If violence and torture have been routine in communist China as the regime strives to silence dissident voices, Beijing’s bid to do so globally appears to be taking on a more cunning form.
While during the decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1970s intellectuals and other so-called class enemies got a dunce cap on their heads and were paraded down the streets for public humiliation, today’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “using mechanisms of [Western] democracy to do their bidding,” Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, told The Epoch Times.
“I think we’ve never faced a dilemma quite like this.”
The Epoch Times reported last week that in a 2022 secret meeting, CCP leader Xi Jinping declared previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong, a faith group that the Chinese regime has tried since 1999 to eradicate, as a failure. He told officials to focus on disinformation and lawfare, taking advantage of social media and outlets with no clear ties to the regime to discredit Falun Gong.
“This is an authoritarian regime trying to snuff people out. It’s just they’re not using labor camps,” Browde said. “Because, by and large, in the U.S. those mechanisms don’t exist.”
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Levi Browde, executive director of Falun Dafa Information Center, speaks in an interview with NTD in New York, on Nov. 27, 2024. (Otabius Williams/The Epoch Times)
To Browde, the directive from Xi has helped to explain a pattern that he has observed and documented, especially over the past year. As the world observes Human Rights Day on Dec. 10, he said, he hopes his organization can help people in the West connect the dots.
“It’s much more deceiving now,” he said. The media, judiciary, and government agencies, “these are the things that people believe in the West,” and the CCP is now leveraging them to “destroy a different voice.”
Since The Epoch Times’ exclusive report on the meeting, a number of lawmakers have expressed alarm and vowed to take action.
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Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) arrives in New York City on May 16, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
“The CCP’s latest efforts to persecute Falun Gong practitioners will not go unnoticed in the 119th Congress,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) told The Epoch Times.
Ogles is a sponsor of the Falun Gong Protection Act, which aims to deter the regime’s forced organ harvesting that primarily targets the spiritual group, but also targets Christians and Uyghur Muslims.
“The CCP, like most rogue regimes, only understands strength. If the CCP insists on marginalizing or harming the Falun Gong group here in the United States, Congress must be prepared to respond forcefully.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a member of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said that International Human Rights Day is a reminder that “we all need to recommit ourselves to upholding a high standard of human rights for every person on this planet.”
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Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) speaks during a House Rules Committee hearing in Washington on Dec. 17, 2019. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
“The Chinese government, sadly, has had a horrific human rights record, and they have attacked numerous groups in China, and some of these attacks have come in the most vicious forms,” McGovern told The Epoch Times.
“It’s important for everybody, not just U.S. legislators … to stand up and denounce that,” he said, adding that the United States needs to hold the CCP to account for its transnational suppression activities so that people who gained freedom in America won’t need to once again live in fear.
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Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) at the U.S. Capitol on May 19, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The new pivot in the attack campaign is “deeply concerning,” but not surprising, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) told The Epoch Times. Following the exposure of a secret Chinese police station in New York, Tiffany proposed a bill calling for the United States to shutter the Chinese consulate in the city and expel its Chinese diplomats to push back against Chinese communist influence operations. In January, he said, he hopes Congress can “get back to cracking down on the CCP’s transnational intimidation campaign by kicking out spies who are masquerading as diplomats and closing down their offices.”
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People attend a press conference and rally highlighting Beijing’s transnational repression, in front of the America ChangLe Association which held a now-closed secret Chinese police station, in New York City on Feb. 25, 2023. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Recently, dozens of social media accounts have emerged that target Falun Gong and Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based performing arts group founded by Falun Gong practitioners that showcases China prior to the communist takeover in 1949, as well as modern scenes of the CCP’s persecution of the faith.
Over the summer, two whistleblowers leaked internal meeting notes showing Chinese officials being instructed to feed disparaging materials to a particular social media influencer, who has taken credit for making inroads in attacking Shen Yun.
U.S. prosecutors have recently sentenced two Chinese agents who tried to bribe the IRS into acting against Shen Yun. The two also traveled to New York’s Orange County, the location of Shen Yun’s headquarters, to surveil Falun Gong practitioners there while collecting materials to furnish “the basis for a potential environmental lawsuit meant to inhibit the growth of the Falun Gong community in Orange County,” according to court documents.
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Delegates and security stand in the entranceway to the auditorium before the closing session of the National Peoples Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 11, 2024. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Targeting Falun Gong at this particular time suits the regime’s political goals, according to Wang Zhiyuan, who heads human rights group the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, which has been probing reports of forced organ harvesting in Chinese hospitals.
He pointed to the economic and political turmoil that the regime has faced in the past two years. Suppressing Falun Gong, which has been a top target for the regime for over two decades, is a way for Beijing’s leaders to draw attention away from domestic problems.
This has always been the regime’s modus operandi, Wang told The Epoch Times.
“They target a small group of people for persecution so as to scare off the rest,” Wang said. “It’s an act of survival.”
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Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) speaks during a news conference with members of the House Freedom Caucus outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 28, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
With the CCP being an adversary, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said the United States “should have increased scrutiny on all their activities and with the mindset that they would do these things purposefully.”
“We can’t have our adversaries using our systems, our administrative systems … to violate people’s basic civil and human rights,” Perry said.
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Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) in Washington on Nov. 30, 2021. (Shannon Finney/Getty Images for 20th Century Studios)
Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) voiced a similar view.
“The United States needs to use diplomatic and economic policy to help promote civil liberties and protect minorities in China,” Soto told The Epoch Times.
There are real consequences if the United States allows the operations to go unchecked, said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
“Giving them the opportunity to have immunity to attack people in American soil or international soil legitimizes what they’re doing,” she told The Epoch Times.
“That’s the most dangerous part.”
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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 26, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Sherry Dong contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times