❤️ Genomics 🐏

"Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of all of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain. The field also includes studies of intragenomic (within the genome) phenomena such as epistasis (effect of one gene on another), pleiotropy (one gene affecting more than one trait), heterosis (hybrid vigour), and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. History Etymology From the Greek ΓΕΝ gen, "gene" (gamma, epsilon, nu, epsilon) meaning "become, create, creation, birth", and subsequent variants: genealogy, genesis, genetics, genic, genomere, genotype, genus etc. While the word genome (from the German Genom, attributed to Hans Winkler) was in use in English as early as 1926, the term genomics was coined by Tom Roderick, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine), over beer at a meeting held in Maryland on the mapping of the human genome in 1986. Early sequencing efforts Following Rosalind Franklin's confirmation of the helical structure of DNA, James D. Watson and Francis Crick's publication of the structure of DNA in 1953 and Fred Sanger's publication of the Amino acid sequence of insulin in 1955, nucleic acid sequencing became a major target of early molecular biologists. In 1964, Robert W. Holley and colleagues published the first nucleic acid sequence ever determined, the ribonucleotide sequence of alanine transfer RNA. Extending this work, Marshall Nirenberg and Philip Leder revealed the triplet nature of the genetic code and were able to determine the sequences of 54 out of 64 codons in their experiments. In 1972, Walter Fiers and his team at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the University of Ghent (Ghent, Belgium) were the first to determine the sequence of a gene: the gene for Bacteriophage MS2 coat protein. Fiers' group expanded on their MS2 coat protein work, determining the complete nucleotide-sequence of bacteriophage MS2-RNA (whose genome encodes just four genes in 3569 base pairs [bp]) and Simian virus 40 in 1976 and 1978, respectively. DNA-sequencing technology developed In addition to his seminal work on the amino acid sequence of insulin, Frederick Sanger and his colleagues played a key role in the development of DNA sequencing techniques that enabled the establishment of comprehensive genome sequencing projects. In 1975, he and Alan Coulson published a sequencing procedure using DNA polymerase with radiolabelled nucleotides that he called the Plus and Minus technique. This involved two closely related methods that generated short oligonucleotides with defined 3' termini. These could be fractionated by electrophoresis on a polyacrylamide gel (called polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis) and visualised using autoradiography. The procedure could sequence up to 80 nucleotides in one go and was a big improvement, but was still very laborious. Nevertheless, in 1977 his group was able to sequence most of the 5,386 nucleotides of the single- stranded bacteriophage φX174, completing the first fully sequenced DNA-based genome. The refinement of the Plus and Minus method resulted in the chain- termination, or Sanger method (see below), which formed the basis of the techniques of DNA sequencing, genome mapping, data storage, and bioinformatic analysis most widely used in the following quarter-century of research. In the same year Walter Gilbert and Allan Maxam of Harvard University independently developed the Maxam-Gilbert method (also known as the chemical method) of DNA sequencing, involving the preferential cleavage of DNA at known bases, a less efficient method. For their groundbreaking work in the sequencing of nucleic acids, Gilbert and Sanger shared half the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Paul Berg (recombinant DNA). Complete genomes The advent of these technologies resulted in a rapid intensification in the scope and speed of completion of genome sequencing projects. The first complete genome sequence of a eukaryotic organelle, the human mitochondrion (16,568 bp, about 16.6 kb [kilobase]), was reported in 1981, and the first chloroplast genomes followed in 1986. In 1992, the first eukaryotic chromosome, chromosome III of brewer's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae (315 kb) was sequenced. The first free-living organism to be sequenced was that of Haemophilus influenzae (1.8 Mb [megabase]) in 1995. The following year a consortium of researchers from laboratories across North America, Europe, and Japan announced the completion of the first complete genome sequence of a eukaryote, S. cerevisiae (12.1 Mb), and since then genomes have continued being sequenced at an exponentially growing pace. , the complete sequences are available for: 2,719 viruses, 1,115 archaea and bacteria, and 36 eukaryotes, of which about half are fungi. alt="Hockey stick" graph showing the exponential growth of public sequence databases. Most of the microorganisms whose genomes have been completely sequenced are problematic pathogens, such as Haemophilus influenzae, which has resulted in a pronounced bias in their phylogenetic distribution compared to the breadth of microbial diversity. Of the other sequenced species, most were chosen because they were well-studied model organisms or promised to become good models. Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has long been an important model organism for the eukaryotic cell, while the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been a very important tool (notably in early pre-molecular genetics). The worm Caenorhabditis elegans is an often used simple model for multicellular organisms. The zebrafish Brachydanio rerio is used for many developmental studies on the molecular level, and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana is a model organism for flowering plants. The Japanese pufferfish (Takifugu rubripes) and the spotted green pufferfish (Tetraodon nigroviridis) are interesting because of their small and compact genomes, which contain very little noncoding DNA compared to most species. The mammals dog (Canis familiaris), brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), mouse (Mus musculus), and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) are all important model animals in medical research. A rough draft of the human genome was completed by the Human Genome Project in early 2001, creating much fanfare. This project, completed in 2003, sequenced the entire genome for one specific person, and by 2007 this sequence was declared "finished" (less than one error in 20,000 bases and all chromosomes assembled). In the years since then, the genomes of many other individuals have been sequenced, partly under the auspices of the 1000 Genomes Project, which announced the sequencing of 1,092 genomes in October 2012. Completion of this project was made possible by the development of dramatically more efficient sequencing technologies and required the commitment of significant bioinformatics resources from a large international collaboration. The continued analysis of human genomic data has profound political and social repercussions for human societies. The "omics" revolution General schema showing the relationships of the genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome (lipidome). The English-language neologism omics informally refers to a field of study in biology ending in -omics, such as genomics, proteomics or metabolomics. The related suffix -ome is used to address the objects of study of such fields, such as the genome, proteome or metabolome respectively. The suffix -ome as used in molecular biology refers to a totality of some sort; similarly omics has come to refer generally to the study of large, comprehensive biological data sets. While the growth in the use of the term has led some scientists (Jonathan Eisen, among others) to claim that it has been oversold, it reflects the change in orientation towards the quantitative analysis of complete or near-complete assortment of all the constituents of a system. In the study of symbioses, for example, researchers which were once limited to the study of a single gene product can now simultaneously compare the total complement of several types of biological molecules. Genome analysis After an organism has been selected, genome projects involve three components: the sequencing of DNA, the assembly of that sequence to create a representation of the original chromosome, and the annotation and analysis of that representation. BGI or DOE JGI). Third, the genome sequence is annotated at several levels: DNA, protein, gene pathways, or comparatively. Sequencing Historically, sequencing was done in sequencing centers, centralized facilities (ranging from large independent institutions such as Joint Genome Institute which sequence dozens of terabases a year, to local molecular biology core facilities) which contain research laboratories with the costly instrumentation and technical support necessary. As sequencing technology continues to improve, however, a new generation of effective fast turnaround benchtop sequencers has come within reach of the average academic laboratory. On the whole, genome sequencing approaches fall into two broad categories, shotgun and high-throughput (or next-generation) sequencing. = Shotgun sequencing = An ABI PRISM 3100 Genetic Analyzer. Such capillary sequencers automated early large-scale genome sequencing efforts. Shotgun sequencing is a sequencing method designed for analysis of DNA sequences longer than 1000 base pairs, up to and including entire chromosomes. It is named by analogy with the rapidly expanding, quasi- random firing pattern of a shotgun. Since gel electrophoresis sequencing can only be used for fairly short sequences (100 to 1000 base pairs), longer DNA sequences must be broken into random small segments which are then sequenced to obtain reads. Multiple overlapping reads for the target DNA are obtained by performing several rounds of this fragmentation and sequencing. Computer programs then use the overlapping ends of different reads to assemble them into a continuous sequence. Shotgun sequencing is a random sampling process, requiring over-sampling to ensure a given nucleotide is represented in the reconstructed sequence; the average number of reads by which a genome is over- sampled is referred to as coverage. For much of its history, the technology underlying shotgun sequencing was the classical chain-termination method or 'Sanger method', which is based on the selective incorporation of chain- terminating dideoxynucleotides by DNA polymerase during in vitro DNA replication. Recently, shotgun sequencing has been supplanted by high- throughput sequencing methods, especially for large-scale, automated genome analyses. However, the Sanger method remains in wide use, primarily for smaller-scale projects and for obtaining especially long contiguous DNA sequence reads (>500 nucleotides). Chain-termination methods require a single- stranded DNA template, a DNA primer, a DNA polymerase, normal deoxynucleosidetriphosphates (dNTPs), and modified nucleotides (dideoxyNTPs) that terminate DNA strand elongation. These chain-terminating nucleotides lack a 3'-OH group required for the formation of a phosphodiester bond between two nucleotides, causing DNA polymerase to cease extension of DNA when a ddNTP is incorporated. The ddNTPs may be radioactively or fluorescently labelled for detection in DNA sequencers. Typically, these machines can sequence up to 96 DNA samples in a single batch (run) in up to 48 runs a day. = High- throughput sequencing = The high demand for low-cost sequencing has driven the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies that parallelize the sequencing process, producing thousands or millions of sequences at once. High-throughput sequencing is intended to lower the cost of DNA sequencing beyond what is possible with standard dye-terminator methods. In ultra-high- throughput sequencing, as many as 500,000 sequencing-by-synthesis operations may be run in parallel. Illumina Genome Analyzer II System. Illumina technologies have set the standard for high-throughput massively parallel sequencing. The Illumina dye sequencing method is based on reversible dye- terminators and was developed in 1996 at the Geneva Biomedical Research Institute, by Pascal Mayer and Laurent Farinelli. In this method, DNA molecules and primers are first attached on a slide and amplified with polymerase so that local clonal colonies, initially coined "DNA colonies", are formed. To determine the sequence, four types of reversible terminator bases (RT-bases) are added and non-incorporated nucleotides are washed away. Unlike pyrosequencing, the DNA chains are extended one nucleotide at a time and image acquisition can be performed at a delayed moment, allowing for very large arrays of DNA colonies to be captured by sequential images taken from a single camera. Decoupling the enzymatic reaction and the image capture allows for optimal throughput and theoretically unlimited sequencing capacity; with an optimal configuration, the ultimate throughput of the instrument depends only on the A/D conversion rate of the camera. The camera takes images of the fluorescently labeled nucleotides, then the dye along with the terminal 3' blocker is chemically removed from the DNA, allowing the next cycle. An alternative approach, ion semiconductor sequencing, is based on standard DNA replication chemistry. This technology measures the release of a hydrogen ion each time a base is incorporated. A microwell containing template DNA is flooded with a single nucleotide, if the nucleotide is complementary to the template strand it will be incorporated and a hydrogen ion will be released. This release triggers an ISFET ion sensor. If a homopolymer is present in the template sequence multiple nucleotides will be incorporated in a single flood cycle, and the detected electrical signal will be proportionally higher. Assembly Sequence assembly refers to aligning and merging fragments of a much longer DNA sequence in order to reconstruct the original sequence. This is needed as current DNA sequencing technology cannot read whole genomes as a continuous sequence, but rather reads small pieces of between 20 and 1000 bases, depending on the technology used. Third generation sequencing technologies such as PacBio or Oxford Nanopore routinely generate sequencing reads >10 kb in length; however, they have a high error rate at approximately 15 percent.https://www.pacb.com/ Typically the short fragments, called reads, result from shotgun sequencing genomic DNA, or gene transcripts (ESTs). = Assembly approaches = Assembly can be broadly categorized into two approaches: de novo assembly, for genomes which are not similar to any sequenced in the past, and comparative assembly, which uses the existing sequence of a closely related organism as a reference during assembly. Relative to comparative assembly, de novo assembly is computationally difficult (NP-hard), making it less favourable for short-read NGS technologies. Within the de novo assembly paradigm there are two primary strategies for assembly, Eulerian path strategies, and overlap-layout- consensus (OLC) strategies. OLC strategies ultimately try to create a Hamiltonian path through an overlap graph which is an NP-hard problem. Eulerian path strategies are computationally more tractable because they try to find a Eulerian path through a deBruijn graph. = Finishing = Finished genomes are defined as having a single contiguous sequence with no ambiguities representing each replicon. Annotation The DNA sequence assembly alone is of little value without additional analysis. Genome annotation is the process of attaching biological information to sequences, and consists of three main steps: # identifying portions of the genome that do not code for proteins # identifying elements on the genome, a process called gene prediction, and # attaching biological information to these elements. Automatic annotation tools try to perform these steps in silico, as opposed to manual annotation (a.k.a. curation) which involves human expertise and potential experimental verification. Ideally, these approaches co-exist and complement each other in the same annotation pipeline (also see below). Traditionally, the basic level of annotation is using BLAST for finding similarities, and then annotating genomes based on homologues. More recently, additional information is added to the annotation platform. The additional information allows manual annotators to deconvolute discrepancies between genes that are given the same annotation. Some databases use genome context information, similarity scores, experimental data, and integrations of other resources to provide genome annotations through their Subsystems approach. Other databases (e.g. Ensembl) rely on both curated data sources as well as a range of software tools in their automated genome annotation pipeline. Structural annotation consists of the identification of genomic elements, primarily ORFs and their localisation, or gene structure. Functional annotation consists of attaching biological information to genomic elements. Sequencing pipelines and databases The need for reproducibility and efficient management of the large amount of data associated with genome projects mean that computational pipelines have important applications in genomics. Research areas Functional genomics Functional genomics is a field of molecular biology that attempts to make use of the vast wealth of data produced by genomic projects (such as genome sequencing projects) to describe gene (and protein) functions and interactions. Functional genomics focuses on the dynamic aspects such as gene transcription, translation, and protein–protein interactions, as opposed to the static aspects of the genomic information such as DNA sequence or structures. Functional genomics attempts to answer questions about the function of DNA at the levels of genes, RNA transcripts, and protein products. A key characteristic of functional genomics studies is their genome-wide approach to these questions, generally involving high-throughput methods rather than a more traditional “gene-by-gene” approach. A major branch of genomics is still concerned with sequencing the genomes of various organisms, but the knowledge of full genomes has created the possibility for the field of functional genomics, mainly concerned with patterns of gene expression during various conditions. The most important tools here are microarrays and bioinformatics. Structural genomics 300px Structural genomics seeks to describe the 3-dimensional structure of every protein encoded by a given genome. This genome-based approach allows for a high-throughput method of structure determination by a combination of experimental and modeling approaches. The principal difference between structural genomics and traditional structural prediction is that structural genomics attempts to determine the structure of every protein encoded by the genome, rather than focusing on one particular protein. With full-genome sequences available, structure prediction can be done more quickly through a combination of experimental and modeling approaches, especially because the availability of large numbers of sequenced genomes and previously solved protein structures allow scientists to model protein structure on the structures of previously solved homologs. Structural genomics involves taking a large number of approaches to structure determination, including experimental methods using genomic sequences or modeling-based approaches based on sequence or structural homology to a protein of known structure or based on chemical and physical principles for a protein with no homology to any known structure. As opposed to traditional structural biology, the determination of a protein structure through a structural genomics effort often (but not always) comes before anything is known regarding the protein function. This raises new challenges in structural bioinformatics, i.e. determining protein function from its 3D structure. Epigenomics Epigenomics is the study of the complete set of epigenetic modifications on the genetic material of a cell, known as the epigenome. Epigenetic modifications are reversible modifications on a cell's DNA or histones that affect gene expression without altering the DNA sequence (Russell 2010 p. 475). Two of the most characterized epigenetic modifications are DNA methylation and histone modification. Epigenetic modifications play an important role in gene expression and regulation, and are involved in numerous cellular processes such as in differentiation/development and tumorigenesis. The study of epigenetics on a global level has been made possible only recently through the adaptation of genomic high-throughput assays. Metagenomics Environmental Shotgun Sequencing (ESS) is a key technique in metagenomics. (A) Sampling from habitat; (B) filtering particles, typically by size; (C) Lysis and DNA extraction; (D) cloning and library construction; (E) sequencing the clones; (F) sequence assembly into contigs and scaffolds. Metagenomics is the study of metagenomes, genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics or community genomics. While traditional microbiology and microbial genome sequencing rely upon cultivated clonal cultures, early environmental gene sequencing cloned specific genes (often the 16S rRNA gene) to produce a profile of diversity in a natural sample. Such work revealed that the vast majority of microbial biodiversity had been missed by cultivation-based methods. Recent studies use "shotgun" Sanger sequencing or massively parallel pyrosequencing to get largely unbiased samples of all genes from all the members of the sampled communities. Because of its power to reveal the previously hidden diversity of microscopic life, metagenomics offers a powerful lens for viewing the microbial world that has the potential to revolutionize understanding of the entire living world. Model systems = Viruses and bacteriophages = Bacteriophages have played and continue to play a key role in bacterial genetics and molecular biology. Historically, they were used to define gene structure and gene regulation. Also the first genome to be sequenced was a bacteriophage. However, bacteriophage research did not lead the genomics revolution, which is clearly dominated by bacterial genomics. Only very recently has the study of bacteriophage genomes become prominent, thereby enabling researchers to understand the mechanisms underlying phage evolution. Bacteriophage genome sequences can be obtained through direct sequencing of isolated bacteriophages, but can also be derived as part of microbial genomes. Analysis of bacterial genomes has shown that a substantial amount of microbial DNA consists of prophage sequences and prophage-like elements. A detailed database mining of these sequences offers insights into the role of prophages in shaping the bacterial genome: Overall, this method verified many known bacteriophage groups, making this a useful tool for predicting the relationships of prophages from bacterial genomes. = Cyanobacteria = At present there are 24 cyanobacteria for which a total genome sequence is available. 15 of these cyanobacteria come from the marine environment. These are six Prochlorococcus strains, seven marine Synechococcus strains, Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 and Crocosphaera watsonii WH8501. Several studies have demonstrated how these sequences could be used very successfully to infer important ecological and physiological characteristics of marine cyanobacteria. However, there are many more genome projects currently in progress, amongst those there are further Prochlorococcus and marine Synechococcus isolates, Acaryochloris and Prochloron, the N2-fixing filamentous cyanobacteria Nodularia spumigena, Lyngbya aestuarii and Lyngbya majuscula, as well as bacteriophages infecting marine cyanobaceria. Thus, the growing body of genome information can also be tapped in a more general way to address global problems by applying a comparative approach. Some new and exciting examples of progress in this field are the identification of genes for regulatory RNAs, insights into the evolutionary origin of photosynthesis, or estimation of the contribution of horizontal gene transfer to the genomes that have been analyzed. Applications of genomics Genomics has provided applications in many fields, including medicine, biotechnology, anthropology and other social sciences. Genomic medicine Next-generation genomic technologies allow clinicians and biomedical researchers to drastically increase the amount of genomic data collected on large study populations. When combined with new informatics approaches that integrate many kinds of data with genomic data in disease research, this allows researchers to better understand the genetic bases of drug response and disease. For example, the All of Us research program aims to collect genome sequence data from 1 million participants to become a critical component of the precision medicine research platform. Synthetic biology and bioengineering The growth of genomic knowledge has enabled increasingly sophisticated applications of synthetic biology. In 2010 researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute announced the creation of a partially synthetic species of bacterium, Mycoplasma laboratorium, derived from the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium. Conservation genomics Conservationists can use the information gathered by genomic sequencing in order to better evaluate genetic factors key to species conservation, such as the genetic diversity of a population or whether an individual is heterozygous for a recessive inherited genetic disorder. By using genomic data to evaluate the effects of evolutionary processes and to detect patterns in variation throughout a given population, conservationists can formulate plans to aid a given species without as many variables left unknown as those unaddressed by standard genetic approaches. See also * Cognitive genomics * Computational genomics * Epigenomics * Functional genomics * GeneCalling, an mRNA profiling technology * Genomics of domestication * Genetics in fiction * Glycomics * Immunomics * Metagenomics * Pathogenomics * Personal genomics * Proteomics * Transcriptomics * Psychogenomics * Whole genome sequencing *Thomas Roderick References Further reading * electronic-book electronic- External links * Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics * BMC Genomics: A BMC journal on Genomics * Genomics journal * Genomics.org: An openfree genomics portal. * NHGRI: US government's genome institute * JCVI Comprehensive Microbial Resource * KoreaGenome.org: The first Korean Genome published and the sequence is available freely. * GenomicsNetwork: Looks at the development and use of the science and technologies of genomics. * Institute for Genome Sciences: Genomics research. * MIT OpenCourseWare HST.512 Genomic Medicine A free, self- study course in genomic medicine. Resources include audio lectures and selected lecture notes. * ENCODE threads explorer Machine learning approaches to genomics. Nature (journal) * Global map of genomics laboratories * Genomics: Scitable by nature education "

❤️ Proteomics 🐏

"Robotic preparation of MALDI mass spectrometry samples on a sample carrier Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, with many functions. The proteome is the entire set of proteins that is produced or modified by an organism or system. Proteomics has enabled the identification of ever increasing numbers of protein. This varies with time and distinct requirements, or stresses, that a cell or organism undergoes. Proteomics is an interdisciplinary domain that has benefitted greatly from the genetic information of various genome projects, including the Human Genome Project. It covers the exploration of proteomes from the overall level of protein composition, structure, and activity. It is an important component of functional genomics. Proteomics generally refers to the large- scale experimental analysis of proteins and proteomes, but often is used specifically to refer to protein purification and mass spectrometry. History and etymology The first studies of proteins that could be regarded as proteomics began in 1975, after the introduction of the two-dimensional gel and mapping of the proteins from the bacterium Escherichia coli. The word proteome is a portmanteau of protein and genome, and was coined by Marc Wilkins in 1994 while he was a Ph.D. student at Macquarie University. Macquarie University also founded the first dedicated proteomics laboratory in 1995. Complexity of the problem After genomics and transcriptomics, proteomics is the next step in the study of biological systems. It is more complicated than genomics because an organism's genome is more or less constant, whereas proteomes differ from cell to cell and from time to time. Distinct genes are expressed in different cell types, which means that even the basic set of proteins that are produced in a cell needs to be identified. In the past this phenomenon was assessed by RNA analysis, but it was found to lack correlation with protein content. Now it is known that mRNA is not always translated into protein, and the amount of protein produced for a given amount of mRNA depends on the gene it is transcribed from and on the current physiological state of the cell. Proteomics confirms the presence of the protein and provides a direct measure of the quantity present. Post- translational modifications Not only does the translation from mRNA cause differences, but many proteins also are subjected to a wide variety of chemical modifications after translation. The most common and widely studied post translational modifications include phosphorylation and glycosylation. Many of these post-translational modifications are critical to the protein's function. =Phosphorylation= One such modification is phosphorylation, which happens to many enzymes and structural proteins in the process of cell signaling. The addition of a phosphate to particular amino acids—most commonly serine and threonine mediated by serine-threonine kinases, or more rarely tyrosine mediated by tyrosine kinases—causes a protein to become a target for binding or interacting with a distinct set of other proteins that recognize the phosphorylated domain. Because protein phosphorylation is one of the most- studied protein modifications, many "proteomic" efforts are geared to determining the set of phosphorylated proteins in a particular cell or tissue- type under particular circumstances. This alerts the scientist to the signaling pathways that may be active in that instance. =Ubiquitination= Ubiquitin is a small protein that may be affixed to certain protein substrates by enzymes called E3 ubiquitin ligases. Determining which proteins are poly- ubiquitinated helps understand how protein pathways are regulated. This is, therefore, an additional legitimate "proteomic" study. Similarly, once a researcher determines which substrates are ubiquitinated by each ligase, determining the set of ligases expressed in a particular cell type is helpful. =Additional modifications= In addition to phosphorylation and ubiquitination, proteins may be subjected to (among others) methylation, acetylation, glycosylation, oxidation, and nitrosylation. Some proteins undergo all these modifications, often in time-dependent combinations. This illustrates the potential complexity of studying protein structure and function. Distinct proteins are made under distinct settings A cell may make different sets of proteins at different times or under different conditions, for example during development, cellular differentiation, cell cycle, or carcinogenesis. Further increasing proteome complexity, as mentioned, most proteins are able to undergo a wide range of post- translational modifications. Therefore, a "proteomics" study may become complex very quickly, even if the topic of study is restricted. In more ambitious settings, such as when a biomarker for a specific cancer subtype is sought, the proteomics scientist might elect to study multiple blood serum samples from multiple cancer patients to minimise confounding factors and account for experimental noise. Thus, complicated experimental designs are sometimes necessary to account for the dynamic complexity of the proteome. Limitations of genomics and proteomics studies Proteomics gives a different level of understanding than genomics for many reasons: * the level of transcription of a gene gives only a rough estimate of its level of translation into a protein. An mRNA produced in abundance may be degraded rapidly or translated inefficiently, resulting in a small amount of protein. * as mentioned above, many proteins experience post-translational modifications that profoundly affect their activities; for example, some proteins are not active until they become phosphorylated. Methods such as phosphoproteomics and glycoproteomics are used to study post-translational modifications. * many transcripts give rise to more than one protein, through alternative splicing or alternative post-translational modifications. * many proteins form complexes with other proteins or RNA molecules, and only function in the presence of these other molecules. * protein degradation rate plays an important role in protein content. Reproducibility. One major factor affecting reproducibility in proteomics experiments is the simultaneous elution of many more peptides than mass spectrometers can measure. This causes stochastic differences between experiments due to data-dependent acquisition of tryptic peptides. Although early large-scale shotgun proteomics analyses showed considerable variability between laboratories, presumably due in part to technical and experimental differences between laboratories, reproducibility has been improved in more recent mass spectrometry analysis, particularly on the protein level and using Orbitrap mass spectrometers. Notably, targeted proteomics shows increased reproducibility and repeatability compared with shotgun methods, although at the expense of data density and effectiveness. Methods of studying proteins In proteomics, there are multiple methods to study proteins. Generally, proteins may be detected by using either antibodies (immunoassays) or mass spectrometry. If a complex biological sample is analyzed, either a very specific antibody needs to be used in quantitative dot blot analysis (QDB), or biochemical separation then needs to be used before the detection step, as there are too many analytes in the sample to perform accurate detection and quantification. Protein detection with antibodies (immunoassays) Antibodies to particular proteins, or to their modified forms, have been used in biochemistry and cell biology studies. These are among the most common tools used by molecular biologists today. There are several specific techniques and protocols that use antibodies for protein detection. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has been used for decades to detect and quantitatively measure proteins in samples. The western blot may be used for detection and quantification of individual proteins, where in an initial step, a complex protein mixture is separated using SDS- PAGE and then the protein of interest is identified using an antibody. Modified proteins may be studied by developing an antibody specific to that modification. For example, there are antibodies that only recognize certain proteins when they are tyrosine-phosphorylated, they are known as phospho- specific antibodies. Also, there are antibodies specific to other modifications. These may be used to determine the set of proteins that have undergone the modification of interest. Disease detection at the molecular level is driving the emerging revolution of early diagnosis and treatment. A challenge facing the field is that protein biomarkers for early diagnosis may be present in very low abundance. The lower limit of detection with conventional immunoassay technology is the upper femtomolar range (10−13 M). Digital immunoassay technology has improved detection sensitivity three logs, to the attomolar range (10−16 M). This capability has the potential to open new advances in diagnostics and therapeutics, but such technologies have been relegated to manual procedures that are not well suited for efficient routine use. Antibody-free protein detection While protein detection with antibodies is still very common in molecular biology, other methods have been developed as well, that do not rely on an antibody. These methods offer various advantages, for instance they often are able to determine the sequence of a protein or peptide, they may have higher throughput than antibody-based, and they sometimes can identify and quantify proteins for which no antibody exists. = Detection methods = One of the earliest methods for protein analysis has been Edman degradation (introduced in 1967) where a single peptide is subjected to multiple steps of chemical degradation to resolve its sequence. These early methods have mostly been supplanted by technologies that offer higher throughput. More recently implemented methods use mass spectrometry-based techniques, a development that was made possible by the discovery of "soft ionization" methods developed in the 1980s, such as matrix- assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI). These methods gave rise to the top-down and the bottom-up proteomics workflows where often additional separation is performed before analysis (see below). = Separation methods = For the analysis of complex biological samples, a reduction of sample complexity is required. This may be performed off-line by one-dimensional or two-dimensional separation. More recently, on- line methods have been developed where individual peptides (in bottom-up proteomics approaches) are separated using reversed-phase chromatography and then, directly ionized using ESI; the direct coupling of separation and analysis explains the term "on-line" analysis. Hybrid technologies There are several hybrid technologies that use antibody-based purification of individual analytes and then perform mass spectrometric analysis for identification and quantification. Examples of these methods are the MSIA (mass spectrometric immunoassay), developed by Randall Nelson in 1995, and the SISCAPA (Stable Isotope Standard Capture with Anti-Peptide Antibodies) method, introduced by Leigh Anderson in 2004. Current research methodologies Fluorescence two-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis (2-D DIGE) may be used to quantify variation in the 2-D DIGE process and establish statistically valid thresholds for assigning quantitative changes between samples. Comparative proteomic analysis may reveal the role of proteins in complex biological systems, including reproduction. For example, treatment with the insecticide triazophos causes an increase in the content of brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens (Stål)) male accessory gland proteins (Acps) that may be transferred to females via mating, causing an increase in fecundity (i.e. birth rate) of females. To identify changes in the types of accessory gland proteins (Acps) and reproductive proteins that mated female planthoppers received from male planthoppers, researchers conducted a comparative proteomic analysis of mated N. lugens females. The results indicated that these proteins participate in the reproductive process of N. lugens adult females and males. Proteome analysis of Arabidopsis peroxisomes has been established as the major unbiased approach for identifying new peroxisomal proteins on a large scale. There are many approaches to characterizing the human proteome, which is estimated to contain between 20,000 and 25,000 non-redundant proteins. The number of unique protein species likely will increase by between 50,000 and 500,000 due to RNA splicing and proteolysis events, and when post-translational modification also are considered, the total number of unique human proteins is estimated to range in the low millions. In addition, the first promising attempts to decipher the proteome of animal tumors have recently been reported. This method was used as a functional method in Macrobrachium rosenbergii protein profiling. High- throughput proteomic technologies Proteomics has steadily gained momentum over the past decade with the evolution of several approaches. Few of these are new, and others build on traditional methods. Mass spectrometry-based methods and micro arrays are the most common technologies for large-scale study of proteins. =Mass spectrometry and protein profiling= There are two mass spectrometry-based methods currently used for protein profiling. The more established and widespread method uses high resolution, two-dimensional electrophoresis to separate proteins from different samples in parallel, followed by selection and staining of differentially expressed proteins to be identified by mass spectrometry. Despite the advances in 2-DE and its maturity, it has its limits as well. The central concern is the inability to resolve all the proteins within a sample, given their dramatic range in expression level and differing properties. The second quantitative approach uses stable isotope tags to differentially label proteins from two different complex mixtures. Here, the proteins within a complex mixture are labeled isotopically first, and then digested to yield labeled peptides. The labeled mixtures are then combined, the peptides