The Chinese regime is engaged in a long-term campaign to target the spiritual group Falun Gong in the United States.
Over the past few years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has escalated attacks of some of its most vocal critics in the United States, deploying a comprehensive playbook to silence them.
The operation has highlighted the level of infiltration and influence the CCP possesses in the United States. If the plan gains traction, the CCP is likely to use the same toolkit against other targets, experts told The Epoch Times.
The operation kicked into high gear in 2022, when CCP leader Xi Jinping complained to top officials that practitioners of Falun Gong, a faith group persecuted by the CCP in China, have been increasingly effective at exposing the CCP’s crimes overseas, several internal sources told Chinese dissident and legal scholar Yuan Hongbin last year.
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According to the sources, Xi chastised the officials, saying their previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong overseas were ineffective and ordered a new campaign that would focus on the most prominent companies started by Falun Gong practitioners abroad. Those include Shen Yun Performing Arts, a premier classical Chinese dance and music company that puts on hundreds of performances a year under the tagline “China before communism,” as well as several media companies, including The Epoch Times and NTD.
Shen Yun, it appears, has borne the brunt of the new campaign, facing legal warfare; hit pieces in Western media and from social media influencers; attacks by social media bots and trolls; and even bomb threats and death threats.
Falun Gong practitioners have faced brutal persecution in China since 1999, involving imprisonment, torture, and even forced organ harvesting. Incessant harassment by the regime’s henchmen has extended to American soil.
The CCP sees Shen Yun as undermining its ideological grip on China and the image it presents to the world, which in turn threatens its grip on power and its ambition for dominance overseas, multiple experts previously told The Epoch Times.
The State Department on Feb. 7 denounced the CCP’s continued targeting of Shen Yun, telling The Epoch Times: “We condemn such acts of intimidation and urge protection of the right to free expression.
“We urge the Chinese Communist Party to end its now 25-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”
The spokesperson added that the department’s annual international religious freedom report has documented “incidents of interference against Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun Performing Arts in many countries.”
Several CCP whistleblowers came forward last year with more details about the anti-Falun Gong campaign.
The campaign mainly relies on information laundering via social media influencers and Western media outlets that can’t easily be traced back to the CCP. In tandem, it utilizes the U.S. legal and law enforcement system to go after companies started by Falun Gong practitioners, particularly Shen Yun, the whistleblowers said.
The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, personally oversees the campaign, one whistleblower said, though other agencies are also involved, including the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
Notably, officials believe the Ministry of State Security to also be behind other high-profile operations in the United States, including the “Salt Typhoon” attack that hit most of the U.S. telecommunications system and targeted top political figures.
The campaign is particularly pernicious for its use of undercover MPS operatives in the United States, according to the whistleblower, who said, “Once these people are mobilized, the threat is very high.”
By Petr Svab
