High-profile Falun Gong Practitioner in Beijing Dies Under Intense Surveillance After 15 Years’ Imprisonment

Mr. Zhiwen Wang, a former volunteer contact person of the Falun Gong Research Association and one of the most well-known victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution campaign against Falun Gong, passed away at the Capital Medical University Affiliated Beijing Shijitan Hospital on October 16.

”It [is] with the greatest sadness that I share my father, Zhiwen Wang, passed away on October 16, 2025 in Beijing, China,” updated Wang’s daughter Danielle on a website advocating for his freedom. ”Although Zhiwen’s [freedom] was still restricted, he lived his life nobly and shared his compassionate view with everyone he came into contact with. Even in the face of decades of injustice, he bore no grudge against anyone.”

According to Danielle Wang, in October 2025, he was taken to a hospital in Beijing against his will where he passed away under suspicious circumstances. A group of police monitored his room and even video recorded the final days of his life.

”In the months leading up to his death, the local police asked when I would return to China, claiming they would use all of their power to enable my safe return,” says Danielle Wang. ”In all the years of persecution, they never did us any favors. If they truly cared about my father, they should have used their power to enable my father safe passage to the US! As long as the persecution continues, we still your need help to raise awareness. We need to ensure the tragic fate of my beloved father does not end in vain.”

Former volunteer contact person sentenced

An engineer at the Ministry of Railways, Mr. Wang served as one of the volunteer contact persons for the former Falun Gong Research Association, which was officially approved by the China Qigong Research Association in 1993. The association promoted Falun Gong as a beneficial qigong practice before formally separating from the state-run qigong body in 1996. 

In April 1999, Mr. Wang was among several practitioners who met with then–Premier Zhu Rongji during the peaceful appeal of 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners in Beijing. Just three months later, on July 19, 1999, he was arrested—one day before the CCP formally launched its nationwide persecution campaign against Falun Gong.

In December 1999, Chinese state media announced that Mr. Wang had been sentenced to 16 years in prison for his faith, alongside several other former contact persons such as Mr. Chang Li and Mr. Liewu Ji. Amnesty International’s March 2000 report described the trial as the most high-profile case against Falun Gong practitioners that year and “grossly unfair.” 

”The date of Wang’s sentencing was meaningful – December 26, 1999. This was one of the first examples of the regime strategically using the Christmas holidays for a high-profile dissident trial, when international policymakers and media would not be paying attention,” recalls Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center. ”As we were celebrating with our families in the United States, I remember seeing the photo of him standing in China at his show trial. Up until that point, there had not been such a highly publicized sentencing nor such long prison terms meted out to Falun Gong practitioners. It was a very grave moment.”

Reports later revealed that Mr. Wang endured severe torture in Qianjin Prison. He was savagely beaten, lost all his teeth, and once had his collarbone fractured after being deprived of sleep for seven consecutive days. Guards took turns watching him around the clock, ensuring he could never rest. His case drew widespread international concern. It was documented by the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) and recognized by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission’s Defending Freedoms Project as that of a prisoner of conscience. Mr. Wang’s name also appeared repeatedly in the U.S. State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Reports.

From prison to house arrest

Released one year early in October 2014, Mr. Wang’s ordeal was far from over. He was immediately taken from the prison gates to a “brainwashing center,” where authorities attempted to coerce him into renouncing his beliefs. When he was finally allowed home, he lived under relentless surveillance—his every movement tracked by security cameras, regular police visits, and neighborhood informants. On politically “sensitive days,” he was ordered to remain indoors.

Danielle Wang, who was 19 and studying in the U.S. when her father was first imprisoned, never stopped fighting for his freedom. 

She managed to speak with him briefly by phone upon his release in 2014—a deeply emotional conversation after 15 years of separation. In 2016, she finally reunited with him in Beijing after 18 years apart. However, when Mr. Wang attempted to visit her in the U.S., his passport was confiscated at customs, and he was again placed under house arrest. 

In her 2017 testimony before the CECC, Danielle described the conditions her father continued to face:

“Now that my father has returned home to Beijing, there are agents literally camping outside his front door 24 hours a day. While he may not be in prison, he is monitored and followed as if he was. This is entirely an extension of persecution against him as a Falun Dafa practitioner.”

Until his final days, Mr. Wang lived under heavy restrictions, his every move watched. His passing marks not only the end of a decades-long personal ordeal but also a solemn reminder of the enduring human cost of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

”Zhiwen Wang’s story sadly epitomizes the CCP’s 26 year long persecution against Falun Gong practitioners. An ordinary Chinese man, sentenced in a show trial to 16 years in prison and tortured, simply for helping organize fellow citizens to meditate and find spiritual fulfillment,” says Browde. ”Yet, he held no grudges. Still, even after release, the regime would not let him live his life or reunite with his family, while keeping him under strict surveillance even on his deathbed. The CCP may act like a confident bully on the international stage, but Wang’s case reveals how deeply fragile and afraid the regime is below that façade.”