American Thought Leaders - Bribery, Lawfare, and Media Smears: The CCP’s Campaign to Destroy a Religious Group in America—Erping Zhang

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is stepping up its efforts to destroy a religious group in America that it sees as a threat to its rule, according to leaked information from multiple CCP insiders.Tactics include lawfare, bomb threats, smear campaigns, impersonation attempts, and bribing U.S. officials. The Department of Justice sentenced a Chinese agent for trying to bribe an IRS agent to target practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline.So what’s going on exactly? And why would this be a priority for the Chinese regime?Today, I’m sitting down with Erping Zhang, president of the International Falun Dafa Association.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

According to leaked information from several CCP insiders, the Chinese regime is stepping up its efforts to destroy a religious group in America. Department of Justice has recently sentenced two Chinese agents who tried to bribe IRS. And the DOJ also recently indicted a former Verizon employee who spies for China on Falun Gong practitioners. Insiders say that General Secretary Xi Jinping himself issued a new strategy to target the group overseas. They are using disinformation campaign, using violence threats, bomb threats, shooting threats, and they are using lawfare. They are trying to

weaponize our judicial system to persecute individual American citizens and community. Today, I'm sitting down with Erping Zhang, who's the president of the International Falun Dafa Association. Who is New York Times helping right now with amounts of non-articles against persecuted religious communities? What is going on behind all this? This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Erping Zhang, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me here today. Erping, here on American soil, the Chinese regime is persecuting Falun Gong practitioners,

Chinese Americans. This thing has been escalated, as we understand from reporting that we've done at Epoch Times. We've gotten some insider information from a dissident in Australia and then corroborated with others that Xi Jinping, the Chinese dictator himself, has elevated these efforts to the level of the Minister of State Security in China. But there's this focus here on Americans. What's going on? The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security, they have appointed someone to be in charge of anti-falun gong in North America.

So this persecution has really been exported overseas. Here in North America, in New York City, they have the Chinese police station on American soil. Now they are using different ways to really persecute Falun Gong through lawfare. Foreign nationals using American law, judicial system, to persecute American citizens, American companies. And then you have the disinformation campaign. The Chinese government using social media and the free media platform to defame Falun Gong here, and try to turn American society and the American government against this religious community.

They really try to co-opt the U.S. government to look into Falun Gong. And we have actually evidence of that because the Department of Justice has recently sentenced two Chinese agents who tried to bribe IRS to strip the tax exempt status of Shen Ying performing arts, which is run by Falun Gong practitioners. And the DOJ also recently, you know, indicted a former Verizon employee who spies, you know, indicted a former Verizon employee who spies for China unfathomable practitioners here in the United States. And in terms of the lawfare, someone who lived in China for over 15 years in China with a Chinese wife and came back to the United States and registered a so-called environmental group and then filed complaints about the pollution of the Dragon Spring, which is the training

ground for the Shen Yun Performing Arts Group. The judges threw out the complaints multiple times, and finally threw out the case with prejudice, which means you cannot file the same complaint again. It's very peculiar. And they also resort to violence here in America. They sent bomb-shooting threats to American theaters that host Shen Yun Performing Arts Company and to the headquarters of Shen Yun Performing Arts Company and to individuals who support Falun Gong. This is brutal, state-sponsored terrorism in the United States, in our own backyard. This is really not a domestic issue.

It's not just a regular transnational repression act. It's really a risk to the level of national security. How can we allow foreign government, you know, making efforts to weaponize American legal system and to prosecute American citizens and American companies. If we allow this to happen, they could do this to any American citizens or any American companies or entities they dislike. So this should not be tolerated at all. And these kinds of efforts are from the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party. So we have been tipped in the spring of 2024 that they have this scheme to eradicate the

Falun Gong community worldwide, especially in the United States. This is why it's not coincidental to see all these forms of persecution efforts escalate, especially in recent months. It's very peculiar. While the CCP has this plan being implemented in North America, especially here in the United States, the New York Times within months published nine articles against Falun Gong. It's a very peculiar time. I think our government should look into what is going on. And oddly, they use the same playbook the CCP has been using against Falun Gong. I remember in 1999, when Falun Gong was the first encounter, this persecution, Jiang Zemin,

the CCP leader back then, called for three things. One is physically destroy Falun Gong, which means they'll imprison, torture the Falun Gong practitioners if they don they refuse to renounce their belief and faith, and kill them even. And the second thing is to financially exhaust Falun Gong, which means if you are a Falun Gong practitioner, you refuse to give up your faith and belief and give up the practice, you lose your job. If you're a student, you lose your education.

If you're a military person, you lose your job. If you're a student, you lose your education. If you're a military person, you lose your service. You have no financial means to survive. And then the third thing is to tarnish the reputation of Falun Gong and to make up stories, to lie about Falun Gong. And now we're seeing the New York Times not covering the horrific crime, the persecution of Falun Gong. They are repeating the rhetoric, the same playbook that's being used by the CCP. Let me give you two examples of the misinformation that I've been doing. Number one, they recycled the stories from the same formal streaming dancer. Some of these people have ties with China, come in China, and it's not been disclosed. Why New York Times is not recognizing and disclosing some of the people they interviewed

have ties with China? Right, like quite deep ties. That's a conflict of interest. That's a conflict of interest. People have friends who ask, where's the journalists' integrity? How can you publish on the same people who have undisclosed ties with China and then use their words against, if you are serious paper, you know, for decades, you know, people have taken your time as credible, you know, media outlets.

But this is a really raising question to everyone with good conscience. How can this happen? Secondly, on the false organ harvesting that I just discussed, the New York Times article chose to quote someone who is not a medical professional, who works at the China Center at Yale Law School, which was funded by the co-founder of Alibaba, and who claimed there was no systematic false organ harvesting. And the false organ harvesting stopped. At the same time, the New York Times' former reporter, Didi Kirsten Tetlow, who was based in Beijing, who speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, who had

meetings with Chinese surgeons, and who knew there was false organ harvesting from the prison of conscience, who was trying to dig more on this topic, and she was under pressure not to do it. And she wrote a testimony, an affidavit for China tribunal. It was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who is King's counsel and the former prosecutor, former head of Yugoslavia at ICC, and he chaired the China Tribunal, which funds in a large scale of false organ harvesting against Falun Gong practitioners. And also there are peer-reviewed medical journal articles about the false organ harvesting in China, and there have been hearings at the US Congress, European Parliament, and both European Parliament

and the US Congress have passed resolutions condemning this horrific crime after the hearings. And yet New York Times appears to be whitewashing this crime, surprising its own reporter on the story. What is going on here? Who is New York Times helping right now? Within months, nine articles against a persecuted religious community in the United States. And it raises questions about the motivation, about what is going on behind all this. Is there something else we don't know? So it really raised a lot of questions. I want to touch a little bit on this conflict. I was reviewing some of the material. It's kind

of astonishing that this dancer in Taiwan that launched this recent lawsuit against Shen Yun, for some years after she left the company, she had incredibly positive relations with her former professor. She was recruiting Shen Yun dancers. She was recommending dancers from her school to join Shen Yun. She got married, things changed, and she affiliated with the Beijing Dance Academy, which is frankly the only competition really to Shen Yun in the world, right? And affiliated with the Chinese government. And suddenly she's, you know, launching lawsuits. I mean, you would think that would be part of the story at least, right? But the thing with the New York Times, and I have to rant a little bit here for a moment. Like you said,

there's this crimes against humanity level, if not genocide, persecution happening against a massive group of people in China. The other side of it, it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, active civil disobedience movement in the world that's happening as we speak. And somehow, in nine articles across five months, The New York Times misses that part of the story and focuses just on this. I mean, that in itself to me seems kind of revealing. This country was founded by our founding father,

you know, for freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression. And now our basic rights are being violated, infringed upon by the foreign state actors, the Chinese Communist Party. We should not allow this to happen in the United States. To weaponize the media, free media platforms, and also the legal system, and allow, how can we allow violent threats to occur in this country? We need to stand up and stop this. We need to investigate and prosecute the people who

are behind this. We need to find out what is really going on here. I think the thing that is the hardest to explain, I guess, is just the incredible grassroots work that Falun Gong practitioners have done in China over the last 25 years. I think this might actually be one of the biggest untold stories. Lay this out for me, okay? Yeah. Let me give you a very brief introduction of what Falun Gong is and stands for. Falun Gong was introduced to the public in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi. It's a meditation regime in the Buddhist tradition. It has the moral principles of truthfulness, compassion, tolerance. And it comes with five sides of gentle meditation exercises. When Falun Gong was first introduced to the public, the people who benefited from practice started to pass it to their family members and friends. So it began with words of mouth.

