The CCP Is Behind the New Wave of U.S. Media Attacks on Falun Gong

(Minghui.org) Soon after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999, the regime extended its defamation campaign against Falun Gong from China to America. Today, the CCP is instigating another wave of media attacks and lawfare in the U.S. in a new attempt to destroy Falun Gong, a system of self-cultivation that teaches people to follow the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

Two months after the persecution began in July 1999, then CCP leader Jiang Zemin did something unusual at the September 1999 APEC summit in New Zealand: He personally handed U.S. President Bill Clinton a 150-page publication in English that slandered Falun Gong and contained frightening graphics. Jiang’s extreme effort to attack Falun Gong surprised world leaders who attended the conference.

When he was interviewed by the French newspaper Le Figaro in October 1999, Jiang went a step further and openly slandered Falun Gong by labeling it a “cult.” During a September 2000 interview with Mike Wallace, the host for the CBS TV program 60 Minutes, Jiang again attacked Falun Gong.

In the beginning of the persecution, some members of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee (consisting of the Party’s top leaders) did not agree with suppressing Falun Gong, but Jiang and his followers carried out the campaign with brutality and lies. Despite these efforts, during a secret meeting of top CCP leaders in October 2022, it was concluded that the Party’s overseas suppression of Falun Gong had failed.

According to media reports from outside of China, the CCP formulated a new strategy to attack Falun Gong outside China. The plan revolved around “one theme and two basic paths.” The main effort would be to “directly target” and defame Mr. Li Hongzhi (Falun Gong’s founder) and his family, while the two basic paths would be media attacks and lawfare. After the meeting, the CCP started a new wave of attacks in the U.S. through these two channels.

It’s no secret that the CCP has infiltrated the U.S. for decades and established an intelligence network to collect sensitive information. For example, an independent media report recently found that the CCP had set up a crowdsourced intelligence gathering system at Stanford University. This system targets students who are engaged in research on China and collects sensitive scientific research information. The CCP has already infiltrated many fields in the United States using this approach.

Meanwhile, the CCP uses money to influence U.S. media outlets to cover up its persecution of Falun Gong, both by blocking outlets from reporting on the persecution and using the media to spread and repeat its lies. This is not limited to traditional media but also includes social media, independent media channels, and search engines.

Tucker Carlson, a well-known American media figure, exposed these methods in his program back in August 2021. He reported that The New York Times received more than $100,000 from the CCP every month and actively served as a propaganda tool for the totalitarian regime.

Carlson also pointed out that when the pandemic escalated in the summer of 2020, New York Times readers discovered that hundreds of articles the newspaper had published in the past decade suddenly disappeared. Some readers had print copies of these articles. Each of these articles was propaganda provided by the CCP and disguised as news reports.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, The New York Times is not the only news organization that has cooperated with the CCP; since 2016, the CCP has paid 20 million dollars to newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. Twitter also received checks of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Chinese government, and this scheme has gone on for years.

In 2024, The New York Times began publishing a series of articles slandering Falun Gong and Shen Yun (a classical Chinese dance company founded by U.S. Falun Gong practitioners), in effect acting as part of the CCP’s overseas propaganda operation.

Throughout history, persecutions of faith have never succeeded. Jiang Zemin’s claim that he would “eliminate Falun Gong in three months” failed, the CCP’s efforts to use Chinese media to defame Falun Gong failed, and its attempts to smear Falun Gong through global media attacks and lawfare will also end in failure. Humanity needs Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, and this will not change based on the CCP’s will. To the contrary, intensifying the persecution of Falun Gong will only accelerate the CCP’s demise.

On the flip side, only when the CCP disintegrates and the persecution of Falun Gong ends can the people of China escape the disasters brought about by the Party, re-embrace China’s divinely inspired culture, and be blessed and protected by the divine again.