(Minghui.org)
Name: Wang Zhiwen Chinese Name: 王治文 Gender: Male Age: 76 City: Beijing Province: N/A Occupation: Railway engineer Date of Death: October 16, 2025 Date of Most Recent Arrest: October 18, 2014 Most Recent Place of Detention: A brainwashing center
Mr. Wang Zhiwen died at the Capital Medical University Affiliated Beijing Shijitan Hospital on October 16, 2025. The cause of his death was listed as “cerebral infarction,” but his daughter, Ms. Danielle Wang, who lives in the U.S., doubted it, given the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) history of covering up the truth.
Danielle also told Minghui.org that police were present at the hospital while her father was dying, and they video-recorded everything. The next day they went to her relative’s home to question if her father had a will. They searched the relative’s home and found her father’s household registration and house deed, and took pictures of the documents before leaving.
Mr. Wang, an engineer at the Ministry of Railways, was a contact person for the former Falun Gong Research Association. He was one of the few Falun Gong practitioners who had a meeting with then-premier Zhu Rongju on April 25, 1999, when about 10,000 Falun Gong practitioners gathered in Beijing to request the release of a group of practitioners who had been arrested in nearby Tianjin.
Mr. Wang was arrested on July 19, 1999, the day before the CCP formally launched a nationwide campaign against Falun Gong. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison and released one year ahead of time in October 2014.
Mr. Wang was taken back into custody on October 18, 2014, and put in a brainwashing center. After he was released, he was put under around-the-clock house surveillance. His daughter Danielle, who went to the U.S. at age 18 in December 1998 to pursue her undergraduate studies, managed to return to Beijing in 2016 with her husband and saw her father for the first time in 18 years. She helped her father apply for a visa to visit her in the U.S.
Mr. Wang, however, was stopped at customs on August 6, 2016. His passport was confiscated and invalidated on the spot. He was again put under house surveillance.
More About Falun Gong Research Association
The Falun Gong Research Association, also known as the Falun Dafa Research Association or the Beijing Falun Gong Research Association, was established in 1993. Its full name was the “Falun Gong Research Branch of the China Qigong Research Association.” The reason for the association with the China Qigong Research Association was that starting on June 25, 1992, Master Li Hongzhi held several consecutive in-person teaching lectures in Beijing. These lectures were sponsored by the China Qigong Research Association, with its leaders attending and giving talks at the lectures. They approved of Falun Gong as an excellent qigong practice to be promoted both domestically and internationally.
In 1993, the China Qigong Research Association officially approved Falun Gong as a directly affiliated qigong school, and established a Falun Gong Research Branch, abbreviated as the “Falun Gong Research Association.”
Master Li taught Falun Gong across China for two and a half years. In September 1994, he informed the China Qigong Research Association that there would be no further teaching in China. In March 1996, Master Li instructed several volunteer contact persons, including Mr. Wang, to submit a formal request to the China Qigong Research Association, asking to dissociate from it. The withdrawal request was then formally approved. From then on, the “Falun Gong Research Association” was history, but the CCP continued to use it to slander Falun Gong.
Contact Persons Retaliated Against
Mr. Wang was not the only contact person from the former Falun Gong Research Association to be given heavy sentences. Mr. Li Chang and Mr. Ji Liewu, two other contact persons of the former Falun Gong Research Association, were tried with Mr. Wang on December 26, 1999, and sentenced to 18 and 12 years, respectively.
Mr. Yu Changxin, a retired military colonel-level officer and former professor at the Air Force Command College, was sentenced to 17 years on January 6, 2000, per an order from Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese dictator who initiated the persecution. Mr. Yu filed an appeal, and several high-ranking generals also stood up for him.
According to insiders, as early as July 1, 1999, the General Political Department and the Air Force set up a special task force of over 20 people to isolate and investigate Mr. Yu. They failed to find any evidence to justify disciplinary action against him despite trying various tactics including deception, intimidation, sleep deprivation, and house raids. Jiang still ordered the court to sentence him.
Mr. Wang Tortured in Prison
Danielle, then 19 and studying in the U.S., was heartbroken when she watched a TV program on December 26, 1999 announcing that her father had been sentenced to 16 years that day for his faith in Falun Gong.
A Falun Gong practitioner herself, Danielle was unable to return to China to visit her father or even call him, fearing that the communist regime’s surveillance might jeopardize her or her father’s safety. She learned from insiders how her father was being tortured in the Qianjin Prison. He was beaten savagely and had lost all of his teeth. He was once deprived of sleep for seven straight days. The guards had four 4-inmate groups take turns watching him around the clock. As soon as he closed his eyes, they beat him, once fracturing his collarbone.
The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released its 2015 Report on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in China on October 8, 2015. The report stated that human rights and legal conditions in China were continuing to deteriorate, with the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners unabated. The report cited the cases of several Falun Gong practitioners, including Mr. Wang. The report also stated that the international community believed that the CCP has not stopped its state-sanctioned organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners.