What is the Relationship between The Epoch Times and Falun Gong?

Falun Gong is the faith of John Tang, the founder and CEO of The Epoch Times. It is also one of the main reasons he decided to establish The Epoch Times.

John was able to leave China following the events on Tiananmen Square in 1989, after being thoroughly shocked by the brutality and deception of the communist regime against their own people. In 1995, two years after he had arrived in the United States, a friend of his introduced him to Falun Gong. He took up the practice after his life had been enhanced by its principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Tolerance.

Yet, in 1999, he would witness the second round of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brutality and deception when it began to suppress Falun Gong practitioners. Furthermore, John noted that this time, it wasn’t just the media in China that printed the CCP’s defamatory messaging about the practice. Many big media outlets either parroted the CCP's narrative or turned a blind eye to the situation.

This phenomenon motivated him to take matters into his own hands. He knew that to be able to always print the truth, a media had to be completely independent from any corporation, government, or political party. Those are the founding principles of The Epoch Times and remain so to this day.

Another vision that John had for The Epoch Times is to make it a place where people who still seek truth and goodness can come together. He wanted them to know that there are people out there just like them, who will fight for the things that they value—that even in the deluge of information that we’re all subject to, there are people who care about the things that matter to them.

Since 2000, we have grown into a multinational media that spans 36 countries and 22 languages. Our goal remains steadfast in its resolve to present what we see, not dictate how to think; we strive to deliver you a factual picture of reality that lets you form your own opinions.