GURU or charlatan? That is the burning question facing the claimed 100 million disciples who follow a man they call 'Master Li'.
Until last week, Li Hongzhi was known to followers as the tall, charismatic, robed teacher of Falun Gong, a meditation technique which has proved spectacularly successful on the mainland while attracting a considerable following in Hong Kong and around the world.
That was until Beijing outlawed his teachings and orchestrated a smear campaign of Mr Li in the wake of the silent protest conducted by 10,000 of his followers outside Communist Party headquarters in April, the biggest since the 1989 student demonstrations.
As part of the hatchet job, the mainland's state-run newspapers on Friday reviled Mr Li as a greedy, evil leader of a dangerous cult. They carried horrifying accounts of disciples who had killed or maimed themselves, blaming the Falun Gong for their deaths and injuries.
There was the retired oil worker in Hubei who spent much of his time in a trance, insisting he had a wheel of law (part of Mr Li's teachings) in his stomach and who died when he cut himself open with scissors to take a look at it.
And the clerk in Jiangsu province who was convinced he was a Buddha and chopped his wife to death when she tried to stop him from practising.
The vicious official denunciation of Mr Li begs the question: who is this mysterious man who has attracted such a huge following and drawn Beijing's wrath? The recluse has been emerging since the April protest from his new headquarters in New York and on the Internet - which he has used masterfully to help build his following - to defend his teachings.