separated by multidimensional liquid chromatography and analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry. Isotope coded affinity tag (ICAT) reagents are the widely used isotope tags. In this method, the cysteine residues of proteins get covalently attached to the ICAT reagent, thereby reducing the complexity of the mixtures omitting the non-cysteine residues. Quantitative proteomics using stable isotopic tagging is an increasingly useful tool in modern development. Firstly, chemical reactions have been used to introduce tags into specific sites or proteins for the purpose of probing specific protein functionalities. The isolation of phosphorylated peptides has been achieved using isotopic labeling and selective chemistries to capture the fraction of protein among the complex mixture. Secondly, the ICAT technology was used to differentiate between partially purified or purified macromolecular complexes such as large RNA polymerase II pre-initiation complex and the proteins complexed with yeast transcription factor. Thirdly, ICAT labeling was recently combined with chromatin isolation to identify and quantify chromatin-associated proteins. Finally ICAT reagents are useful for proteomic profiling of cellular organelles and specific cellular fractions. Another quantitative approach is the accurate mass and time (AMT) tag approach developed by Richard D. Smith and coworkers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. In this approach, increased throughput and sensitivity is achieved by avoiding the need for tandem mass spectrometry, and making use of precisely determined separation time information and highly accurate mass determinations for peptide and protein identifications. =Protein chips= Balancing the use of mass spectrometers in proteomics and in medicine is the use of protein micro arrays. The aim behind protein micro arrays is to print thousands of protein detecting features for the interrogation of biological samples. Antibody arrays are an example in which a host of different antibodies are arrayed to detect their respective antigens from a sample of human blood. Another approach is the arraying of multiple protein types for the study of properties like protein-DNA, protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions. Ideally, the functional proteomic arrays would contain the entire complement of the proteins of a given organism. The first version of such arrays consisted of 5000 purified proteins from yeast deposited onto glass microscopic slides. Despite the success of first chip, it was a greater challenge for protein arrays to be implemented. Proteins are inherently much more difficult to work with than DNA. They have a broad dynamic range, are less stable than DNA and their structure is difficult to preserve on glass slides, though they are essential for most assays. The global ICAT technology has striking advantages over protein chip technologies. =Reverse-phased protein microarrays= This is a promising and newer microarray application for the diagnosis, study and treatment of complex diseases such as cancer. The technology merges laser capture microdissection (LCM) with micro array technology, to produce reverse phase protein microarrays. In this type of microarrays, the whole collection of protein themselves are immobilized with the intent of capturing various stages of disease within an individual patient. When used with LCM, reverse phase arrays can monitor the fluctuating state of proteome among different cell population within a small area of human tissue. This is useful for profiling the status of cellular signaling molecules, among a cross section of tissue that includes both normal and cancerous cells. This approach is useful in monitoring the status of key factors in normal prostate epithelium and invasive prostate cancer tissues. LCM then dissects these tissue and protein lysates were arrayed onto nitrocellulose slides, which were probed with specific antibodies. This method can track all kinds of molecular events and can compare diseased and healthy tissues within the same patient enabling the development of treatment strategies and diagnosis. The ability to acquire proteomics snapshots of neighboring cell populations, using reverse phase microarrays in conjunction with LCM has a number of applications beyond the study of tumors. The approach can provide insights into normal physiology and pathology of all the tissues and is invaluable for characterizing developmental processes and anomalies. Practical applications of proteomics One major development to come from the study of human genes and proteins has been the identification of potential new drugs for the treatment of disease. This relies on genome and proteome information to identify proteins associated with a disease, which computer software can then use as targets for new drugs. For example, if a certain protein is implicated in a disease, its 3D structure provides the information to design drugs to interfere with the action of the protein. A molecule that fits the active site of an enzyme, but cannot be released by the enzyme, inactivates the enzyme. This is the basis of new drug-discovery tools, which aim to find new drugs to inactivate proteins involved in disease. As genetic differences among individuals are found, researchers expect to use these techniques to develop personalized drugs that are more effective for the individual. Proteomics is also used to reveal complex plant-insect interactions that help identify candidate genes involved in the defensive response of plants to herbivory. Interaction proteomics and protein networks Interaction proteomics is the analysis of protein interactions from scales of binary interactions to proteome- or network-wide. Most proteins function via protein–protein interactions, and one goal of interaction proteomics is to identify binary protein interactions, protein complexes, and interactomes. Several methods are available to probe protein–protein interactions. While the most traditional method is yeast two-hybrid analysis, a powerful emerging method is affinity purification followed by protein mass spectrometry using tagged protein baits. Other methods include surface plasmon resonance (SPR), protein microarrays, dual polarisation interferometry, microscale thermophoresis and experimental methods such as phage display and in silico computational methods. Knowledge of protein-protein interactions is especially useful in regard to biological networks and systems biology, for example in cell signaling cascades and gene regulatory networks (GRNs, where knowledge of protein-DNA interactions is also informative). Proteome-wide analysis of protein interactions, and integration of these interaction patterns into larger biological networks, is crucial towards understanding systems-level biology. Expression proteomics Expression proteomics includes the analysis of protein expression at larger scale. It helps identify main proteins in a particular sample, and those proteins differentially expressed in related samples—such as diseased vs. healthy tissue. If a protein is found only in a diseased sample then it can be a useful drug target or diagnostic marker. Proteins with same or similar expression profiles may also be functionally related. There are technologies such as 2D-PAGE and mass spectrometry that are used in expression proteomics. Biomarkers The National Institutes of Health has defined a biomarker as “a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention.” Understanding the proteome, the structure and function of each protein and the complexities of protein–protein interactions is critical for developing the most effective diagnostic techniques and disease treatments in the future. For example, proteomics is highly useful in identification of candidate biomarkers (proteins in body fluids that are of value for diagnosis), identification of the bacterial antigens that are targeted by the immune response, and identification of possible immunohistochemistry markers of infectious or neoplastic diseases. An interesting use of proteomics is using specific protein biomarkers to diagnose disease. A number of techniques allow to test for proteins produced during a particular disease, which helps to diagnose the disease quickly. Techniques include western blot, immunohistochemical staining, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) or mass spectrometry. Secretomics, a subfield of proteomics that studies secreted proteins and secretion pathways using proteomic approaches, has recently emerged as an important tool for the discovery of biomarkers of disease. Proteogenomics In proteogenomics, proteomic technologies such as mass spectrometry are used for improving gene annotations. Parallel analysis of the genome and the proteome facilitates discovery of post-translational modifications and proteolytic events, especially when comparing multiple species (comparative proteogenomics). Structural proteomics Structural proteomics includes the analysis of protein structures at large-scale. It compares protein structures and helps identify functions of newly discovered genes. The structural analysis also helps to understand that where drugs bind to proteins and also show where proteins interact with each other. This understanding is achieved using different technologies such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. Bioinformatics for proteomics (proteome informatics) Much proteomics data is collected with the help of high throughput technologies such as mass spectrometry and microarray. It would often take weeks or months to analyze the data and perform comparisons by hand. For this reason, biologists and chemists are collaborating with computer scientists and mathematicians to create programs and pipeline to computationally analyze the protein data. Using bioinformatics techniques, researchers are capable of faster analysis and data storage. A good place to find lists of current programs and databases is on the ExPASy bioinformatics resource portal. The applications of bioinformatics-based proteomics includes medicine, disease diagnosis, biomarker identification, and many more. Protein identification Mass spectrometry and microarray produce peptide fragmentation information but do not give identification of specific proteins present in the original sample. Due to the lack of specific protein identification, past researchers were forced to decipher the peptide fragments themselves. However, there are currently programs available for protein identification. These programs take the peptide sequences output from mass spectrometry and microarray and return information about matching or similar proteins. This is done through algorithms implemented by the program which perform alignments with proteins from known databases such as UniProt and PROSITE to predict what proteins are in the sample with a degree of certainty. Protein structure The biomolecular structure forms the 3D configuration of the protein. Understanding the protein's structure aids in identification of the protein's interactions and function. It used to be that the 3D structure of proteins could only be determined using X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. As of 2017, Cryo-electron microscopy is a leading technique, solving difficulties with crystallization (in X-ray crystallography) and conformational ambiguity (in NMR); resolution was 2.2Å as of 2015. Now, through bioinformatics, there are computer programs that can in some cases predict and model the structure of proteins. These programs use the chemical properties of amino acids and structural properties of known proteins to predict the 3D model of sample proteins. This also allows scientists to model protein interactions on a larger scale. In addition, biomedical engineers are developing methods to factor in the flexibility of protein structures to make comparisons and predictions. Post-translational modifications Most programs available for protein analysis are not written for proteins that have undergone post- translational modifications. Some programs will accept post-translational modifications to aid in protein identification but then ignore the modification during further protein analysis. It is important to account for these modifications since they can affect the protein's structure. In turn, computational analysis of post-translational modifications has gained the attention of the scientific community. The current post-translational modification programs are only predictive. Chemists, biologists and computer scientists are working together to create and introduce new pipelines that allow for analysis of post-translational modifications that have been experimentally identified for their effect on the protein's structure and function. Computational methods in studying protein biomarkers One example of the use of bioinformatics and the use of computational methods is the study of protein biomarkers. Computational predictive models have shown that extensive and diverse feto-maternal protein trafficking occurs during pregnancy and can be readily detected non-invasively in maternal whole blood. This computational approach circumvented a major limitation, the abundance of maternal proteins interfering with the detection of fetal proteins, to fetal proteomic analysis of maternal blood. Computational models can use fetal gene transcripts previously identified in maternal whole blood to create a comprehensive proteomic network of the term neonate. Such work shows that the fetal proteins detected in pregnant woman’s blood originate from a diverse group of tissues and organs from the developing fetus. The proteomic networks contain many biomarkers that are proxies for development and illustrate the potential clinical application of this technology as a way to monitor normal and abnormal fetal development. An information theoretic framework has also been introduced for biomarker discovery, integrating biofluid and tissue information. This new approach takes advantage of functional synergy between certain biofluids and tissues with the potential for clinically significant findings not possible if tissues and biofluids were considered individually. By conceptualizing tissue-biofluid as information channels, significant biofluid proxies can be identified and then used for guided development of clinical diagnostics. Candidate biomarkers are then predicted based on information transfer criteria across the tissue-biofluid channels. Significant biofluid-tissue relationships can be used to prioritize clinical validation of biomarkers. Emerging trends in proteomics A number of emerging concepts have the potential to improve current features of proteomics. Obtaining absolute quantification of proteins and monitoring post-translational modifications are the two tasks that impact the understanding of protein function in healthy and diseased cells. For many cellular events, the protein concentrations do not change; rather, their function is modulated by post- translational modifications (PTM). Methods of monitoring PTM are an underdeveloped area in proteomics. Selecting a particular subset of protein for analysis substantially reduces protein complexity, making it advantageous for diagnostic purposes where blood is the starting material. Another important aspect of proteomics, yet not addressed, is that proteomics methods should focus on studying proteins in the context of the environment. The increasing use of chemical cross linkers, introduced into living cells to fix protein-protein, protein-DNA and other interactions, may ameliorate this problem partially. The challenge is to identify suitable methods of preserving relevant interactions. Another goal for studying protein is to develop more sophisticated methods to image proteins and other molecules in living cells and real time. Proteomics for systems biology Advances in quantitative proteomics would clearly enable more in-depth analysis of cellular systems. Biological systems are subject to a variety of perturbations (cell cycle, cellular differentiation, carcinogenesis, environment (biophysical), etc.). Transcriptional and translational responses to these perturbations results in functional changes to the proteome implicated in response to the stimulus. Therefore, describing and quantifying proteome-wide changes in protein abundance is crucial towards understanding biological phenomenon more holistically, on the level of the entire system. In this way, proteomics can be seen as complementary to genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, and other -omics approaches in integrative analyses attempting to define biological phenotypes more comprehensively. As an example, The Cancer Proteome Atlas provides quantitative protein expression data for ~200 proteins in over 4,000 tumor samples with matched transcriptomic and genomic data from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Similar datasets in other cell types, tissue types, and species, particularly using deep shotgun mass spectrometry, will be an immensely important resource for research in fields like cancer biology, developmental and stem cell biology, medicine, and evolutionary biology. Human plasma proteome Characterizing the human plasma proteome has become a major goal in the proteomics arena, but it is also the most challenging proteomes of all human tissues. It contains immunoglobulin, cytokines, protein hormones, and secreted proteins indicative of infection on top of resident, hemostatic proteins. It also contains tissue leakage proteins due to the blood circulation through different tissues in the body. The blood thus contains information on the physiological state of all tissues and, combined with its accessibility, makes the blood proteome invaluable for medical purposes. It is thought that characterizing the proteome of blood plasma is a daunting challenge. The depth of the plasma proteome encompassing a dynamic range of more than 1010 between the highest abundant protein (albumin) and the lowest (some cytokines) and is thought to be one of the main challenges for proteomics.Six decades serching for meaning in the proteome. Leigh Anderson Temporal and spatial dynamics further complicate the study of human plasma proteome. The turnover of some proteins is quite faster than others and the protein content of an artery may substantially vary from that of a vein. All these differences make even the simplest proteomic task of cataloging the proteome seem out of reach. To tackle this problem, priorities need to be established. Capturing the most meaningful subset of proteins among the entire proteome to generate a diagnostic tool is one such priority. Secondly, since cancer is associated with enhanced glycosylation of proteins, methods that focus on this part of proteins will also be useful. Again: multiparameter analysis best reveals a pathological state. As these technologies improve, the disease profiles should be continually related to respective gene expression changes. Due to the above-mentioned problems plasma proteomics remained challenging. However, technological advancements and continuous developments seem to result in a revival of plasma proteomics as it was shown recently by a technology called plasma proteome profiling. Due to such technologies researchers were able to investigate inflammation processes in mice, the heritability of plasma proteomes as well as to show the effect of such a common life style change like weight loss on the plasma proteome.Quantitative variability of 342 plasma proteins in a human twin population. Liu Y1, Buil A2, Collins BC3, Gillet LC3, Blum LC3, Cheng LY4, Vitek O4, Mouritsen J3, Lachance G5, Spector TD5, Dermitzakis ET2, Aebersold R6. Journals Numerous journals are dedicated to the field of proteomics and related areas. Note that journals dealing with proteins are usually more focused on structure and function while proteomics journals are more focused on the large-scale analysis of whole proteomes or at least large sets of proteins. Some of the more important ones are listed below (with their publishers). * Molecular and Cellular Proteomics (ASBMB) * Journal of Proteome Research (ACS) * Journal of Proteomics (Elsevier) * Proteomics (Wiley) See also * Activity based proteomics * Bottom-up proteomics * Cytomics * Functional genomics * Heat stabilization * Human proteome project * Immunoproteomics * List of biological databases * List of omics topics in biology * PEGylation * Phosphoproteomics * Protein production * Proteogenomics * Proteomic chemistry * Secretomics * Shotgun proteomics * Top-down proteomics * Systems biology * Yeast two-hybrid system * TCP-seq * glycomics Protein databases * Human Protein Atlas * Human Protein Reference Database * National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) * PeptideAtlas * Protein Data Bank (PDB) * Protein Information Resource (PIR) * Proteomics Identifications Database (PRIDE) * Proteopedia—The collaborative, 3D encyclopedia of proteins and other molecules * Swiss-Prot * UniProt Research centers * European Bioinformatics Institute * Netherlands Proteomics Centre (NPC) References Bibliography *Ceciliani F, Eckersall D, Burchmore R, Lecchi C. Proteomics in veterinary medicine: applications and trends in disease pathogenesis and diagnostics. Vet Pathol. 2014 Mar;51(2):351-62. * Belhajjame, K. et al. Proteome Data Integration: Characteristics and Challenges. Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, , September 2005, Nottingham, UK. * (covers almost all branches of proteomics) * (focused on 2D-gels, good on detail) * (electronic, on Netlibrary?), hbk * "Myocardial Infarction". (Retrieved 29 November 2006) * Introduction to Antibodies – Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). (Retrieved 29 November 2006) * Jörg von Hagen, VCH-Wiley 2008 Proteomics Sample Preparation. External links * Omics "