And later on, the government found out that it really has health benefits, and also is good for the morality in society because if people follow these principles, they become better person. So the government decided to endorse the practice and showered the founder of Falun Gong and the practice with the recognition and awards and even promoted through the government venues at the beginning. And quickly the practice had a big following of 70 to 100 million people. And then when the group became so big, Jiang Zemin, who was the party leader at that time,

really felt threatened and decided to persecute this group. So on July 20, 1999, a huge ruthless campaign of persecution started. I've been talking to a Chinese scholar about why the Chinese Communist Party persecuted Falun Gong. He said it's very simple. The first word, truthfulness, will make the Chinese Communist Party disappear. Because we know, if you read all the newspapers, they're all state-run in China. There's no private media in China. And it's full of communist propaganda. If everyone's telling the truth, the regime will not be sustainable. And we have a joke in China about the People's Daily, which is the mouthpiece of the Communist

Party. The only thing that is true is the date. The resistance is widespread, sending flyers, CDs to people in their mailbox. Many individuals send faxes, send emails, and printed information from their own computer and sent it to the government officials. Some of the public security bureau chiefs were so scared because when they received emails and phone calls, sometimes from Falun Gong practitioners, Falun Gong practitioners in Europe and from Taiwan, from everywhere, they got so scared and said, well, how did

you know my name and my phone number? I don't want to get involved in the persecutions. Please take my name off your calling list because they keep getting called and saying, you shouldn't get involved in sending this person to jail, you shouldn't do this. And some of these people, officials, they have their children's relatives leaving overseas so they are really afraid to be known to be part of the persecution. So all this emailing, the phone calling, these flyers, these CDs in their mailbox really

helped to reduce the persecution pressure. Falun Gong practitioners are known to invent two famous anti-censorship software. One is called FreeGate, the other one is UltraServe. These are the two anti-internet censorship tools. Very powerful, sending information into China, allowing Chinese netizens to access overseas media and websites, social media, news network. These people work in their garage, in their basement. And without government funding, without private company funding, they are the shining example of what a nonviolent resistance should be in the face of a powerful economic power, you know, communist China. And they are doing this persistently over the past 25 years.

And so the large majority of Chinese people are informed. So it's against the party's interest now. They know it's unpopular. When they see the villagers sending in from different province, sending in with a fingerprint, public letters. Kind of like a signature, that's right. Yes, yes. Yeah, the fingerprint signature.

Yeah, the public appeal letters to the government officials, you should not do this to our fellow Chinese citizens. So this is very powerful. You just reminded me, I remember there's a Freedom House report from a few years ago talking about how on just general religious freedom and Falun Gong in China, they said, well, of course, it's very heavily persecuted. But in some states or some provinces where this effort that you're describing was the most effective, that level of persecution has been lowered because people just

don't want to do it anymore because they've realized that this isn't something we should do. One of the things I found most inspiring is that basically millions of individual people in China going out, taking these materials like the CDs or DVDs and pamphlets and so forth, and going one by one, going to the police stations. I mean, it's like, really? They're going to the police stations, talking to the leadership there. They're, you know, putting pamphlets in people's mailboxes. I mean, imagine, this is a massive grassroots effort. Like, you know, kind of, I don't think anything like this has been seen before. Right?

