Defamation: The CCP’s Magic Weapon

(Minghui.org) In traditional Chinese culture, kindness and honesty were basic principles everyone followed. Under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule, however, brutality and lies became the norm.

Looking at the CCP’s history, the regime was founded on class struggle, violence, and lies. Each of its political campaigns targeted a specific group, and each began with a campaign to “ruin their reputation.” This strategy was pushed to the extreme in July 1999, when the CCP began to persecute the Falun Gong meditation discipline. It mobilized the entire state apparatus to persecute Falun Gong and ran sophisticated defamation campaigns to turn people from all sectors of society against Falun Gong practitioners.

Jiang Zemin, the former CCP leader who started the persecution, issued an order to “ruin their [practitioners’] reputations, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically.” As a result, countless practitioners were discriminated against, harassed, detained, and tortured. Some lost their lives and even became victims of forced organ harvesting.

This atrocity is not surprising because the CCP followed the Soviet Communist Party’s model and Karl Marx, who referred to communism as “A spectre … haunting Europe” in The Communist Manifesto. The Soviet Communist Party was notorious for its brutality and lies.

Defaming the Kuomintang

One of the CCP’s first and best-known lies came after the Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945, when Mao Zedong instructed his secretary Chen Boda to write a book to defame top Kuomintang officials.

Chen did his job well and published The Four Big Families of China in 1946, in which he greatly exaggerated how much property the four great families of the Kuomintang–Chiang, Soong, Kong, and Chen–owned. Through newspapers, radio stations, textbooks, brochures, movies, dramas, posters, and slogans on walls and even lining the roads, the propaganda was disseminated everywhere, day after day, year after year—the CCP achieved its desired effect. In China, mentioning “the four great families of the Kuomintang” became synonymous with “corruption and abuse of power.”

In another example of brainwashing in China, the CCP has made the U.S. synonymous with “American imperialism” and “Western hostile forces.” When “Western society” is mentioned, people think of “corruption” and “capitalism.”

As the CCP expands its control globally and influences Western media, it established a wider network through money and other means. Educational institutions inside and outside China have become tools in its “united front work.” One of the top priorities of the united front is twisting history in order to discredit targeted groups and spread the CCP’s lies.

With the recent declassification of historic materials, many truths have gradually been revealed, and it has become apparent that stories like the “Four Great Families” are nothing more than smear campaigns.

Chen Lifu, a Kuomintang veteran, went to the U.S. in the 1950's and had to borrow nearly 20,000 dollars from Kong Xiangxi and other old friends to buy a chicken farm in order to make a living. He did everything himself–feeding the chickens, collecting and selling eggs, and cleaning out chicken manure. In his spare time, he studied traditional Chinese culture and served as a visiting professor at Princeton University. If he truly were a billionaire as the CCP claimed, why would he be forced to do such menial work? Wouldn’t it be easier to just give lectures at the university?

His older brother Chen Guofu, who stayed in Taiwan, had tuberculosis and accrued huge medical expenses. Because he was no longer a high-ranking official, he needed a special approval to receive 5,000 dollars for treatment. However, one year later, he passed away in August 1951 due to ineffective treatment.

The family of T.V. Soong (Soong Tse-vung), who was once the Minister of Finance of the Republic of China, donated 58 boxes of documents to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University in the U.S. These documents contained a list of Soong’s personal property from 1941 to 1968 before his death, and each report was signed by an American accountant.

In April 1971, Soong passed away at the age of 77. When the tax officials of the New York State government heard he had huge wealth, they started to investigate his assets, but the results were disappointing: T.V. Soong’s non-fixed assets were just over one million US dollars. Even after 20 years of appreciation, his real estate was worth only 7 or 8 million dollars. After the estate taxes were deducted, only 5 million dollars were left to his wife Zhang Leyi. This was a far cry from being a billionaire.

According to Daijun Guo from the Hoover Institution, historian Donald Jordan looked for evidence of Soong’s corruption but found nothing. Almost all the archives are now open, but nothing shows that Soong was corrupt.

When Chiang Ching-kuo–Chiang Kai-shek’s son–died in January 1988, he only left his widow Chiang Fang-liang $1.152 million New Taiwan dollars ($34, 700 USD), the 20 months of salary that Chiang Ching-kuo received before his death. When Chiang Fang-liang met with the mayor and deputy mayor of Minsk (the capital of Belarus) in 1992, the two mayors invited her to visit her hometown. Chiang Fang-liang replied that she could not go back because she had no money. The officials were surprised.

Modern Day Defamation

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditation discipline based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. After being introduced to the public in 1999, the practice quickly gained popularity, and the number of practitioners was estimated to be about 100 million when the CCP began to suppress the group in July 1999.

Despite Falun Gong’s huge physical and mental benefits, the CCP cannot tolerate traditional values such as the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. The regime exhausted every resource to eradicate its imaginary enemy in Falun Gong.

The CCP’s smear campaign started with the documents Jiang Zemin sent to top Party officials. Because many people had witnessed the benefits of practicing Falun Gong, the CCP’s confidential documents were exposed to the public many times. Subsequent persecution documents were mainly conveyed in the form of secret verbal orders through the 610 Office to the CCP’s public security, procuratorial and judicial organs at all levels.

After the 610 Office was thoroughly exposed by overseas Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP claimed to have abolished the office under international pressure, while changing its name to the “Stability Maintenance Office” and other names. It continued to maintain a staff dedicated to persecuting Falun Gong in all institutions and fields—from the central government to local governments and overseas agencies.

In order to justify its persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP carefully fabricated all kinds of rumors and accused the practice of whatever is abhorrent or terrifying, such as “suicide,” “murder,” “politically motivated,” “anti-science,” “anti-human,” “tightly organized,” “supported by foreign anti-China forces,” and so on.

Inside China, the CCP controls over more than 2,000 newspapers, more than 1,000 magazines, hundreds of TV and radio stations, and online media, and all of them were tasked with smearing Falun Gong. After July 1999, CCTV broadcast programs up to seven hours a day, slandering Falun Gong in every possible way. Local TV stations rebroadcast these CCTV programs, turning public opinion overwhelmingly against Falun Gong.

Despite the CCP’s smear campaign, Falun Gong is now well received in more than 100 countries, and its main book Zhuan Falun has been translated into more than 50 languages. There are people all over the world who practice and follow Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance as their guide to improve themselves—physically and mentally. Newcomers have also begun practicing, having found answers to their questions about life and the universe.

There’s an old Chinese saying: good is rewarded, while evil is punished. Starting with Jiang Zemin, CCP leaders have persecuted Falun Gong for 26 years, whether out of jealousy of Falun Gong’s popularity or to maintain the regime’s power. The persecution is doomed to fail, and the perpetrators are bound to be held accountable for their crimes.