❤️ Falun Gong 🐏

"Falun Gong (, ) or Falun Dafa (; Standard Mandarin Chinese: ; literally, "Dharma Wheel Practice" or "Law Wheel Practice") is a new religious movement.Junker, Andrew. 2019. Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora, pp. 23–24, 33, 119, 207. Cambridge University Press. Barker, Eileen. 2016. Revisionism and Diversification in New Religious Movements, cf. 142–43. Taylor & Francis. Oliver, Paul. 2012. New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 81–84. Bloomsbury Academic. Hexham, Irving. 2009. Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements, pp. 49, 71. InterVarsity Press. Clarke, Peter. 2004. Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. Taylor & Francis. Partridge, Christopher. 2004. Encyclopedia of New Religions: New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities, 265–66. Lion. .Ownby, David. 2005. "The Falun Gong: A New Religious Movement in Post-Mao China" in Lewis, James R. & Jesper Aagaard. Editors. Controversial New Religions, 195–96. Oxford University Press. Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Today Falun Gong maintains an informal headquarters, Dragon Springs, a 400-acre compound around the hamlet of Cuddebackville in Deerpark, New York, located near the current residence of Li Hongzhi. Falun Gong's performance arts extension, Shen Yun and two closely connected schools, Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, also operate in and around Dragon Springs.Zadronzy, Brandy & Ben Collins. 2019. "Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times". NBC News. Online. Last accessed May 19, 2020.Van der Made, Jaan. 2019. "Shen Yun: Fighting Communism - and making a stack on the side". Radio France Internationale, May 13, 2019. Online. Last accessed July 6, 2020. Quote: "Dragon Springs Buddhists, Inc. in the town of Cuddebackville functions as its informal headquarters" Falun Gong emerged toward the end of China's "qigong boom"—a period that saw a proliferation of similar practices of meditation, slow-moving energy exercises and regulated breathing. Falun Gong combines meditation and qigong exercises with a moral philosophy. The practice emphasizes morality and the cultivation of virtue, and identifies as a practice of the Buddhist school, though its teachings also incorporate elements drawn from Taoist traditions. Through moral rectitude and the practice of meditation, practitioners of Falun Gong aspire to eliminate attachments, and ultimately to achieve spiritual enlightenment. The practice initially enjoyed support from Chinese officialdom, but by the mid-to-late 1990s, the Government of China increasingly viewed Falun Gong as a potential threat due to its size, independence from the state, and spiritual teachings. By 1999, government estimates placed the number of Falun Gong practitioners at 70 million. During that time, negative coverage of Falun Gong began to appear in the state-run press, and practitioners usually responded by picketing the source involved. Most of the time, the practitioners succeeded, but controversy and tension continued to build. The scale of protests grew until April 1999, when over 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered near the central government compound in Beijing to request legal recognition and freedom from state interference. This demonstration is widely seen as catalyzing the persecution that followed. On 20 July 1999, the Communist Party leadership initiated a nationwide crackdown and multifaceted propaganda campaign intended to eradicate the practice. It blocked Internet access to websites that mention Falun Gong, and in October 1999 it declared Falun Gong a "heretical organization" that threatened social stability. Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities. As of 2009, human rights groups estimated that at least 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners had died as a result of abuse in custody. One writer estimates that tens of thousands may have been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. Data from within China suggest that millions continued to practice Falun Gong there in spite of the persecution.Noakes and Ford, "Managing Political Opposition Groups in China: Explaining the Continuing Anti-Falun Gong Campaign", China Quarterly (2015) pp. 672–73 Outside of China, Falun Gong is practiced in over 70 countries, with as of 2008 estimates on the number adherents ranging from roughly 40,000 to several hundreds of thousands. Falun Gong administers a variety of extensions in the United States and elsewhere, which have received notable media attention for their political involvement and ideological messaging, particularly since the involvement of these extensions in the 2016 United States presidential election. Falun Gong extensions include The Epoch Times, a media entity that has received significant media attention for its promotion of conspiracy theories and right-wing politics, and for producing advertisements for United States president Donald Trump.Hettena, Seth. 2019. "The Obscure Newspaper Fueling the Far-Right in Europe". The New Republic. Online. Last accessed May 19, 2019. Shen Yun has also received significant media coverage for its emphasis on, for example, anti-evolution statements and promotion of Falun Gong doctrine, while presenting itself as founded on ancient tradition.Tolentino, Jia. 2019. Stepping into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun. The New Yorker. March 19, 2019. Online. Last accessed May 18, 2020.Braslow, Samuel. 2020. "Inside the Shadowy World of Shen Yun and Its Secret Pro-Trump Ties". Los Angeles Magazine. March 9, 2020. Online. Last accessed May 22, 2020. Origins Falun Gong is most frequently identified with the qigong movement in China. Qigong is a modern term that refers to a variety of practices involving slow movement, meditation, and regulated breathing. Qigong-like exercises have historically been practiced by Buddhist monks, Daoist martial artists, and Confucian scholars as a means of spiritual, moral, and physical refinement. The modern qigong movement emerged in the early 1950s, when Communist cadres embraced the techniques as a way to improve health. The new term was constructed to avoid association with religious practices, which were prone to being labeled as "feudal superstition" and persecuted during the Maoist era. Early adopters of qigong eschewed its religious overtones and regarded qigong principally as a branch of Chinese medicine. In the late 1970s, Chinese scientists purported to have discovered the material existence of the qi energy that qigong seeks to harness. In the spiritual vacuum of the post-Mao era, tens of millions of mostly urban and elderly Chinese citizens took up the practice of qigong,Benjamin Penny, "Qigong, Daoism and Science: some contexts for the qigong boom", in M. Lee and A.D. Syrokomla-Stefanowska (eds.), Modernisation of the Chinese Past (Sydney: Wild Peopy, 1993), pp. 166–79Richard Gunde,"Culture and Customs of China," (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002).Nancy Chen. "Breathing spaces: qigong, psychiatry, and healing in China", New York City: Columbia University Press, 2003 and a variety of charismatic qigong masters established practices. At one time, over 2,000 disciplines of qigong were being taught.Zhu Xiaoyang and Benjamin Penny, "The Qigong Boom", Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1994) The state-run China Qigong Science Research Society (CQRS) was established in 1985 to oversee and administer the movement. On 13 May 1992, Li Hongzhi gave his first public seminar on Falun Gong (alternatively called Falun Dafa) in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun. In his hagiographic spiritual biography, Li Hongzhi is said to have been taught ways of "cultivation practice" by several masters of the Buddhist and Daoist traditions, including Quan Jue, the 10th Heir to the Great Law of the Buddha School, and a master of the Great Way School with the Taoist alias of True Taoist from the Changbai Mountains. Falun Dafa is said to be the result of his reorganizing and writing down the teachings that were passed to him. Li presented Falun Gong as part of a "centuries-old tradition of cultivation", and in effect sought to revive the religious and spiritual elements of qigong practice that had been discarded in the earlier Communist era. David Palmer writes that Li "redefined his method as having entirely different objectives from qigong: the purpose of practice should neither be physical health nor the development of extraordinary powers, but to purify one's heart and attain spiritual salvation." Falun Gong is distinct from other qigong schools in that its teachings cover a wide range of spiritual and metaphysical topics, placing emphasis on morality and virtue and elaborating a complete cosmology. The practice identifies with the Buddhist School (Fojia) but also draws on concepts and language found in Taoism and Confucianism. Beliefs and practices Central teachings Falun Gong adherents practice the fifth exercise, a meditation, in Manhattan Falun Gong aspires to enable the practitioner to ascend spiritually through moral rectitude and the practice of a set of exercises and meditation. The three stated tenets of the belief are Truthfulness (, Zhēn), Compassion (, Shàn), and Forbearance (, Rěn). These principles have been repeated by Falun Gong members to outsiders as a tactic for evading deeper inquiry, and followers have been instructed by Li to lie about the practice. Together these principles are regarded as the fundamental nature of the cosmos, the criteria for differentiating right from wrong, and are held to be the highest manifestations of the Tao, or Buddhist Dharma.: "According to the Falun Gong belief system, there are three virtues that are also principles of the universe: Zhen, Shan, and Ren (). Zhen is truthfulness and sincerity. Shan is compassion, benevolence, and kindness. Ren is forbearance, tolerance, and endurance. These three virtues are the only criteria that truly distinguish good people and bad people. Human society has deviated from these moral standards. All matter in the universe contains Zhen- Shan-Ren. All three are equally important.": "The very structure of the universe, according to Li Hongzhi, is made up of the moral qualities that cultivators are enjoined to practice in their own lives: truth, compassion, and forbearance.": "For Li, as he often repeats in Zhuan Falun, the special characteristic or particular nature of the cosmos is the moral triumvirate of zhen (truth), shan (compassion), and ren (forbearance). He does not mean this metaphorically; for him zhen, shan, and ren are the basic organizing principles of all things ... it is embedded in the very essence of everything in the universe that they adhere to the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance." Adherence to and cultivation of these virtues is regarded as a fundamental part of Falun Gong practice.: "In addition, in Falun Gong cultivation adherence to the code of truth, compassion, and forbearance is not just regarded as the right and responsible course of action for practitioners; it is an essential part of the cultivation process. Lapsing from it will render any other efforts in cultivation worthless." In Zhuan Falun (), the foundational text published in 1995, Li Hongzhi writes "It doesn't matter how mankind's moral standard changes ... The nature of the cosmos doesn't change, and it is the only standard for determining who's good and who's bad. So to be a cultivator you have to take the nature of the cosmos as your guide for improving yourself." Practice of Falun Gong consists of two features: performance of the exercises, and the refinement of one's xinxing (moral character, temperament). In Falun Gong's central text, Li states that xinxing "includes virtue (which is a type of matter), it includes forbearance, it includes awakening to things, it includes giving up things—giving up all the desires and all the attachments that are found in an ordinary person—and you also have to endure hardship, to name just a few things." The elevation of one's moral character is achieved, on the one hand, by aligning one's life with truth, compassion, and tolerance; and on the other, by abandoning desires and "negative thoughts and behaviors, such as greed, profit, lust, desire, killing, fighting, theft, robbery, deception, jealousy, etc." Among the central concepts found in the teachings of Falun Gong is the existence of 'Virtue' (', Dé) and 'Karma' (', Yè).: "Transforming karma into virtue is fundamental in the cultivation practice of Falun Gong" The former is generated through doing good deeds and suffering, while the latter is accumulated through doing wrong deeds. A person's ratio of karma to virtue is said to determine his or her fortunes in this life or the next. While virtue engenders good fortune and enables spiritual transformation, an accumulation of karma results in suffering, illness, and alienation from the nature of the universe.Li Hongzhi, "Zhuan Falun", pp. 27–35, 362–65 Spiritual elevation is achieved through the elimination of negative karma and the accumulation of virtue.: "The goal of cultivation, and hence of life itself, is spiritual elevation, achieved through eliminating negative karma—the built-up sins of past and present lives—and accumulating virtue." Practitioners believe that through a process of moral cultivation, one can achieve Tao and obtain special powers and a level of divinity. Falun Gong's teachings posit that human beings are originally and innately good—even divine—but that they descended into a realm of delusion and suffering after developing selfishness and accruing karma. The practice holds that reincarnation exists and that different people's reincarnation processes are overseen by different gods. To re-ascend and return to the "original, true self", Falun Gong practitioners are supposed to assimilate themselves to the qualities of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, let go of "attachments and desires" and suffer to repay karma.: "One finds few lists of do's and don'ts in Li's writings, nor are there sophisticated ethical discussions. Instead, followers are advised to rid themselves of unnecessary "attachments", to do what they know is right, and hence to return to "the origin", to their "original self". The ultimate goal of the practice is enlightenment or spiritual perfection (yuanman), and release from the cycle of reincarnation, known in Buddhist tradition as samsara. Traditional Chinese cultural thought and modernity are two focuses of Li Hongzhi's teachings. Falun Gong echoes traditional Chinese beliefs that humans are connected to the universe through mind and body, and Li seeks to challenge "conventional mentalities", concerning the nature and genesis of the universe, time-space, and the human body.. The practice draws on East Asian mysticism and traditional Chinese medicine, criticizes the purportedly self- imposed limits of modern science, especially evolution, and views traditional Chinese science as an entirely different, yet equally valid ontological system. Exercises The five exercises of Falun Gong In addition to its moral philosophy, Falun Gong consists of four standing exercises and one sitting meditation. The exercises are regarded as secondary to moral elevation, though is still an essential component of Falun Gong cultivation practice. The first exercises, called "Buddha Stretching a Thousand Arms", are intended to facilitate the free flow of energy through the body and open up the meridians. The second exercise, "Falun Standing Stance", involves holding four static poses—each of which resembles holding a wheel—for an extended period. The objective of this exercise is to "enhances wisdom, increases strength, raises a person's level, and strengthens divine powers". The third, "Penetrating the Cosmic Extremes", involves three sets of movements, which aim to enable the expulsion of bad energy (e.g., pathogenic or black qi) and the absorption of good energy into the body. Through practice of this exercise, the practitioner aspires to cleanse and purify the body. The fourth exercise, "Falun Cosmic Orbit", seeks to circulate energy freely throughout the body. Unlike the first through fourth exercises, the fifth exercise is performed in the seated lotus position. Called "Reinforcing Supernatural Powers", it is a meditation intended to be maintained as long as possible.Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong (6th Translation Edition, 2014) Falun Gong exercises can be practiced individually or in group settings, and can be performed for varying lengths of time in accordance with the needs and abilities of the individual practitioner. Porter writes that practitioners of Falun Gong are encouraged to read Falun Gong books and practice its exercises on a regular basis, preferably daily. Falun Gong exercises are practiced in group settings in parks, university campuses, and other public spaces in over 70 countries worldwide, and are taught for free by volunteers. In addition to five exercises, in 2001 another meditation activity was introduced called "sending righteous thoughts," which is intended to reduce persecution on the spiritual plane. In addition to the attainment of physical health, many Buddhist and Daoist meditation systems aspire to transform the physical body and cultivate a variety of supernatural capabilities (shentong), such as telepathy and divine sight. Discussions of supernatural skills also feature prominently within the qigong movement, and the existence of these skills gained a level of mainstream acceptance in China's scientific community in the 1980s. Falun Gong's teachings hold that practitioners can acquire supernatural skills through a combination of moral cultivation, meditation and exercises. These include—but are not limited to—precognition, clairaudience, telepathy, and divine sight (via the opening of the third eye or celestial eye). However, Falun Gong stresses that these powers can be developed only as a result of moral practice, and should not be pursued or casually displayed. 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. Social practices Falun Gong adherents practice the third exercise in Toronto Falun Gong differentiates itself from Buddhist monastic traditions in that it places great importance on participation in the secular world. Falun Gong practitioners are required to maintain regular jobs and family lives, to observe the laws of their respective governments, and are instructed not to distance themselves from society. An exception is made for Buddhist monks and nuns, who are permitted to continue a monastic lifestyle while practicing Falun Gong. As part of its emphasis on ethical behavior, Falun Gong's teachings prescribe a strict personal morality for practitioners. They are expected to do good deeds, and conduct themselves with patience and forbearance when encountering difficulties. For instance, Li stipulates that a practitioner of Falun Gong must "not hit back when attacked, not talk back when insulted." In addition, they must "abandon negative thoughts and behaviors," such as greed, deception, jealousy, etc. The teachings contain injunctions against smoking and the consumption of alcohol, as these are considered addictions that are detrimental to health and mental clarity. Practitioners of Falun Gong are forbidden to kill living things—including animals for the purpose of obtaining food—though they are not required to adopt a vegetarian diet. In addition to these things, practitioners of Falun Gong must abandon a variety of worldly attachments and desires. In the course of cultivation practice, the student of Falun Gong aims to relinquish the pursuit of fame, monetary gain, sentimentality, and other entanglements. 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. Similarly, sexual desire and lust are treated as attachments to be discarded, but Falun Gong students are still generally expected to marry and have families. All sexual relations outside the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marriage are regarded as immoral. Although gays and lesbians may practice Falun Gong, homosexual conduct is said to generate karma, and is therefore viewed as incompatible with the goals of the practice. Falun Gong's cosmology includes the belief that different ethnicities each have a correspondence to their own heavens, and that individuals of mixed race lose some aspect of this connection. Falun Gong doctrine counsels against participation in political or social issues. Excessive interest in politics is viewed as an attachment to worldly power and influence, and Falun Gong aims for transcendence of such pursuits. According to Hu Ping, "Falun Gong deals only with purifying the individual through exercise, and does not touch on social or national concerns. It has not suggested or even intimated a model for social change. Many religions ... pursue social reform to some extent ... but there is no such tendency evident in Falun Gong."Hu Ping, "The Falun Gong Phenomenon", in Challenging China: Struggle and Hope in an Era of Change, Sharon Hom and Stacy Mosher (ed) (New York: The New Press, 2007). Texts Li Hongzhi authored the first book of Falun Gong teachings in April 1993: Titled China Falun Gong, or simply Falun Gong, it is an introductory text that discusses qigong, Falun Gong's relationship to Buddhism, the principles of cultivation practice and the improvement of moral character (xinxing). The book also provides illustrations and explanations of the exercises and meditation. The main body of teachings is articulated in the book Zhuan Falun, published in Chinese in January 1995. The book is divided into nine "lectures", and was based on edited transcriptions of the talks Li gave throughout China in the preceding three years. Falun Gong texts have since been translated into an additional 40 languages. In addition to these central texts, Li has published several books, lectures, articles, books of poetry, which are made available on Falun Gong websites. The Falun Gong teachings use numerous untranslated Chinese religious and philosophical terms, and make frequent allusion to characters and incidents in Chinese folk literature and concepts drawn from Chinese popular religion. This, coupled with the literal translation style of the texts, which imitate the colloquial style of Li's speeches, can make Falun Gong scriptures difficult to approach for Westerners. Symbols The main symbol of the practice is the Falun (Dharma wheel, or Dharmacakra in Sanskrit). In Buddhism, the Dharmacakra represents the completeness of the doctrine. To "turn the wheel of dharma" (Zhuan Falun) means to preach the Buddhist doctrine, and is the title of Falun Gong's main text.Benjamin Penny, "Falun Gong, Buddhism, and Buddhist qigong", Asian Studies Review 29 (March 2009). Despite the invocation of Buddhist language and symbols, the law wheel as understood in Falun Gong has distinct connotations, and is held to represent the universe. It is conceptualized by an emblem consisting of one large and four small (counter-clockwise) swastika symbols, representing the Buddha, and four small Taiji (yin-yang) symbols of the Daoist tradition.George Bruseker, "Falun Gong: A Modern Chinese Folk Buddhist Movement in Crisis," 26 April 2000. Dharma-ending period Li situates his teaching of Falun Gong amidst the "Dharma-ending period" (Mo Fa, ), described in Buddhist scriptures as an age of moral decline when the teachings of Buddhism would need to be rectified. The current era is described in Falun Gong's teachings as the "Fa rectification" period (zhengfa, which might also be translated as "to correct the dharma"), a time of cosmic transition and renewal. The process of Fa rectification is necessitated by the moral decline and degeneration of life in the universe, and in the post-1999 context, the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government has come to be viewed as a tangible symptom of this moral decay. Through the process of the Fa rectification, life will be reordered according to the moral and spiritual quality of each, with good people being saved and ascending to higher spiritual planes, and bad ones being eliminated or cast down. In this paradigm, Li assumes the role of rectifying the Dharma by disseminating through his moral teachings. Some scholars, such as Maria Hsia Chang and Susan Palmer, have described Li's rhetoric about the "Fa rectification" and providing salvation "in the final period of the Last Havoc", as apocalyptic.Chang, Maria Hsia (2004) Falun Gong: The End of Days (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press) However, Benjamin Penny, a professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University, argues that Li's teachings are better understood in the context of a "Buddhist notion of the cycle of the Dharma or the Buddhist law".Chris Bullock, Falun Gong: Cult or Culture? , National Radio. Retrieved 21 April 2012. Richard Gunde wrote that unlike apocalyptic groups in the West, Falun Gong does not fixate on death or the end of the world, and instead "has a simple, innocuous ethical message". Li Hongzhi does not discuss a "time of reckoning", and has rejected predictions of an impending apocalypse in his teachings. Categorization Scholars overwhelmingly describe Falun Gong as a new religious movement. The organization is regularly featured in handbooks of new religious movements.Examples include:a.) Hexham, Irving. 2009. Pocket Dictionary of New Religious Movements, pp. 49, 71. InterVarsity Press. and b.) Clarke, Peter. 2004. Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements. Taylor & Francis. and c.) Partridge, Christopher. 2004. Encyclopedia of New Religions: New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities, 265–66. Lion. . While commonly described by scholars as a new religious movement, adherents may reject this term. Falun Gong is a multifaceted discipline that means different things to different people, ranging from a set of physical exercises for the attainment of better health and a praxis of self-transformation, to a moral philosophy and a new knowledge system. 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. Varieties of cultivation practice are found throughout Chinese history, spanning Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian traditions. Benjamin Penny, writes "the best way to describe Falun Gong is as a cultivation system. Cultivation systems have been a feature of Chinese life for at least 2,500 years."Benjamin Penny, "The Past, Present, and Future of Falun Gong" , Lecture given at the National Library of Australia, 2001. Qigong practices can also be understood as a part of a broader tradition of "cultivation practice". In the West, Falun Gong is frequently classified as a religion on the basis of its theological and moral teachings, its concerns with spiritual cultivation and transformation, and its extensive body of scripture. Human rights groups report on the persecution of Falun Gong as a violation of religious freedom, and in 2001, Falun Gong was given an International Religious Freedom Award from Freedom House. Falun Gong practitioners themselves have sometimes disavowed this classification, however. This rejection reflects the relatively narrow definition of "religion" (zongjiao) in contemporary China. According to David Ownby, religion in China has been defined since 1912 to refer to "world- historical faiths" that have "well-developed institutions, clergy, and textual traditions"—namely, Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism.David Ownby, "Unofficial Religions in China: Beyond the Party's Rules" , Testimony for the Congressional–Executive Commission on China, 23 May 2005. Falun Gong lacks these features, having no temples, rituals of worship, clergy or formal hierarchy. Moreover, if Falun Gong had described itself as a religion in China, it likely would have invited immediate suppression. These historical and cultural circumstances notwithstanding, the practice has often been described as a form of Chinese religion.: "Falun Gong is a new form of Chinese religion, even if its adherents themselves may not recognize it as being religion at all." Although it is often referred to as such in journalistic literature, according to Schlechter, Falun Gong does not satisfy the definition of a "sect" or "cult." A sect is generally defined as a branch or denomination of an established belief system or mainstream church. Although Falun Gong draws on both Buddhist and Daoist ideas and terminology, it claims no direct relationship or lineage connection to these religions.: "[Falun Gong] claims no immediate predecessor in the sense of asserting its position in a lineage of religions. Nonetheless, as will be clear throughout this book, many of the terms Li Hongzhi uses and the ideas that underpin Falun Gong teachings are found in Chinese religions of the past." Sociologists regard sects as exclusive groups that exist within clearly defined boundaries, with rigorous standards for admission and strict allegiances. However, as Noah Porter indicated, Falun Gong does not share these qualities: it does not have clearly defined boundaries, and anyone may practice it. Cheris Shun-ching Chan likewise writes that Falun Gong is "categorically not a sect": its practitioners do not sever ties with secular society, it is "loosely structured with a fluctuating membership and tolerant of other organizations and faiths," and it is more concerned with personal, rather than collective worship. Organization As a matter of doctrinal significance, Falun Gong is intended to be "formless", having little to no material or formal organization. Practitioners of Falun Gong cannot collect money or charge fees, conduct healings, or teach or interpret doctrine for others. There are no administrators or officials within the practice, no system of membership, and no churches or physical places of worship.Noah Porter, "Professional Practitioners and Contact Persons Explicating Special Types of Falun Gong Practitioners", Nova Religio, November 2005, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 62–83 In the absence of membership or initiation rituals, Falun Gong practitioners can be anyone who chooses to identify themselves as such. Students are free to participate in the practice and follow its teachings as much or as little as they like, and practitioners do not instruct others on what to believe or how to behave. Spiritual authority is vested exclusively in the teachings of founder Li Hongzhi. But organizationally Falun Gong is decentralized, and local branches and assistants are afforded no special privileges, authority, or titles. Volunteer "assistants" or "contact persons" do not hold authority over other practitioners, regardless of how long they have practiced Falun Gong. Li's spiritual authority within the practice is absolute, yet the organization of Falun Gong works against totalistic control, and Li does not intervene in the personal lives of practitioners. Falun Gong practitioners have little to no contact with Li, except through the study of his teachings. There is no hierarchy in Falun Gong to enforce orthodoxy, and little or no emphasis is given on dogmatic discipline; the only thing emphasized is the need for strict moral behavior, according to Craig Burgdoff, a professor of religious studies. To the extent that organization is achieved in Falun Gong, it is accomplished through a global, networked, and largely virtual online community. In particular, electronic communications, email lists and a collection of websites are the primary means of coordinating activities and disseminating Li Hongzhi's teachings. Outside Mainland China, a network of volunteer 'contact persons', regional Falun Dafa Associations and university clubs exist in approximately 80 countries. Li Hongzhi's teachings are principally spread through the Internet.Mark R. Bell, Taylor C. Boas, Falun Gong and the Internet: Evangelism, Community, and Struggle for Survival, Nova Religio, April 2003, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 277–93 In most mid- to large-sized cities, Falun Gong practitioners organize regular group meditation or study sessions in which they practice Falun Gong exercises and read Li Hongzhi's writings. The exercise and meditation sessions are described as informal groups of practitioners who gather in public parks—usually in the morning—for one to two hours.Susan Palmer and David Ownby, Field Notes: Falun Dafa Practitioners: A Preliminary Research Report, Nova Religio, 2000.4.1.133Craig Burgdoff, "How Falun Gong Practice Undermines Li Hongzhi's Totalistic Rhetoric," p. 336. 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.David Ownby, "Falun Gong in the New World", European Journal of East Asian Studies (2003), pp. 313–14. Individuals who are too busy, isolated, or who simply prefer solitude may elect to practice privately. When there are expenses to be covered (such as for the rental of facilities for large-scale conferences), costs are borne by self- nominated and relatively affluent individual members of the community.Craig Burgdoff, "How Falun Gong Practice Undermines Li Hongzhi's Totalistic Rhetoric," p. 338. Within China Morning Falun Dafa exercises in Guangzhou In 1993, the Beijing-based Falun Dafa Research Society was accepted as a branch of the state-run China Qigong Research Society (CQRS), which oversaw the administration of the country's various qigong schools, and sponsored activities and seminars. As per the requirements of the CQRS, Falun Gong was organized into a nationwide network of assistance centers, "main stations", "branches", "guidance stations", and local practice sites, mirroring the structure of the qigong society or even of the Communist Party itself.Kevin McDonald, Global Movements: Action and Culture, 'Healing Movements, embodied subjects', (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), pp. 142–64 Falun Gong assistants were self-selecting volunteers who taught the exercises, organized events, and disseminated new writings from Li Hongzhi. The Falun Dafa Research Society provided advice to students on meditation techniques, translation services, and coordination for the practice nationwide. Following its departure from the CQRS in 1996, Falun Gong came under increased scrutiny from authorities and responded by adopting a more decentralized and loose organizational structure. In 1997, the Falun Dafa Research Society was formally dissolved, along with the regional "main stations." Yet practitioners continued to organize themselves at local levels, being connected through electronic communications, interpersonal networks and group exercise sites. Both Falun Gong sources and Chinese government sources claimed that there were some 1,900 "guidance stations" and 28,263 local Falun Gong exercise sites nationwide by 1999, though they disagree over the extent of vertical coordination among these organizational units. In response to the persecution that began in 1999, Falun Gong was driven underground, the organizational structure grew yet more informal within China, and the internet took precedence as a means of connecting practitioners.Patricia Thornton, "Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China", in Popular Protest in China, Kevin J. O'Brien (ed.), (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). Following the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, Chinese authorities sought to portray Falun Gong as a hierarchical and well-funded organization. James Tong writes that it was in the government's interest to portray Falun Gong as highly organized in order to justify its repression of the group: "The more organized the Falun Gong could be shown to be, then the more justified the regime's repression in the name of social order was." He concluded that Party's claims lacked "both internal and external substantiating evidence", and that despite the arrests and scrutiny, the authorities never "credibly countered Falun Gong rebuttals". Dragon Springs compound Falun Gong operates out of Dragon Springs, a 400-acre compound located in Deerpark, New York. Falun Gong founder and leader Li Hongzhi resides near the compound, along with "hundreds" of Falun Gong adherents. Members of Falun Gong extension Shen Yun live and rehearse in the compound, which also contains schools and temples. The compound is registered as a church, Dragon Springs Buddhist, which gives it tax exemptions and greater privacy. Scholar Andew Junker noted that in 2019, near Dragon Springs, in Middletown, was an office for the Falun Gong media extension The Epoch Times, which published a special local edition.Junker (2019: 33, 101). The compound has been a point of controversy among former residents. According to NBC News: > [F]our former compound residents and former Falun Gong practitioners who > spoke to NBC News … said that life in Dragon Springs is tightly controlled > by Li, that internet access is restricted, the use of medicines is > discouraged, and arranged relationships are common. Two former residents on > visas said they were offered to be set up with U.S. residents at the > compound. Tiger Huang, a former Dragon Springs resident who was on a United > States student visa from Taiwan, said she was set up on three dates on the > compound, and she believed her ability to stay in the United States was tied > to the arrangement. "The purpose of setting up the dates was obvious," Huang > said. Her now-husband, a former Dragon Springs resident, confirmed the > account. Huang said she was told by Dragon Springs officials her visa had > expired and was told to go back to Taiwan after months of dating a > nonpractitioner in the compound. She later learned that her visa had not > expired when she was told to leave the country. Acquired by Falun Gong in 2000, the site is closed to visitors and features guarded gates, has been a point of contention for some Deer Park residents concerned. In 2019, Falun Gong requested to expand the site, wishing to add a 920-seat concert hall, a new parking garage, a wastewater treatment plant and a conversion of meditation space into residential space large enough to bring the total residential capacity to 500 people. These plans met with opposition from the Delaware Riverkeeper Network regarding the wastewater treatment facility and the elimination of local wetlands, impacting local waterways such as the Basher Kill and Neversink River. Local residents opposed the expansion because it would increase traffic and reduce the rural character of the area. Falun Gong adherents living in the area have claimed that they have experienced discrimination from local residents.Hill, Michael (April 2019). "Falun Gong US compound’s neighbors fret over expansion plans". Associated Press. After visiting in 2019, Junker noted that "the secrecy of Dragon Springs was obvious and a source of tension for the town." Junker adds that, Dragon Springs's website says its restricted access is for security reasons, and that the site claims the compound contains orphans and refugees .Junker 2019: 100-101. Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts Two schools operate in or around Falun Gong's Dragon Springs compound: A private arts college, Fei Tian College, and a highschool, Fei Tian Academy of Arts. Fei Tian College "acts as a feeder for Shen Yun". Both the college and highschool initially operated out of Dragon Springs before expanding into Middletown in 2017.Nani, James. 2017. "Fei Tian arts academies expanding in Middletown". Times Herald-Record, Feb 20, 2017. Online. Last accessed July 6, 2020. According to the Times Herald-Record, "the two schools are independent entities but maintain a close relationship".Nani, James. 2017. "College buys ex-Middletown psych center building to make into dorm", Feb 8, 2017. Times Herald-Record. Online. Last accessed July 6, 2020. According to the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, the college offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts in "classical Chinese dance and Bachelor's in Music Performance", student facilities include an on-site basketball court and a gym, and 2015 enrollment consisted of 127 students.Council for Higher Education Accreditation. Undated. "Fie Tian College". CICU: New York's Private Colleges and Universities. website. Online. Last accessed July 6, 2020. Fei Tian College holds institutional accreditation from the New York State Board of Regents.Undated. "Fei Tian College". Council for Higher Education Accreditation website. [Online https://www.chea.org/fei-tian-college]. Last accessed July 6, 2020. Academic Yutian Wong refers to the college as "[Shen Yun]'s own degree-granting institution".Wong, Yutian. 