China’s Zero-COVID Policy vs. Its “Zero-Out” Campaign Against Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conducted a series of city-wide lockdowns in attempts to achieve its zero-COVID. This has led to a nationwide outcry of a humanitarian crisis.

During the lockdown of Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, in early January 2022, a hospital refused to take in a woman eight months pregnant because she couldn’t present a 24-hour negative COVID test. She ended up having a miscarriage.

From late March to the end of May, Shanghai, the biggest city in China, was put under strict lockdown. A two-year-old toddler died while in quarantine lockdown, leading her mother to an emotional breakdown and suicide. Out of the 51 deaths documented by the government, besides those who had severe existing illnesses, the rest simply died of starvation. Online videos also showed people jumping out of buildings, hanging themselves, or jumping into the river when they could no longer bear the mental distress from the prison-style lockdown.

While it was hard for many to accept the tragedies unfolding before their eyes in such a modern city in Shanghai, the zero-Covid policy was no surprise to those who know the Chinese Communist Party for what it is.

The Little Known “Zero-Out” Campaign Against Falun Gong

Over the past 23 years, a similar draconian lockdown has been happening in China every day, though it’s mostly confined to a specific group of people and hidden from the general public.

The Chinese Communist Party ordered the persecution of Falun Gong, an ancient spiritual discipline with the three principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, in July 1999. Ever since, Falun Gong practitioners have faced a total eradication policy that aims to “ruin their reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.”

Since then, countless practitioners have faced the danger of arrest, detention, torture, or even being killed for their organs. The persecution continued after the pandemic broke out in China, though it began over 20 years ago.

In the summer of 2020, the CCP’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee (PLAC) and its “610 Office,” tasked with overseeing the persecution of Falun Gong, ordered a new nationwide campaign of persecution, the so-called “zero-out” campaign. This campaign aimed to force every Falun Gong practitioner on government blacklists to give up their belief. Even those who had renounced their faith in earlier years were rounded up again.

In Mengyin County, Shandong Province, the police and 610 Office agents arrested practitioner Mr. Sun Pijin on June 18, 2021. The 610 Office staff informed his family the next day that he had died, saying he'd jumped out of a building. His family saw that he was missing an eyeball. Half of his skull and his chest cavity were sunken. But they were not allowed to hire an independent coroner to do an autopsy. Afterward, the 610 Office agents monitored his family, prohibited them from hiring an attorney or appealing his death, and eventually forced them to have his body cremated.

The police in Beijing, using the excuse of vaccinations, entered practitioner Mr. Ke Xingguo’s home on April 23, 2021. Mr. Ke’s wife, a manager at the Ministry of Agriculture, was bedridden and begged the police not to arrest her husband. However, the police handcuffed Mr. Ke in front of her and took him away. The police detained Mr. Ke for a month before releasing him. They continued harassing him at home, trying to coerce him to give up cultivation by threatening him with his child’s job and college study. Mr. Ke was not swayed by them. His wife lived in constant fear, especially when someone knocked on the door. She passed away on December 10, 2021.

Ms. Wu Zhiping, a retiree of Nanchang City Steel Factory, Jiangxi Province, was imprisoned for six years for her belief. The police have been calling her daughter since May 2020 to ask her to persuade her mother to renounce Falun Gong. Her daughter was so scared that she developed health problems and had an operation. She was forced to sever her relationship with her mother. The police went to Ms. Wu’s home in April 2021 to harass her. Ms. Wu left home and went into hiding on April 19, 2021. She wandered on the streets for the whole night. She was still arrested later on and taken to a brainwashing center and then a psychiatric hospital.

The CCP has used every means at its disposal to force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their beliefs, including wiping out practitioner’s years of service so that they cannot receive pensions, stopping pension payments, laying them off, coercing family members to sign statements renouncing Falun Gong on the practitioner's behalf, or stirring up conflicts between family members. Those who refused to comply were taken to brainwashing centers or even sentenced to prison.

According to Minghui.org, the police in China arrested or harassed at least 15,235 Falun Gong practitioners and put 537 in brainwashing centers in 2020. In 2021, they arrested and harassed 16,413 practitioners and put 608 in brainwashing centers, with a daily persecution tally reaching 40 people.

Two “Zero-Out” Campaigns with a Common Nature

This illegal and brutal persecution of Falun Gong has continued for 23 years and counting. Due to the CCP’s extensive cover-up and information blockade, many Chinese people do not know much about the persecution.

With similar suppression tactics, the CCP also turned Shanghai, a mega city with 25 million people, into a gigantic prison, in two months.

While Shanghai’s zero-Covid policy was to restrain people’s mobility, the zero-out campaign against Falun Gong practitioners is meant to control people’s minds.

During the Shanghai lockdown, when a young couple who tested negative refused to be taken to a quarantine center, government workers threatened that their child would be implicated. However, the young husband responded calmly, “We are the last generation.” This statement has been widely spread on the Internet and people called it the Chinese young people’s declaration to dissociate themselves from the CCP.

Just like no law in China that has ever declared Falun Gong illegal, no emergency status was ever declared in Shanghai. But that doesn't stop the Party from persecuting Falun Gong or locking all Shanghai residents inside their homes, even blocking the fire escapes.

Whatever the case, the Party shows that it does not care about right or wrong, good or evil, but only how to maintain its power. It simply doesn’t value human life. The Shanghai lockdown has awakened many Chinese and enabled them to realize the Party's true evil nature, and helped the world’s people to see the same.