And very, you know, obviously, incredibly self-directed. I think that's the other element that when I read this New York Times reporting, it sort of suggests this sort of like, you know, dark command and control structure. When, you know, the reality is is, how could that even be possible? People don't do stuff like this that way. I should mention that Falun Gong is apolitical. It's a traditional meditation practice. It doesn't have a political agenda. But what we are trying to do is to end the persecution

and to allow this traditional Chinese culture to revive. Over the past decades, under the Aces rule, Aces Communist Party's rule, people have been deprived of this thirst and this need for spirituality, especially to their spiritual past. The Communist Party believed in the dialectical materialism, everything is about the communist materialism ideology. If we recall the modern Chinese history, since the Chinese Communist Party took over in 1949, they immediately started the so-called anti-fault tradition campaign.

Traditional values, traditional beliefs, traditional customs, and traditional thinking. And then they felt that that was not enough to eradicate the traditional values from the Chinese people. They waged a cultural revolution in which they burned the Buddhist temples, the Taoist temple, all the spiritual belief systems. They burned classic books and the classical art forms. They persecuted the intellectuals. My father was a professor, and because of that, our family was sent to a farm near the North Korean border in Jilin Province. So I personally witnessed that period of time.

So what Falun Gong stands for is really reconnecting the people of China to their spiritual path. The sets of values are in contrast with what the Communist Party believes in, which is violence, class struggle, deceptions, dictatorship, atheism. History has shown that persecution of any faith-based group or community will fail. In ancient Roman times, we have seen the Christians, despite 300 years of persecution, they later thrive. The same is true with the Falun Gong case. You can take away their life, take away their material things, even torture them, but you cannot take away their faith.

This is why historically all the persecutions regardless if you're in the east or in the west is doomed to fail. And this is what's happening here today. It's only that this persecution is now worldwide. You have transnational repression now here in America now from the CCP. And this is why this is alarming. You know, we are an open society, a free country. We've seen dozens of the mass shooting, bombing threats to American individuals and entities such as Falun Gong practitioners, Falun Gong-run companies, and American theaters that host the performing arts shows. And the theater receives pictures of bullets and guns and the threats of mass shooting.

And also bomb threats. Not only in the United States, but in Canada, France, and other countries as well. How can we allow communist regimes to operate like this in the United States, in our own backyard? So we've written in the past about how Chinese consulates have been writing to theaters, essentially kind of veiled threats to try to prevent Shen Yun from being shown at those theaters. You're telling me now this has escalated to anonymous bomb threats and frankly, pictures of bullets being sent. I can't help but think about how thrilled the Chinese regime is with this New York Times reporting a series of articles, including

even a hit piece on us for being a sponsor of the show. Now, why is the Chinese regime so obsessed with Shen Yun? What Shen Yun stands for is what the Chinese traditional art form, traditional Chinese culture would be like without communism. This is why people from mainland China, they go to Japan and Taiwan to watch the show when they get a chance. People walk away after the show, they feel, wow, this is what China is like. We are really starting a renaissance, a renaissance of culture, traditional culture movement, a movement that will allow the Chinese people to reconnect with their own past,

and reconnect with their spiritual roots, and reconnect with their bad traditional values without communism. That's how powerful it is. Shen Yun actually does expose some of the persecution of Falun Gong. Yeah, that's why the show is very powerful. It shows what happened in China before communism, and what happens when a communist is in charge of China, the persecution. We're living in a very special age, where we are witnessing a huge grassroots movement, where the Falun Gong has been playing a major role in it. People are waking up. We're going to see a China that's different in the future, without communism.

But before that, and until then, we should support this peaceful, apolitical people who are trying to regain their right to their own culture, and past, their values, and their spiritual faith. They are also helping the world to understand what China is like under communism. So they are helping the world to wake up. The Chinese Communist Party is posing a threat everywhere. Let's talk about the scale a little bit. The government estimate in 1999, if I recall correctly, or 1998, was something like 70 to 100 million people practicing Falun Gong. I remember a UN special rapporteur on torture had a report that after the persecution began,

it was something half of all the inmates in many of the labor camps and prisons were Falun Gong practitioners. That was the scale of it. How has that changed? What do we know about the numbers today? Well, actually, you can find the Shanghai Television Network. They have a video clip你可以找到上海电视网络他们有一个视频 说中国有100万个法轮大法创始人李洪志师傅 于92年向社会公开传公讲法 受到广大群众的欢迎 六年来 全世界约有一亿人在学法轮大法

这是有本台记者报道的 The UN Torture Repertoire, Professor Nowak, he did a study about Chinese torture and data on Chinese prisons. He found out two-thirds of the torture cases are related to Falun Gong practitioners. Even though the persecution has been very severe, it might force some people to stop the practice, but actually allow other people to learn about Falun Gong and pick up the practice, in fact. I've met many young Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, some of them, you know, the Gen Z population, you know. We are now seeing a huge following of Falun Gong practitioners from different countries.