2016. "Introduction" in Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance, p. 12. University of Wisconsin Press. The highschool was first approved by the New York State Education Department for operation in 2007. As of 2012, it operated with 200 students. In 2012, the school became a point of contention with Deerpark officials after discovering its operations, because "they were never told of a performing arts college and high school being run there", leading to the Deerpark Planning Board unanimously denying a six-month extension for a special-use permit for Dragon Springs.Nani, James. 2012. "Deerpark won’t extend Dragon Springs permit". Times Herald-Record. Nov 16, 2020. Online. Last accessed July 6, 2020. Demography Prior to July 1999, official estimates placed the number of Falun Gong practitioners at 70 million nationwide, rivaling membership in the Communist Party. By the time of the persecution on 22 July 1999, most Chinese government numbers said the population of Falun Gong was between 2 and 3 million, though some publications maintained an estimate of 40 million. Most Falun Gong estimates in the same period placed the total number of practitioners in China at 70 to 80 million.: "In 1997, Li Hongzhi claimed to have 100 million followers, including 20 million regular practitioners." Other sources have estimated the Falun Gong population in China to have peaked between 10 and 70 million practitioners.: "... we may very roughly and tentatively estimate that the total number of practitioners was, at its peak, between 3 and 20 million. ... A mid-range estimate of 10 million would appear, to me, more reasonable." The number of Falun Gong practitioners still practicing in China today is difficult to confirm, though some sources estimate that tens of millions continue to practice privately.U.S. Department of State (26 October 2009) 2009 International Religious Freedom Report: China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau)Malcolm Moore, "Falun Gong 'growing' in China despite 10-year ban ," The Telegraph, 24 April 2009. Demographic surveys conducted in China in 1998 found a population that was mostly female and elderly. Of 34,351 Falun Gong practitioners surveyed, 27% were male and 73% female. Only 38% were under 50 years old. Falun Gong attracted a range of other individuals, from young college students to bureaucrats, intellectuals and Party officials.Lincoln Kaye, "Travelers Tales," Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 July 1992. Surveys in China from the 1990s found that between 23–40% of practitioners held university degrees at the college or graduate level—several times higher than the general population. Falun Gong is practiced by tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands outside China, with the largest communities found in Taiwan and North American cities with large Chinese populations, such as New York and Toronto. Demographic surveys by Palmer and Ownby in these communities found that 90% of practitioners are ethnic Chinese. The average age was approximately 40. Among survey respondents, 56% were female and 44% male; 80% were married. The surveys found the respondents to be highly educated: 9% held PhDs, 34% had master's degrees, and 24% had a bachelor's degree. As of 2008, the most commonly reported reasons for being attracted to Falun Gong were intellectual content, cultivation exercises, and health benefits. Non-Chinese Falun Gong practitioners tend to fit the profile of "spiritual seekers"—people who had tried a variety of qigong, yoga, or religious practices before finding Falun Gong. According to Richard Madsen, Chinese scientists with doctorates from prestigious American universities who practice Falun Gong claim that modern physics (for example, superstring theory) and biology (specifically the pineal gland's function) provide a scientific basis for their beliefs. From their point of view, "Falun Dafa is knowledge rather than religion, a new form of science rather than faith".Richard Madsen, "Understanding Falun Gong," Current History (September 2000). History inside China 1992–1996 Li Hongzhi introduced Falun Gong to the public on 13 May 1992, in Changchun, Jilin Province. Several months later, in September 1992, Falun Gong was admitted as a branch of qigong under the administration of the state-run China Qigong Scientific Research Society (CQRS). Li was recognized as a qigong master, and was authorized to teach his practice nationwide.David Ownby, "The Falun Gong in the New World". European Journal of East Asian Studies, Sep 2003, Vol. 2 Issue 2, p 306. Like many qigong masters at the time, Li toured major cities in China from 1992 to 1994 to teach the practice. He was granted a number of awards by PRC governmental organizations.A Short Biography of Mr. Li Hongzhi , PRC law and Government v. 32 no. 6 (November/December 1999) pp. 14–23 Zeng, Jennifer. "Witnessing history: one Chinese woman's fight for freedom," Soho Press, 2006 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",David Ownby, "The Falun Gong in the New World". European Journal of East Asian Studies, Sep 2003, Vol. 2 Issue 2, p. 306 and Falun Gong was embraced by the government as an effective means of lowering health care costs, promoting Chinese culture, and improving public morality. In December 1992, for instance, Li and several Falun Gong students participated in the Asian Health Expo in Beijing, where he reportedly "received the most praise [of any qigong school] at the fair, and achieved very good therapeutic results", according to the fair's organizer. The event helped cement Li's popularity, and journalistic reports of Falun Gong's healing powers spread. In 1993, a publication of the Ministry of Public Security praised Li for "promoting the traditional crime-fighting virtues of the Chinese people, in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society." Falun Gong had differentiated itself from other qigong groups in its emphasis on morality, low cost, and health benefits. It rapidly spread via word-of-mouth, attracting a wide range of practitioners from all walks of life, including numerous members of the Chinese Communist Party.Thomas Lum, Congressional Research Report #RL33437 , Congressional Research Service, 11 August 2006 From 1992 to 1994, Li did charge fees for the seminars he was giving across China, though the fees were considerably lower than those of competing qigong practices, and the local qigong associations received a substantial share. Li justified the fees as being necessary to cover travel costs and other expenses, and on some occasions, he donated the money earned to charitable causes. In 1994, Li ceased charging fees altogether, thereafter stipulating that Falun Gong must always be taught for free, and its teachings made available without charge (including online). Although some observers believe Li continued to earn substantial income through the sale of Falun Gong books,Dai Qing: Members of Falungong in an Autocratic Society. Asia Quarterly, Volume IV, No. 3, Summer 2000 others dispute this, asserting that most Falun Gong books in circulation were bootleg copies. With the publication of the books Falun Gong and Zhuan Falun, Li made his teachings more widely accessible. Zhuan Falun, published in January 1995 at an unveiling ceremony held in the auditorium of the Ministry of Public Security, became a best-seller in China. In 1995, Chinese authorities began looking to Falun Gong to solidify its organizational structure and ties to the party-state. Li was approached by the Chinese National Sports Committee, Ministry of Public Health, and China Qigong Science Research Association (CQRS) to jointly establish a Falun Gong association. Li declined the offer. The same year, the CQRS issued a new regulation mandating that all qigong denominations establish a Communist Party branch. Li again refused. Tensions continued to mount between Li and the CQRS in 1996. In the face of Falun Gong's rise in popularity—a large part of which was attributed to its low cost—competing qigong masters accused Li of undercutting them. According to Schechter, the qigong society under which Li and other qigong masters belonged asked Li to hike his tuition, but Li emphasized the need for the teachings to be free of charge. In March 1996, Falun Gong withdrew from the CQRS in response to mounting disagreements, after which time it operated outside the official sanction of the state. Falun Gong representatives attempted to register with other government entities, but were rebuffed. Li and Falun Gong were then outside the circuit of personal relations and financial exchanges through which masters and their qigong organizations could find a place within the state system, and also the protections this afforded. 1996–1999 Falun Gong's departure from the state-run CQRS corresponded to a wider shift in the government's attitudes towards qigong practices. As qigong's detractors in government grew more influential, authorities began attempting to rein in the growth and influence of these groups, some of which had amassed tens of millions of followers. In the mid-1990s the state-run media began publishing articles critical of qigong. Falun Gong was initially shielded from the mounting criticism, but following its withdrawal from the CQRS in March 1996, it lost this protection. On 17 June 1996, the Guangming Daily, an influential state-run newspaper, published a polemic against Falun Gong in which its central text, Zhuan Falun, was described as an example of "feudal superstition". The author wrote that the history of humanity is a "struggle between science and superstition," and called on Chinese publishers not to print "pseudo-scientific books of the swindlers." The article was followed by at least twenty more in newspapers nationwide. Soon after, on 24 July, the Central Propaganda Department banned all publication of Falun Gong books (though the ban was not consistently enforced). The state-administered Buddhist Association of China also began issuing criticisms of Falun Gong, urging lay Buddhists not to take up the practice. The events were an important challenge to Falun Gong, and one that practitioners did not take lightly. 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.Sumner B. Twiss, "Religious Intolerance in Contemporary China, Including the Curious Case of Falun Gong," The World's Religions After 11 September, by Arvind Sharma (ed.) (Greenwood Publishing, 2009), pp. 227–40. In other instances, Falun Gong practitioners staged peaceful demonstrations outside media or local government offices to request retractions of perceived unfair coverage. The polemics against Falun Gong were part of a larger movement opposing qigong organizations in the state-run media.. Although Falun Gong was not the only target of the media criticism, nor the only group to protest, theirs was the most mobilized and steadfast response. Many of Falun Gong's protests against negative media portrayals were successful, resulting in the retraction of several newspaper stories critical of the practice. This contributed to practitioners' belief that the media claims against them were false or exaggerated, and that their stance was justified. In June 1998, He Zuoxiu, an outspoken critic of qigong and a fierce defender of Marxism, appeared on a talk show on Beijing Television and openly disparaged qigong groups, making particular mention of Falun Gong. Falun Gong practitioners responded with peaceful protests and by lobbying the station for a retraction. The reporter responsible for the program was reportedly fired, and a program favorable to Falun Gong was aired several days later. Falun Gong practitioners also mounted demonstrations at 14 other media outlets. In 1997, The Ministry of Public Security launched an investigation into whether Falun Gong should be deemed xie jiao (, "heretical teaching"). The report concluded that "no evidence has appeared thus far". The following year, however, on 21 July 1998, the Ministry of Public Security issued Document No. 555, "Notice of the Investigation of Falun Gong". The document asserted that Falun Gong is a "heretical teaching", and mandated that another investigation be launched to seek evidence in support of the conclusion. Falun Gong practitioners reported having phone lines tapped, homes ransacked and raided, and Falun Gong exercise sites disrupted by public security agents. In this time period, even as criticism of qigong and Falun Gong mounted in some circles, the practice maintained a number of high-profile supporters in the government. In 1998, Qiao Shi, the recently retired Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, initiated his own investigation into Falun Gong. After months of investigations, his group concluded that "Falun Gong has hundreds of benefits for the Chinese people and China, and does not have one single bad effect.". In May of the same year, China's National Sports Commission launched its own survey of Falun Gong. Based on interviews with over 12,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Guangdong province, they stated that they were "convinced the exercises and effects of Falun Gong are excellent. It has done an extraordinary amount to improve society's stability and ethics." The practice's founder, Li Hongzhi, was largely absent from the country during the period of rising tensions with the government. In March 1995, Li had left China to first teach his practice in France and then other countries, and in 1998 obtained permanent residency in the United States. By 1999, estimates provided by the State Sports Commission suggested there were 70 million Falun Gong practitioners in China. 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." Tianjin and Zhongnanhai protests By the late 1990s, the Communist Party's relationship to the growing Falun Gong movement had become increasingly tense. 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. The conflicting investigations launched by the Ministry of the Public Security on one side and the State Sports Commission and Qiao Shi on the other spoke of the disagreements among China's elites on how to regard the growing practice. In April 1999, an article critical of Falun Gong was published in Tianjin Normal University's Youth Reader magazine. The article was authored by physicist He Zuoxiu who, as Porter and Gutmann indicate, is a relative of Politburo member and public security secretary Luo Gan. The article cast qigong, and Falun Gong in particular, as superstitious and harmful for youth. Falun Gong practitioners responded by picketing the offices of the newspaper requesting a retraction of the article. Unlike past instances in which Falun Gong protests were successful, on 22 April the Tianjin demonstration was broken up by the arrival of three hundred riot police. Some of the practitioners were beaten, and forty-five arrested. Other Falun Gong practitioners were told that if they wished to appeal further, they needed to take the issue up with the Ministry of Public Security and go to Beijing to appeal. The Falun Gong community quickly mobilized a response, and on the morning of 25 April, upwards of 10,000 practitioners gathered near the central appeals office to demand an end to the escalating harassment against the movement, and request the release of the Tianjin practitioners. According to Benjamin Penny, practitioners sought redress from the leadership of the country by going to them and, "albeit very quietly and politely, making it clear that they would not be treated so shabbily." They sat or read quietly on the sidewalks surrounding the Zhongnanhai. Five Falun Gong representatives met with Premier Zhu Rongji and other senior officials to negotiate a resolution. The Falun Gong representatives were assured that the regime supported physical exercises for health improvements and did not consider the Falun Gong to be anti-government. Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin was alerted to the demonstration by CPC Politburo member Luo Gan, and was reportedly angered by the audacity of the demonstration—the largest since the Tiananmen Square protests ten years earlier. Jiang called for resolute action to suppress the group, and reportedly criticized Premier Zhu for being "too soft" in his handling of the situation. That evening, Jiang composed a letter indicating his desire to see Falun Gong "defeated". In the letter, Jiang expressed concerns over the size and popularity of Falun Gong, and in particular about the large number of senior Communist Party members found among Falun Gong practitioners. 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. Jiang also intimated that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was at odds with the atheist values of Marxist–Leninism, and therefore constituted a form of ideological competition.Jiang Zemin, Letter to Party cadres on the evening of 25 April 1999. Published in Beijing Zhichun no. 97 (June 2001) Jiang is held by Falun Gong to be personally responsible for this decision to persecute Falun Gong.Dean Peerman, China syndrome: the persecution of Falun Gong, Christian Century, 10 August 2004Tony Saich, Governance and Politics in China, Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition (27 February 2004) 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. Willy Wo-Lap Lam suggests Jiang's decision to suppress Falun Gong was related to a desire to consolidate his power within the Politburo.Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. "China's sect suppression carries a high price," CNN, 5 February 2001 According to Human Rights Watch, Communist Party leaders and ruling elite were far from unified in their support for the crackdown. Persecution On 20 July 1999, security forces abducted and detained thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who they identified as leaders. Two days later, on 22 July, the PRC Ministry of Civil Affairs outlawed the Falun Dafa Research Society as an illegal organization that was "engaged in illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability".Xinhua, China Bans Falun Gong , People's Daily, 22 July 1999Human Rights Watch, "Dangerous Mediation", Appendix II: Laws and Regulations Used to Crack Down on Falungong . The same day, the Ministry of Public Security issued a circular forbidding citizens from practicing Falun Gong in groups, possessing Falun Gong's teachings, displaying Falun Gong banners or symbols, or protesting against the ban. The aim of the ensuing campaign was to "eradicate" the group through a combination of means which included the publication and distribution of propaganda which denounced it and the imprisonment and coercive thought reform of its practitioners, sometimes resulting in deaths. In October 1999, four months after the imposition of the ban, legislation was passed in order to outlaw "heterodox religions" and sentence Falun Gong devotees to prison terms.Leung, Beatrice (2002) 'China and Falun Gong: Party and society relations in the modern era', Journal of Contemporary China, 11:33, 761–84 Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are estimated to have been extrajudicially imprisoned, and practitioners who are currently in detention are reportedly subjected to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands of Chinese authorities. The U.S. Department of State and Congressional-Executive Commission on China cite estimates that as much as half of China's reeducation-through-labor camp population is made up of Falun Gong practitioners. Researcher Ethan Gutmann estimates that Falun Gong practitioners represent an average of 15 to 20 percent of the total "laogai" population, a population which includes practitioners who are currently being held in re-education through labor camps as well as practitioners who are currently being held in prisons and other forms of administrative detention. Former detainees of the labor camp system have reported that Falun Gong practitioners comprise one of the largest groups of prisoners; in some labor camp and prison facilities, they comprise the majority of the detainees, and they are often said to receive the longest sentences and the worst treatment. A 2013 report on labor reeducation camps by Amnesty International found that in some cases, Falun Gong practitioners "constituted on average from one third to 100 per cent of the total population" of certain camps. According to Johnson, the campaign against Falun Gong extends to many aspects of society, including the media apparatus, the police force, the military, the education system, and workplaces.Ian Johnson Wild Grass: three portraits of change in modern China, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2005). An extra-constitutional body, the "610 Office" was created to "oversee" the effort. Human Rights Watch (2002) commented that families and workplace employees were urged to cooperate with the government. Causes Foreign observers have attempted to explain the Party's rationale for banning Falun Gong as stemming from a variety of factors. Many of these explanations centre on institutional causes, such as Falun Gong's size and popularity, its independence from the state, and internal politics within the Chinese Communist Party. Other scholars have noted that Chinese authorities were troubled by Falun Gong's moral and spiritual content, which put it at odds with aspects of the official Marxist ideology. Still others have pointed to China's history of bloody sectarian revolts as a possible factor leading to the crackdown. 