Li Hongzhi, a former government grain clerk and railway worker, claims his practices can open your Celestial Eye, allowing you to see through walls and obstacles. (He won't teach these practices to just anyone, though… if he did, "state secrets would be jeopardized; it would be the same whether people wore clothes or not … [and] you could pick up all the top prizes of the lottery.") He also claims that there is a 2 billion year old nuclear reactor in Africa, and that human footprints have been found alongside contemporaneous trilobite fossils. It would be easy enough to dismiss Hongzhi as a crackpot. And yet the Chinese government considers him and his movement, Falun Dafa (better known in the United States as "Falun Gong") to be the biggest challenge for China's ruling party since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Falun Dafa is a school of Qi Gong, an ancient Chinese science of energy manipulation. (T'ai Chi is probably the most well-known of these schools in the West). Combining mediation and movement exercises with the "meridiens" (energy pathways) used in accupuncture, Qi Gong claims to improve health and vitality. Hongzhi studied various schools of Qi Gong for years, yet declared that all were unsatisfactory… that they were only "lower-level" practices which would cause a practitioner more harm than good. To these exercises (the Xiu Lian), Hongzhi added a spiritual discipline called "cultivation of the Xinxing." Drawing from Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, Falun Dafa promises to help its followers "cultivate their Gong" and put them in touch with the cosmic Buddhas and supernatural beings… and help them avoid being tempted or attacked by demonic forces, including the ones which are currently sailing through Chinese skies in flying saucers.

At first the Chinese government took no interest in Hongzhi's teachings, even as his books and videotapes became increasingly popular throughout China. They became increasingly worried as the numbers of Falun Gong practitioners increased. By some accounts the Falun Gong organization was larger than the Chinese Communist Party: its literature claimed over 100 million members. The quantity of members was troubling, but so too was the quality. This movement claimed widespread support in rural regions, among workers and uneducated peasants - but it also included among its members retired Communist party elders and military officials. Faced with a perceived threat to its power, the government reacted with typical brutality. Hongzhi was forced to relocate to the United States; he remains in New York, communicating with the faithful in China and around the world via satellite conferences and the Internet.

The Chinese have continued their attacks on the Falun Gong movement. Over 200,000 followers of Falun Gong have been arrested; hundreds have died in custody, and there are widespread reports of beatings and torture. Hongzhi has informed his followers that suffering can help "improve their Karma" and has urged them to continue protesting, implying that those who have gone underground have "reached understanding with the evil beings" and telling them that they can use their supernatural powers against the government by pointing at "police and other evildoers" and thinking "FREEZE!" In January several Falun Gong practitioners set themselves afire in Tianamen Square: this did not help their cause, but rather served to convince many Chinese that there was something to the onslaught of government propaganda claiming that Falun Gong made its practitioners insane and advocated violence against the government.

The Chinese government's reaction to Hongzhi and the Falun Gong movement may seem to be a gross overreaction … but there have been other incidents in Chinese history which may lead them to err on the side of caution. In 1850 Hung Xiuquan, a Chinese farmer and aspiring bureaucrat, had a vision which led him to believe that he was Christ's younger brother. Gathering a mass following, he proceeded to launch a military action to bring about "God's Kingdom on Earth." Ultimately the Taiping revolutionaries established a theocratic-military government over large sections of south and central China, including the southern capital of Nanking. By the time Xiuquan was killed and the Taiping Rebellion put down with the aid of British and French troops, fourteen years had passed and an estimated twenty to thirty million people had died. As China has slowly opened to the outside world, many observers have noted the spiritual vacuum which has claimed many Chinese. Buddhist temples are regularly crowded to capacity, and some observers have noted a 1,000% increase in the number of professing Chinese Christians. Hongzhi Li's movement may seem harmless, even silly, to outsiders… but under the right circumstances, it might very well pose a regime-challenging threat to China.