[10][11][12][13] Led by Li Hongzhi, who is viewed by adherents as a deity-like figure, Falun Gong practitioners operate a variety of organizations in the United States and elsewhere, including the dance troupe Shen Yun.

The latter has been broadly noted as a politically far-right[30] 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.

[33][34][35] While supported by some government agencies,[36][37] Falun Gong's rapid growth and independence from state control led several top officials to perceive it as a threat, resulting in periodic acts of harassment in the late 1990s.

[66] According to David Ownby, Falun Gong teaches that "pride in one's abilities, or the desire to show off, are marks of dangerous attachments", and Li warns his followers not to be distracted by the pursuit of such powers.

Li's teachings repeatedly emphasize the emptiness of material pursuits; although practitioners of Falun Gong are not encouraged to leave their jobs or eschew money, they are expected to give up the psychological attachments to these things.

"[74] In the cultural context of China, Falun Gong is generally described either as a system of qigong, or a type of "cultivation practice" (xiulian), a process by which an individual seeks spiritual perfection, often through both physical and moral conditioning.

According to NBC News: The Epoch Media Group, along with Shen Yun, a dance troupe known for its ubiquitous advertising and unsettling performances, make up the outreach effort of Falun Gong, a relatively new spiritual practice that combines ancient Chinese meditative exercises, mysticism and often ultraconservative cultural worldviews.

[133][136][137] In 2010, the US State Department under the Obama administration offered a $1.5 million grant to the Global Internet Freedom Consortium founded by Falun Gong adherents that developed Ultrasurf and Freegate, drawing opposition from the Chinese government.

[82][107][148] Group study sessions typically take place in the evenings in private residences or university or high school classrooms, and are described by David Ownby as "the closest thing to a regular 'congregational experience'" that Falun Gong offers.

[82] Falun Gong is practiced by tens, and possibly hundreds, of thousands outside China,[175] with the largest communities found in Taiwan and North American cities with large Chinese populations, such as New York and Toronto.

[83][118][178][179] According to David Ownby, Professor of History and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal, Li became an "instant star of the qigong movement",[33] and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality.

[38] Thousands of Falun Gong followers wrote to Guangming Daily and to the CQRS to complain against the measures, claiming that they violated Hu Yaobang's 1982 'Triple No' directive, which prohibited the media from either encouraging or criticizing qigong practices.

[160][162] An anonymous employee of China's National Sports Commission, was at this time quoted in an interview with U.S. News & World Report as speculating that if 100 million had taken up Falun Gong and other forms of qigong there would be a dramatic reduction of health care costs and that "Premier Zhu Rongji is very happy about that.

Reports of discrimination and surveillance by the Public Security Bureau were escalating, and Falun Gong practitioners were routinely organizing sit-in demonstrations responding to media articles they deemed to be unfair.

[203] President Jiang Zemin was alerted to the demonstration by Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Luo Gan,[164] and was reportedly angered by the audacity of the demonstration—the largest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

He believed it possible foreign forces were behind Falun Gong's protests (the practice's founder, Li Hongzhi, had emigrated to the United States), and expressed concern about their use of the internet to coordinate a large-scale demonstration.

[205][206] Peerman cited reasons such as suspected personal jealousy of Li Hongzhi; Saich points to Jiang's anger at Falun Gong's widespread appeal, and ideological struggle as causes for the crackdown that followed.

[225] Other articles which appeared in the state-run media in the first days and weeks after the ban was imposed posited that Falun Gong must be defeated because its "theistic" philosophy was at odds with the Marxism–Leninism paradigm and the secular values of materialism.

[74] According to Zhao, Falun Gong practitioners have established a "resistance identity"—one that stands against prevailing pursuits of wealth, power, scientific rationality, and "the entire value system associated with China's project of modernization.

Among them are cases of severe beatings; psychological torment, corporal punishment and forced intense, heavy-burden hard labor and stress positions; solitary confinement in squalid conditions; "heat treatment" including burning and freezing; electric shocks delivered to sensitive parts of the body that may result in nausea, convulsions, or fainting; "devastative" forced feeding; sticking bamboo strips into fingernails; deprivation of food, sleep, and use of toilet; rape and gang rape; asphyxiation; and threat, extortion, and termination of employment and student status.

The Kilgour-Matas report[239][242][243] was published in July 2006, and concluded that "the government of China and its agencies in numerous parts of the country, in particular hospitals but also detention centers and 'people's courts', since 1999 have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience."

Responding to a U.S. House of Representatives Resolution calling for an end to abusing transplant practices against religious and ethnic minorities, a Chinese embassy spokesperson said "the so-called organ harvesting from death-row prisoners is totally a lie fabricated by Falun Gong.

"[252] In June 2019, the China Tribunal—an independent tribunal set up by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China—concluded that detainees including imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement are still being killed for organ harvesting.

The press release stated that UN's human rights experts "were extremely alarmed by reports of alleged 'organ harvesting' targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.

[268] Media Channel and the International Education Development (IED) agree that the supposed self-immolation incident was staged by CCP to "prove" that Falun Gong brainwashes its followers to commit suicide and has therefore to be banned as a threat to the nation.

[42] In February, 2001, the month following the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident, Jiang Zemin convened a rare Central Work Conference to stress the importance of continuity in the anti-Falun Gong campaign and unite senior party officials behind the effort.

[83] According to Zhao, through The Epoch Times it can be discerned how Falun Gong is building a "de facto media alliance" with China's democracy movements in exile, as demonstrated by its frequent printing of articles by prominent overseas Chinese critics of the PRC government.

[283] Falun Gong practitioners outside China have filed dozens of lawsuits against Jiang Zemin, Luo Gan, Bo Xilai, and other Chinese officials alleging genocide and crimes against humanity.

[83] Falun Gong practitioners overseas have responded to the persecution in China through regular demonstrations, parades, and through the creation of media outlets, performing arts companies, and censorship-circumvention software mainly intended to reach mainland Chinese audiences.

[301] Gutmann also says that media organizations and human rights groups also self-censor on the topic, given the PRC governments vehement attitude toward the practice, and the potential repercussions that may follow for making overt representations on Falun Gong's behalf.