610 Office's organization in China Xinhua News Agency, the official news organization of the Communist Party, declared that Falun Gong is "opposed to the Communist Party of China and the central government, preaches idealism, theism and feudal superstition."Xinhua Commentary on Political Nature of Falun Gong , People's Daily, 2 August 1999 Xinhua also asserted that "the so-called 'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by [Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve", and it also argued that it was necessary to crush Falun Gong in order to preserve the "vanguard role and purity" of the Communist Party.Gayle M.B. Hanson, China Shaken by Mass Meditation – meditation movement Falun Gong, Insight on the News, 23 August 1999 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 Marxist–Leninism paradigm and the secular values of materialism. Willy Wo-Lap Lam writes that Jiang Zemin's campaign against Falun Gong may have been used to promote allegiance to himself; Lam quotes one party veteran as saying "by unleashing a Mao-style movement [against Falun Gong], Jiang is forcing senior cadres to pledge allegiance to his line."Willy Wo-Lap Lam, "China's sect suppression carries a high price". CNN, 9 February 2001 The Washington Post reported that sources indicated not all of the standing committee of the Politburo shared Jiang's view that Falun Gong should be eradicated,Reid, Graham (29 April–5 May 2006) "Nothing left to lose" , New Zealand Listener. Retrieved 6 July 2006. Human Rights Watch commented that the crackdown on Falun Gong reflects historical efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to eradicate religion, which the government believes is inherently subversive. The Chinese government protects five "patriotic", Communist Party-sanctioned religious groups. Unregistered religions that fall outside the state-sanctioned organizations are thus vulnerable to suppression.Congressional Executive Commission on China (10 October 2010) Annual Report 2010 p. 19. The Globe and Mail wrote : "... any group that does not come under the control of the Party is a threat".The Globe and Mail (26 January 2001) Beijing v. falun gong Metro A14 Craig S. Smith of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the party feels increasingly threatened by any belief system that challenges its ideology and has an ability to organize itself. That Falun Gong, whose belief system represented a revival of traditional Chinese religion, was being practiced by a large number of Communist Party members and members of the military was seen as particularly disturbing to Jiang Zemin; according to Julia Ching, "Jiang accepts the threat of Falun Gong as an ideological one: spiritual beliefs against militant atheism and historical materialism. He [wished] to purge the government and the military of such beliefs."Julia Ching, "The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications", American Asian Review, Vol. XIX, no. 4, Winter 2001, p. 12 Yuezhi Zhao points to several other factors that may have led to a deterioration of the relationship between Falun Gong and the Chinese state and media. These included infighting within China's qigong establishment, the influence of qigong opponents among Communist Party leaders, and the struggles from mid-1996 to mid-1999 between Falun Gong and the Chinese power elite over the status and treatment of the movement. 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." In China the practice represented an indigenous spiritual and moral tradition, a cultural revitalization movement, and it was a sharp contrast to "Marxism with Chinese characteristics".Twiss, Sumner B. "Religious Intolerance in Contemporary China, Including the Curious Case of Falun Gong" in The World's Religions After September 11. Arvind Sharma (ed), Greenwood Publishing, 2009 pp. 227–40 Vivienne Shue similarly writes that Falun Gong presented a comprehensive challenge to the Communist Party's legitimacy. Shue argues that Chinese rulers have historically derived their legitimacy from their claim to possess an exclusive connection to the "Truth". In imperial China, truth was based on a Confucian and Daoist cosmology, where in the case of the Communist Party, the truth is represented by Marxist–Leninism and historical materialism. Falun Gong challenged the Marxist–Leninism paradigm, reviving an understanding which is based on more traditionally Buddhist or Daoist conceptions.Vivienne Shue, "Legitimacy Crisis in China?" In Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen (eds.), State and Society in 21st-century China. Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004. David Ownby contends that Falun Gong also challenged the Communist Party's hegemony over the Chinese nationalist discourse: "[Falun Gong's] evocation of a different vision of Chinese tradition and its contemporary values are now so threatening to the state and the party because it denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chinese nationalism, and it even denies them the sole right to define the meaning of Chineseness."David Ownby (15 February 2001) China's War Against Itself The New York Times Maria Chang commented that since the overthrow of the Qin dynasty, "Millenarian movements had exerted a profound impact on the course of Chinese history," cumulating in the Chinese Revolutions of 1949, which brought the Chinese Communists to power. Patsy Rahn (2002) describes a paradigm of conflict between Chinese sectarian groups and the rulers who they often challenge. According to Rahn, the history of this paradigm goes back to the collapse of the Han dynasty: "The pattern of a ruling power keeping a watchful eye on sectarian groups, at times threatened by them, at times raising campaigns against them, began as early as the second century and continued throughout the dynastic period, through the Mao era and into the present."Rahn, Patsy (2002) "The Chemistry of a Conflict: The Chinese Government and the Falun Gong" in Terrorism and Political Violence, Winter, 2002, Vol 14, No. 4 (London: Frank Cass Publishers) Conversion program Falun Gong practitioner Tang Yongjie was tortured by prison guards, who applied hot rods to his legs in an attempt to force him to recant his beliefs According to James Tong, the regime aimed at both coercive dissolution of the Falun Gong denomination and "transformation" of the practitioners. By 2000, the Party escalated its campaign by sentencing "recidivist" practitioners to "re-education through labor" in an effort to have them renounce their beliefs and "transform" their thoughts. Terms were also arbitrarily extended by police, while some practitioners had ambiguous charges levied against them, such as "disrupting social order", "endangering national security", or "subverting the socialist system".Robert Bejesky, "Falun Gong & reeducation through labor", Columbia Journal of Asian Law, 17:2, Spring 2004, pp. 147–89 According to Bejesky, the majority of long-term Falun Gong detainees are processed administratively through this system instead of the criminal justice system. Upon completion of their re-education sentences, those practitioners who refused to recant were then incarcerated in "legal education centers" set up by provincial authorities to "transform minds".Congressional Executive Commission on China Annual Report 2006, p. 59; note 224, p. 201 Much of the conversion program relied on Mao-style techniques of indoctrination and thought reform, where Falun Gong practitioners were organized to view anti- Falun Gong television programs and enroll in Marxism and materialism study sessions. Traditional Marxism and materialism were the core content of the sessions. Gao Rongrong, a Falun Gong practitioner from Liaoning Province who was reportedly tortured to death in custody in 2005 The government-sponsored image of the conversion process emphasizes psychological persuasion and a variety of "soft-sell" techniques; this is the "ideal norm" in regime reports, according to Tong. Falun Gong reports, on the other hand, depict "disturbing and sinister" forms of coercion against practitioners who fail to renounce their beliefs. 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 cases appear verifiable, and the great majority identify (1) the individual practitioner, often with age, occupation, and residence; (2) the time and location that the alleged abuse took place, down to the level of the district, township, village, and often the specific jail institution; and (3) the names and ranks of the alleged perpetrators. Many such reports include lists of the names of witnesses and descriptions of injuries, Tong says. The publication of "persistent abusive, often brutal behavior by named individuals with their official title, place, and time of torture" suggests that there is no official will to cease and desist such activities. Deaths Due to the difficulty in corroborating reports of torture deaths in China, estimates of the number of Falun Gong practitioners who have been killed as a result of the persecution vary widely. In 2009, The New York Times reported that, according to human rights groups, the repressions had claimed "at least 2,000" lives. Amnesty International said at least 100 Falun Gong practitioners had reportedly died in the 2008 calendar year, either in custody or shortly after their release.Amnesty International, 'China – Amnesty International Report 2008' . Investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann estimated 65,000 Falun Gong were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008 based on extensive interviews,Ethan Gutmann. The China Conundrum inFocus, Winter 2010, Volume IV: Number 4; Ethan Gutmann, 'The Xinjiang Procedure' , Weekly Standard, 5 December 2011.; Ethan Gutmann, Reluctant Dragon , National Review, 17 October 2011 while researchers David Kilgour and David Matas reported, "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained".David Kilgour & David Matas, Bloody Harvest: The killing of Falun Gong for their organs, Seraphim Editions (2009) 232 pages Chinese authorities do not publish statistics on Falun Gong practitioners killed amidst the crackdown. In individual cases, however, authorities have denied that deaths in custody were due to torture.Ian Johnson, 'Paper Chase' , Wall Street Journal, 2 October 2000. Organ harvesting In 2006, allegations emerged that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. These allegations prompted an investigation by former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas. The Kilgour-Matas reportReuters, AP (8 July 2006) "Falun Gong organ claim supported" , The Age, (Australia)Endemann, Kirstin (6 July 2006) CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen "Ottawa urged to stop Canadians travelling to China for transplants" 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." The report, which was based mainly on circumstantial evidence, called attention to the extremely short wait times for organs in China—one to two weeks for a liver compared with 32.5 months in Canada—implying it was indicative of organs being procured on demand. It also tracked a significant increase in the number of annual organ transplants in China beginning in 1999, corresponding with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong. Despite very low levels of voluntary organ donation, China performs the second-highest number of transplants per year. Kilgour and Matas also presented self- accusatory material from Chinese transplant center web sitesLnxsb Liaoning Thrombus Treatment Center of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine (Le Figaro Reports on CCP's Forced Organ Harvesting 1999.7.20. ) advertising the immediate availability of organs from living donors, and transcripts of interviews in which hospitals told prospective transplant recipients that they could obtain Falun Gong organs.David Kilgour, David Matas (6 July 2006, revised 31 January 2007) An Independent Investigation into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China organharvestinvestigation.net Ethan Gutmann (left) with Edward McMillan-Scott at a Foreign Press Association press conference, 2009 In May 2008 two United Nations Special Rapporteurs reiterated requests for the Chinese authorities to respond to the allegations,United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteurs Reiterate Findings on China's Organ Harvesting from Falun Gong Practitioners , 9 May 2008. Retrieved 24 September 2010 and to explain a source for the organs that would account for the sudden increase in organ transplants in China since 2000. Chinese officials have responded by denying the organ harvesting allegations, and insisting that China abides by World Health Organization principles that prohibit the sale of human organs without written consent from donors. 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." In August 2009, Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, said, "The Chinese government has yet to come clean and be transparent ... It remains to be seen how it could be possible that organ transplant surgeries in Chinese hospitals have risen massively since 1999, while there are never that many voluntary donors available." In 2014, investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann published the result of his own investigation. Gutmann conducted extensive interviews with former detainees in Chinese labor camps and prisons, as well as former security officers and medical professionals with knowledge of China's transplant practices.Jay Nordlinger (25 August 2014) "Face The Slaughter: The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, by Ethan Gutmann" , National ReviewBarbara Turnbull (21 October 2014) "Q&A;: Author and analyst Ethan Gutmann discusses China’s illegal organ trade" , The Toronto Star He reported that organ harvesting from political prisoners likely began in Xinjiang province in the 1990s, and then spread nationwide. Gutmann estimates that some 64,000 Falun Gong prisoners may have been killed for their organs between the years 2000 and 2008. In a 2016 report, David Kilgour found that he had underestimated. In the new report he found that the government's official estimates for the volume of organs harvested since the persecution of Falun Gong began to be 150,000 to 200,000. Media outlets have extrapolated from this study a death toll of 1,500,000.Ethan Gutmann estimated from this update that 60,000 to 110,000 organs are harvested in China annually observing that it is (paraphrasing): "difficult but plausible to harvest 3 organs from a single body" and also calls the harvest "a new form of genocide using the most respected members of society." 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 Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, said it was "certain that Falun Gong as a source—probably the principal source—of organs for forced organ harvesting". Media campaign The Chinese government's campaign against Falun Gong was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspapers, radio and internet. The propaganda campaign focused on allegations that Falun Gong jeopardized social stability, was deceiving and dangerous, was "anti-science" and threatened progress, and argued that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was incompatible with a Marxist social ethic. China scholars Daniel Wright and Joseph Fewsmith stated that for several months after Falun Gong was outlawed, China Central Television's evening news contained little but anti-Falun Gong rhetoric; the government operation was "a study in all-out demonization", they wrote.Fewsmith, Joseph and Daniel B. Wright. "The promise of the Revolution: stories of fulfilment and struggle in China", 2003, Rowman and Littlefield. p. 156 Falun Gong was compared to "a rat crossing the street that everyone shouts out to squash" by Beijing Daily;Associated Press, "'Enemies of people' warned", 23 January 2001 other officials said it would be a "long-term, complex and serious" struggle to "eradicate" Falun Gong.Plafker, Ted. "Falun Gong Stays Locked In Struggle With Beijing," The Washington Post, 26 April 2000 State propaganda initially used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism.Lu, Xing, Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: the impact on Chinese thought, culture, and communication, University of South Carolina Press (2004). For example, the People's Daily asserted on 27 July 1999, that the fight against Falun Gong "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism." Other editorials declared that Falun Gong's "idealism and theism" are "absolutely contradictory to the fundamental theories and principles of Marxism," and that the "'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by [Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve." Suppressing Falun Gong was presented as a necessary step to maintaining the "vanguard role" of the Communist Party in Chinese society.Chen, Chiung Hwang. "Framing Falun Gong: Xinhua News Agency's Coverage of the New Religious Movement in China", Asian Journal of Communication, Vol. 15 No. 1 (2005), pp. 16–36. Despite Party efforts, initial charges leveled against Falun Gong failed to elicit widespread popular support for the persecution of the group. In the months following July 1999, the rhetoric in the state-run press escalated to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign, "anti-China" forces. In October 1999, three months after the persecution began, the People's Daily newspaper claimed Falun Gong as a xiejiao. A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching", but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English.Amnesty International (23 March 2000) The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called 'heretical organizations' In the context of imperial China, the term "xiejiao" was used to refer to non-Confucian religions, though in the context of Communist China, it has been used to target religious organizations that do not submit to Communist Party authority.Maria Hsia Chang, "Falun Gong:The End of Days," (Yale University Press, 2004).Freedom House, "Report Analyzing Seven Secret Chinese Government Documents" , 11 February 2002. Ian Johnson argued that applying the 'cult' label to Falun Gong effectively "cloaked the government's crackdown with the legitimacy of the West's anticult movement." He wrote that Falun Gong does not satisfy common definitions of a cult: "its members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the world's end is imminent and do not give significant amounts of money to the organisation ... it does not advocate violence and is at heart an apolitical, inward- oriented discipline, one aimed at cleansing oneself spiritually and improving one's health." David Ownby similarly wrote that "the entire issue of the supposed cultic nature of Falun Gong was a red herring from the beginning, cleverly exploited by the Chinese state to blunt the appeal of Falun Gong". According to John Powers and Meg Y. M. Lee, because the Falun Gong was categorized in the popular perception as an "apolitical, qigong exercise club," it was not seen as a threat to the government. The most critical strategy in the Falun Gong suppression campaign, therefore, was to convince people to reclassify the Falun Gong into a number of "negatively charged religious labels",Powers, John and Meg Y. M. Lee. "Dueling Media: Symbolic Conflict in China's Falun Gong Suppression Campaign" in Chinese Conflict Management and Resolution, by Guo-Ming Chen and Ringo Ma (2001), Greenwood Publishing Group like "evil cult", "sect", or "superstition". The group's silent protests were reclassified as creating "social disturbances". In this process of relabelling, the government was attempting to tap into a "deep reservoir of negative feelings related to the historical role of quasi- religious cults as a destabilising force in Chinese political history." A turning point in the propaganda campaign came on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001, when five people attempted to set themselves ablaze on Tiananmen Square. The official Chinese press agency, Xinhua News Agency, and other state media asserted that the self-immolators were practitioners, though the Falun Dafa Information Center disputed this, on the grounds that the movement's teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing, further alleging that the event was "a cruel (but clever) piece of stunt-work."Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing dictatorship: propaganda and thought work in contemporary China, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008 The incident received international news coverage, and video footage of the burnings were broadcast later inside China by China Central Television (CCTV). The broadcasts showed images of a 12-year- old girl, Liu Siying, burning, and interviews with the other participants in which they stated a belief that self-immolation would lead them to paradise. But one of the CNN producers on the scene did not even see a child there. Falun Gong sources and other commentators pointed out that the main participants' account of the incident and other aspects of the participants' behavior were inconsistent with the teachings of Falun Dafa. 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. IED's statement at the 53rd UN session describes China's violent assault on Falun Gong practitioners as state terrorism and that the self- immolation "was staged by the government." Washington Post journalist Phillip Pan wrote that the two self-immolators who died were not actually Falun Gong practitioners. On March 21, 2001, Liu Siying suddenly died after appearing very lively and being deemed ready to leave the hospital to go home. Time reported that prior to the self-immolation incident, many Chinese had felt that Falun Gong posed no real threat, and that the state's crackdown had gone too far. After the event, however, the mainland Chinese media campaign against Falun Gong gained significant traction.Matthew Gornet, "The Breaking " , Time, 25 June 2001 As public sympathy for Falun Gong declined, the government began sanctioning "systematic use of violence" against the group.Philip Pan and John Pomfret, "Torture is Breaking Falun Gong". The Washington Post, 5 August 2001 In February, 2001, the month following the Tiananmen Square 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. Under Jiang's leadership, the crackdown on Falun Gong became part of the Chinese political ethos of "upholding stability"—much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen in 1989. Jiang's message was echoed at the 2001 National People's Congress, where the Falun Gong's eradication was tied to China's economic progress. Though less prominent on the national agenda, the persecution of Falun Gong has carried on after Jiang was retired; successive, high-level "strike hard" campaigns against Falun Gong were initiated in both 2008 and 2009. In 2010, a three-year campaign was launched to renew attempts at the coercive "transformation" of Falun Gong practitioners.Congressional Executive Commission on China, "Communist Party Calls for Increased Efforts To "Transform" Falun Gong Practitioners as Part of Three-Year Campaign" , 22 March 2011. = In education system = Anti-Falun Gong propaganda efforts have also permeated the Chinese education system. Following Jiang Zemin's 1999 ban of Falun Gong, then-Minister of Education Chen Zhili launched an active campaign to promote the Party's line on Falun Gong within all levels of academic institutions, including graduate schools, universities and colleges, middle schools, primary schools, and kindergartens. Her efforts included a "Cultural Revolution-like pledge" in Chinese schools that required faculty members, staff, and students to publicly denounce Falun Gong. Teachers who did not comply with Chen's program were dismissed or detained; uncooperative students were refused academic advancement, expelled from school, or sent to "transformation" camps to alter their thinking."Chinese Ministry of Education Participating in Persecution of Falun Gong: Investigative Report" . 16 March 2004. Retrieved 17 November 2011. Chen also worked to spread the anti-Falun Gong academic propaganda movement overseas, using domestic educational funding to donate aid to foreign institutions, encouraging them to oppose Falun Gong. Falun Gong's response to the persecution Practitioners meditate to protest the persecution of Falun Gong at a demonstration in Washington, D.C. Falun Gong's response to the persecution in China began in July 1999 with appeals to local, provincial, and central petitioning offices in Beijing.Elisabeth Rosenthal and Erik Eckholm, "Vast Numbers of Sect Members Keep Pressure on Beijing", The New York Times, 28 October 1999. It soon progressed to larger demonstrations, with hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners traveling daily to Tiananmen Square to perform Falun Gong exercises or raise banners in defense of the practice. These demonstrations were invariably broken up by security forces, and the practitioners involved were arrested—sometimes violently—and detained. By 25 April 2000, a total of more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested on the square; seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration in the square on 1 January 2001. Public protests continued well into 2001. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Ian Johnson wrote that "Falun Gong faithful have mustered what is arguably the most sustained challenge to authority in 50 years of Communist rule."Ian Johnson, "A Deadly Exercise: Practicing Falun Gong was a right, Ms. Chen said, to her last day" , Wall Street Journal, 20 April 2000 By late 2001, demonstrations in Tiananmen Square had become less frequent, and the practice was driven deeper underground. As public protest fell out of favor, practitioners established underground "material sites," which would produce literature and DVDs to counter the portrayal of Falun Gong in the official media. Practitioners then distribute these materials, often door-to-door.Liao Yiwu. "The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up." p. 230. Falun Gong sources estimated in 2009 that over 200,000 such sites exist across China today. The production, possession, or distribution of these materials is frequently grounds for security agents to incarcerate or sentence Falun Gong practitioners.Congressional Executive Commission on China 2009 Annual Report In 2002, Falun Gong activists in China tapped into television broadcasts, replacing regular state-run programming with their own content. One of the more notable instances occurred in March 2002, when Falun Gong practitioners in Changchun intercepted eight cable television networks in Jilin Province, and for nearly an hour, televised a program titled "Self-Immolation or a Staged Act?". All six of the Falun Gong practitioners involved were captured over the next few months. Two were killed immediately, while the other four were all dead by 2010 as a result of injuries sustained while imprisoned. Outside China, Falun Gong practitioners established international media organizations to gain wider exposure for their cause and challenge narratives of the Chinese state-run media. These include The Epoch Times newspaper, New Tang Dynasty Television, and Sound of Hope radio station. 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. In 2004, The Epoch Times published a collection of nine editorials that presented a critical history of Communist Party rule.Steel, Kevin. 'Revolution number nine', The Western Standard, 11 July 2005. This catalyzed the Tuidang movement, which encourages Chinese citizens to renounce their affiliations to the Chinese Communist Party, including ex post facto renunciations of the Communist Youth League and Young Pioneers. The Epoch Times claims that tens of millions have renounced the Communist Party as part of the movement, though these numbers have not been independently verified.Gutmann, Ethan. The Chinese Internet: A dream deferred?. Testimony given at the National Endowment for Democracy panel discussion "Tiananmen 20 years on", 2 June 2009. In 2006, Falun Gong practitioners in the United States formed Shen Yun Performing Arts, a dance and music company that tours internationally. Falun Gong software developers in the United States are also responsible for the creation of several popular censorship-circumvention tools employed by internet users in China.Beiser, Vince. "Digital Weapons Help Dissidents Punch Holes in China's Great Firewall ," Wired, 1 November 2010. 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.Human Rights Law Foundation, Direct Litigation . Retrieved 19 March 2011 According to International Advocates for Justice, Falun Gong has filed the largest number of human rights lawsuits in the 21st century and the charges are among the most severe international crimes defined by international criminal laws. As of 2006, 54 civil and criminal lawsuits were under way in 33 countries. In many instances, courts have refused to adjudicate the cases on the grounds of sovereign immunity. In late 2009, however, separate courts in Spain and Argentina indicted Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan on charges of "crimes of humanity" and genocide, and asked for their arrest—the ruling is acknowledged to be largely symbolic and unlikely to be carried out.La Audiencia pide interrogar al ex presidente chino Jiang por genocidio , 14 November 2009, El MundoLuis Andres Henao, Argentine judge asks China arrests over Falun Gong , 22 December 2009Argentine Judge Orders Arrest of Top Chinese Communist Party Officials for Crimes Against Humanity 20 December 2009 The court in Spain also indicted Bo Xilai, Jia Qinglin and Wu Guanzheng. Falun Gong practitioners and their supporters also filed a lawsuit in May 2011 against the technology company Cisco Systems, alleging that the company helped design and implement a surveillance system for the Chinese government to suppress Falun Gong. Cisco denied customizing their technology for this purpose.Terry Baynes, 'Suit claims Cisco helped China repress religious group' , Reuters, 20 May 2011. Falun Gong outside China Falun Gong practitioners outside China hold events such as this group exercise in Los Angeles Falun Gong procession in Dublin on May 6, 2017 Li Hongzhi began teaching Falun Gong internationally in March 1995. His first stop was in Paris where, at the invitation of the Chinese ambassador, he held a lecture seminar at the PRC embassy. This was followed by lectures in Sweden in May 1995. Between 1995 and 1999, Li gave lectures in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, and Singapore. Falun Gong's growth outside China largely corresponded to the migration of students from Mainland China to the West in the early- to mid-1990s. Falun Gong associations and clubs began appearing in Europe, North America and Australia, with activities centered mainly on university campuses. Translations of Falun Gong teachings began appearing in the late 1990s. As the practice began proliferating outside China, Li Hongzhi was beginning to receive recognition in the United States and elsewhere in the western world. In May 1999, Li was welcomed to Toronto with greetings from the city's mayor and the provincial lieutenant governor, and in the two months that followed also received recognition from the cities of Chicago and San Jose. Although the practice was beginning to attract an overseas constituency in the 1990s, it remained relatively unknown outside China until the Spring of 1999, when tensions between Falun Gong and Communist Party authorities became a subject of international media coverage. With the increased attention, the practice gained a greater following outside China. Following the launch of the Communist Party's suppression campaign against Falun Gong, the overseas presence became vital to the practice's resistance in China and its continued survival. 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. International reception Since 1999, numerous Western governments and human rights organizations have expressed condemnation of the Chinese government's suppression of Falun Gong. Since 1999, members of the United States Congress have made public pronouncements and introduced several resolutions in support of Falun Gong. In 2010, U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 605 called for "an immediate end to the campaign to persecute, intimidate, imprison, and torture Falun Gong practitioners", condemned the Chinese authorities' efforts to distribute "false propaganda" about the practice worldwide, and expressed sympathy to persecuted Falun Gong practitioners and their families.United States House Resolution 605 , United States Government Printing Office, 17 March 2010Einhorn, Bruce, (17 March 2010). "Congress Challenges China on Falun Gong & Yuan, Businessweek Adam Frank writes that in reporting on the Falun Gong, the Western tradition of casting the Chinese as "exotic" took dominance, and that while the facts were generally correct in Western media coverage, "the normalcy that millions of Chinese practitioners associated with the practice had all but disappeared."Frank 2004, p. 241 David Ownby wrote that alongside these tactics, the "cult" label applied to Falun Gong by the Chinese authorities never entirely went away in the minds of some Westerners, and the stigma still plays a role in wary public perceptions of Falun Gong.Ownby (2000), p. 248 To counter the support of Falun Gong in the West, the Chinese government expanded their efforts against the group internationally. This included visits to newspaper officers by diplomats to "extol the virtues of Communist China and the evils of Falun Gong",Turley-Ewart, John, "Falun Gong persecution spreads to Canada: Ottawa does little ", National Post, 20 March 2004 linking support for Falun Gong with "jeopardizing trade relations", and sending letters to local politicians telling them to withdraw support for the practice. According to Perry Link, pressure on Western institutions also takes more subtle forms, including academic self-censorship, whereby research on Falun Gong could result in a denial of visa for fieldwork in China; or exclusion and discrimination from business and community groups who have connections with China and fear angering the Communist Party.Perry Link, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Chinese censorship today , 27 May 2005. Although the persecution of Falun Gong has drawn considerable condemnation outside China, some observers assert that Falun Gong has failed to attract the level of sympathy and sustained attention afforded to other Chinese dissident groups. Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, has said most Americans are aware of the suppression of "Tibetan Buddhists and unregistered Christian groups or pro- democracy and free speech advocates such as Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei", and yet "know little to nothing about China's assault on the Falun Gong".Katrina Lantos Swett and Mary Ann Glendon, "U.S. should press China over Falun Gong" , CNN, 23 July 2013. Ethan Gutmann, a journalist reporting on China since the early 1990s, has attempted to explain this apparent dearth of public sympathy for Falun Gong as stemming, in part, from the group's shortcomings in public relations. Unlike the democracy activists or Tibetans, who have found a comfortable place in Western perceptions, "Falun Gong marched to a distinctly Chinese drum", Gutmann writes. Moreover, practitioners' attempts at getting their message across carried some of the uncouthness of Communist party culture, including a perception that practitioners tended to exaggerate, create "torture tableaux straight out of a Cultural Revolution opera", or "spout slogans rather than facts". This is coupled with a general doubtfulness in the West of persecuted refugees. 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.Ethan Gutmann, "Carrying a Torch for China" , Weekly Standard, 21 April 2008 Richard Madsen writes that Falun Gong lacks robust backing from the American constituencies that usually support religious freedom. For instance, Falun Gong's conservative moral beliefs have alienated some liberal constituencies in the West (e.g. its teachings against promiscuity and homosexual behavior). Christian conservatives, by contrast, do not accord the practice the same space as persecuted Chinese Christians.Richard Madsen, "Understanding Falun Gong", p. 247. Madsen charges that the American political center does not want to push the human rights issue so hard that it would disrupt commercial and political relations with China. Thus, Falun Gong practitioners have largely had to rely on their own resources in responding to suppression. In August 2007, the newly reestablished Rabbinic Sanhedrin deliberated persecution of the movement by the Chinese government at the request of Falun Gong. Political involvement The Epoch Times and Shen Yun The performance arts group Shen Yun and the media organization The Epoch Times are the major outreach organizations of Falun Gong. Both promote the spiritual and political teachings of Falun Gong. They and a variety of other organizations such as New Tang Dynasty Television (NTD) operate as extensions of Falun Gong. These extensions promote the new religious movement and its teachings. In the case of The Epoch Times, they also promote conspiracy theories and far-right politics in both Europe and the United States. Particularly during the 2016 United States presidential election, The Epoch Times has been promoting conspiracy theories and extreme right-wing political views. According to a 2020 report by the Los Angeles magazine: > Both Shen Yun and Epoch Times are funded and operated by members of Falun > Gong, a controversial spiritual group that was banned by China's government > in 1999. [...] Falun Gong melds traditional Taoist principles with > occasionally bizarre pronouncements from its Chinese-born founder and > leader, Li Hongzhi. Among other pronouncements, Li has claimed that aliens > started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading > to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced > feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and > levitate. But the central tenet of the group’s wide-ranging belief system is > its fierce opposition to communism. In 2000, Li founded Epoch Times to > disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers. Six years later > he launched Shen Yun as another vehicle to promote his teachings to > mainstream Western audiences. Over the years Shen Yun and Epoch Times, while > nominally separate organizations, have operated in tandem in Falun Gong's > ongoing PR campaign against the Chinese government, taking directions from > Li. Despite its conservative agenda, Epoch Times took pains until recently > to avoid wading into partisan U.S. politics. That all changed in June 2015 > after Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator to announce his > presidential candidacy, proclaiming that he "beat China all the time." In > Trump, Falun Gong saw more than just an ally—it saw a savior. As a former > Epoch Times editor told NBC News, the group's leaders "believe that Trump > was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party." Falun Gong extensions have also been active in promoting the European alt- right. The exact financial and structural connections between Falun Gong, Shen Yun and The Epoch Times remains unclear. 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. Falun Gong’s founder has referred to Epoch Media Group > as "our media," and the group’s practice heavily informs The Epoch Times' > coverage, according to former employees who spoke with NBC News. The Epoch > Times, digital production company NTD and the heavily advertised dance > troupe Shen Yun make up the nonprofit network that Li calls "our media." > Financial documents paint a complicated picture of more than a dozen > technically separate organizations that appear to share missions, money and > executives. Though the source of their revenue is unclear, the most recent > financial records from each organization paint a picture of an overall > business thriving in the Trump era.Collins, Zadrozny & Ben Collins. 2019. > "Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise > of The Epoch Times". NBC News. August 20, 2019. Online . See also * Freedom of religion in China * Human rights in China * List of new religious movements * Qigong fever * Religion in China References Further reading * External links * Meditation New religious movements Political abuses of psychiatry Qigong "