan Falun also promises that practitioners can develop supernatural abilities such as clairvoyance, though such abilities can only be attained through moral practice and should not be pursued or abused. The movement is named after the "Falun" (Dharma Wheel), which according to Li's teachings, is a supernatural entity that he claims to install in practitioners' lower abdomen and is described as a spinning wheel. Adherents are taught that performing 5 exercises can keep the wheel rotating which the teaching says promotes health and eliminate disease. Li teaches that Falun Gong is the only means of truly curing diseases at their spiritual root, and characterizes that homosexuality, feminism, modern science, and conventional medicine as moral deviations incompatible with the Fa.
Although initially supported by some government agencies in China, Falun Gong developed during a period of growing official scepticism toward qigong movements.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Falun Gong” as religious movement originating in China. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as religious movement originating in China. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q185802. VIAF identifies the subject as 135149106275968492297. The Library of Congress control number is nr98001240. Authority coordinates are 41.447, -74.590. 2 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Falun Gong” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.