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Li Hongzhi

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Li Hongzhi (Chinese:李洪志; pinyin: Lǐ Hóngzhì) (born either May 13, 1951 or July 7, 1952) is the founder of Falun Dafa, otherwise known as Falun Gong. He resides in Brooklyn, New York. He was born in Gongzhuling, Jilin Province, China. Li's real birth date is disputed; while he has said that he was born on May 13, 1951, Chinese authorities allege that he was actually born on July 7, 1952, and that he lied about his birth date so that it would be the same as Buddhism's founder Sakyamuni. (These allegations of a deliberate fraud surfaced only after the persecution against Falun Gong was launched in 1999.) Li states that he corrected his birth data, which was confused during the Cultural Revolution, and has not drawn particular significance to it.

Falun Gong was introduced to the public by Li Hongzhi on 13 May, 1992, at the Fifth Middle School, Changchun, China. In China, he only taught the practice for three years. Falun Gong was nominated twice as the "Star Qigong School" in the 1992 and 1993 Asian Health Expo in Beijing. As Falun Dafa practitioners themselves started promoting the discipline, Li stipulated that it could never be done for fame or profit, and that practicing always had to be voluntary. Li's insistence that the practice be offered free of charge caused a rift with the China Qigong Research Society, the state administrative body under which Falun Dafa was initially introduced, and Li withdrew from the organization.

As of 1996, Li Hongzhi took up invitations to teach the practice in numerous countries in Europe and Asia. This year, the first reports of harassment of Falun Dafa practitioners by Chinese officials were reported.

Li Hongzhi moved to the United States in 1998. By 1999, the Associated Press and the New York Times quoted Chinese officials estimating that there were "at least 70 million" practitioners in China. Since Li asked that Falun Gong be kept as unstructured as possible, records of the number of practitioners were not kept. The rapid growth of the practice led some communist party officials, led by then-president Jiang Zemin, to take issue with Li Hongzhi and the practice, though a 1998 official government investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing.

On July 30, 1999, Chinese authorities issued a nationwide arrest warrant for Li Hongzhi. An arrest warrant was also sent to Interpol, but was ignored by member states. Soon thereafter, his passport was revoked, preventing him from traveling internationally.

The arrest warrant followed a July 20 ruling which declared Falun Dafa illegal in China and the incarceration of tens of thousands of practitioners. Three months earlier, over 10,000 Falun Dafa practitioners surprised the government by arriving at the National Appeals Office in Beijing to protest certain cases of arrests and violence against practitioners, and asking for peaceful resolution to arising juxtaposition. The office is located just outside Zhongnanhai, the main Chinese government compound, and such an unprecedented number of people gathering there caused great concern among the Communist Party leadership. Afterwards, the CCP claimed that the protest was organized by Li himself, which he denied. All the practitioners stated that they had acted individually and without anybody's command; at this time there were over 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing alone.

In China, Li Hongzhi's name remains blacklisted by the Great Firewall of China, and Falun Gong practitioners held in prisons or Laogai (forced labor camps) are pressured to denounce him as part of their re-education process.

Li Hongzhi currently lives in seclusion in the United States. He is associated with a number of publishers, including Universe Publishing, which prints mainly Falun Dafa-related books.

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