Now it's being practiced in over 100 countries and the teachings have been translated into 40 languages. It's all free on the website. The Chinese government, including the New York Times, tried to insinuate that the founder is profiting from this. The truth couldn't be further from that. The founder of Falun Gong, Mr. Li Hongzhi, actually is giving this teaching for free to the public.

You can download his teachings online and the exercise instructions, video, free from the internet. And when he was introducing this practice to the public in 1992, he asked the Falun Gong practitioners, you cannot solicit funding from the Falun Gong community. So that was not allowed. We are not allowed to solicit funding from the community or Falun Gong practitioners. You can come, you can leave, we don't have membership. Anyone can come and go.

Relying on self-discipline is an individually based cultivation method. We call it cultivation, it's really cultivating the mind and body. You know, you've cultivated your mind by adhering to the principle of truthfulness, compassion, tolerance. And you do the meditation exercise, you know, cultivating your body for physical well-being,

you know, transformation of your physical body to make it more healthy. So it's a mind-body meditation regime. So it's really a holistic approach to personal well-being. You know, we don't have conversion rituals, ceremony, we don't have worshipings, we don't have church, we don't have those, you know, you have to give a certain percentage of your annual salary to a common trust, we don't have those kind of things.

Right, tithing. Yeah, it's actually the most loosely group of people with different political backgrounds, different social, economic backgrounds, different ethnic backgrounds. So we welcome anyone from any community, any background, to learn about Falun Gong. And if you're interested, we welcome you to practice this ancient meditation practice. How would you respond to this insinuation in the recent New York Times reports that basically there's these hapless people being duped by a guru figure?

Well, in the Falun Gong practice, there's no chain command or top-down hierarchy. Instead, everyone is responsible for his own actions. And everyone tries to adhere to the principle of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. And many people who have benefited from the practice, they volunteer their time, they make personal contributions to all the different causes and projects in the face of brutal persecution, many people started their own projects like anti-censorship technology projects, like Quitting the CCP movement. We have started the largest Quitting the CCP campaign and over 400 million people have already created the Communist Party and affiliated entities such as Communist Youth, the Young Pioneer organizations. So we are letting people to recognize what the CCP is, and allowing them to leave this evil organization and to be a meaningful member

of society. This is one of the reasons the Chinese Communist Party is so scared of Falun Gong. As for me, I volunteer for the Falun Gong cause because I have some family friends, a professor who was a Fulbright professor in physics. She was thrown into jail in China because she refused to give up her faith and practice in Falun Gong. How can we allow this to happen? How can we remain silent when the perpetrator of the crime in China, which is a state sponsor, the state policy of persecution, and they cause so many deaths, they commit such a horrific

crime of false organ harvesting, and none of them is being charged. Instead, they're being rewarded, get promoted, and get funding for it. If we look back in history, the horrific genocide in different countries, and including the Holocaust, should we remain silent now? So given everything we've talked about, you've worked with people in government in the U.S., in Canada, in all sorts of countries. What is your hope for the public reaction, the government reaction? I think the American public deserves the information, the facts about what CCP is all about. And that's why we are trying to reach out to the international community, including

governments around the world, and tell them about the persecution and tell them about what's going on with the CCP's intention to eradicate Falun Gong overseas, especially here in the United States. These are really national security concerns. We are seeing a state actor, in this case CCP, is behind the state-sponsored terrorism in our own backyard. So I'm hoping that our government will take all this seriously and look into it and stop such terrorist acts on the U.S. soil. Well, Erping Zhang, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

Thank you very much for having me here. Thank you all for joining Erping Zhang and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.