The China expert warned about the gravity of the situation, saying that the CCP’s influence has deeply infiltrated democratic countries.
In response to The New York Times’s recent attempts to smear the spiritual practice Falun Gong and its affiliated groups through a series of articles, a Chinese scholar emphasizes the need to view these reports within the broader context of the global threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He also points out that Falun Gong practitioners outside of China have played a key role in exposing the CCP’s abuses and inspiring a grassroots movement against its authoritarian rule.
In a recent interview with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times, Chinese scholar Yuan Hongbing said The New York Times’s attempt to discredit organizations founded by Falun Gong practitioners and the practice itself is not an isolated incident but rather a coordinated effort aligned with the CCP’s propaganda campaign both inside and outside China.
“Other than The New York Times, several bloggers have published a series of commentaries on Falun Gong that go beyond standard critique and have aligned with the CCP’s propaganda campaigns, contributing to the Party’s broader attacks against Falun Gong,” he said.
Yuan is also a former law professor at Peking University who lives in exile in Australia. He has remained connected to Beijing’s top political circles and has long studied the CCP’s authoritarian regime.
CCP Escalates Persecution of Falun Gong
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, was first introduced to the public in China in 1992. Its moral teachings and five meditative exercises exploded in popularity, and by the late 1990s, official estimates put the number of people practicing Falun Gong at between 70 million and 100 million.
In July 1999, the CCP, out of fear that the practice’s popularity would undermine its totalitarian rule, launched a sweeping campaign to eradicate the practice. Since then, millions of practitioners have been arbitrarily detained in prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands having been tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.
By Mary Hong
