The Communist Party fears the Chinese people getting wealthy, for that will give the people the power to dictate the economy. It fears the people having an independent mind, for that will make brainwashing the masses difficult. It fears the people having access to uncensored information, for it will expose the Chinese communist Party (CCP)’s lies and falsehoods. The CCP’s ultimate fear is losing control of the Chinese people because, without its people, the CCP can’t achieve its ambitions.
To illustrate, let me tell you the story of the Menglianggu battle during the Chinese Civil War in 1947. Menglianggu is a successful battle example often quoted in the CCP’s military science and history books as well as a propaganda piece. The poorly equipped underdog, the People’s Liberation Army, defeated the Republic of China’s elite troops. In a nutshell: 200,000 communist PLA troops defeated the ROC Nationalists’ 600,000 well-equipped, elite troops. But how did the CCP win?
According to Chinese historian Xin Haonian, during the first wave of the attack, the PLA used elderly people as human shields in front of them. The Nationalist soldiers couldn’t open fire on the grandmas and grandpas. This allowed the PLA to advance. Next, the PLA used children to make another advancement. The most dramatic scene happened when the PLA used a huge white cloth to cover the front of their troops as they advanced. The Nationalists didn’t know what was behind the cloth. When the PLA got close and suddenly dropped the cloth, the Nationalists were shocked to see many naked young women in front of them.
Thus, the Nationalist soldiers lost their will to fight and dropped the guns. This, however, allowed the PLA to advance to victory. This loss significantly affected the morale of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist troops and he eventually lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan.
Western leaders and experts don’t understand the importance of the Chinese people to the CCP in this context. The CCP has taken the Chinese people hostage on its war wagon. Now you will understand where China’s civilian-military hybrid programs come from, why China’s rocket launch centers are located so close to civilian areas, and who taught Hamas to hide its military operations in hospitals and schools. This is the reason why the CCP must brainwash the Chinese people and subject them to censorship so they can be manipulated and used.
China has one billion people, and it’s impossible that the CCP uses them and fears them all. That’s right, the CCP doesn’t fear them all but fears losing control over all of them. So, who does CCP fear the most?
Let’s ask ourselves: Who has been slandered, defamed, and persecuted the most by the Chinese regime? Here is one group. That’s Falun Gong.
The persecution of Falun Gong is the largest human rights abuse in the world, given its length, severity, and scale. However, there haven’t been many news reports in the West about the persecution, especially during the 10 years from 2000 to 2009. The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story in April 2020 about an elderly lady who was tortured to death because she wouldn’t give up Falun Gong. The journalist Ian Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for his work.
Since then, American mainstream media had collectively remained silent despite mounting evidence, including evidence of the most atrocious crime of forced organ harvesting on healthy Falun practitioners. When addressing China’s human rights abuses, Western governments have avoided mentioning Falun Gong until recent years.
Why? It’s because the CCP has named Falun Gong its number one enemy and a taboo in international affairs. Western governments have been told to be quiet on Falun Gong. They can bring up Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Tibet, but not Falun Gong. Have you thought about why that is? The answer is simple: The CCP fears Falun Gong the most.
And there are six reasons why Falun Gong is the group of Chinese the CCP is most scared of. Western strategists and think tanks should study the subject. This will help them find Beijing’s weak spots and better solutions to counter CCP’s threats.
Falun Gong’s popularity
Before the CCP launched the persecution of Falun Gong in July 1999, state-controlled media reported that 100 million Chinese were practicing Falun Gong. In a February 1999 issue of the US News and World Report, the magazine quoted an official from China’s National Sports Commission as saying that Falun Gong and other types of Qigong could potentially save the country ¥100B in medical expenses, given the practice’s health benefits and 100 million followers. China’s population was 1.3 billion at the time. That means one in 13 Chinese was practicing Falun Gong.
The main Falun Gong website, falundafa.org, has been translated into 49 languages, and 111 countries on all 5 continents have listed local Falun Gong contacts. I don’t think there is any private Chinese organization that has this scale of global presence.
Falun Gong’s influence
The fact that Falun Gong reached 100 million followers in seven short years under the watchful eyes of a totalitarian regime was a miracle. This was attributed to 1) its tremendous health benefits. 2) For the Chinese, it fills a spiritual void left by decades of communist brainwashing. And 3) it’s taught by volunteers and is free of charge.
Before the persecution, Falun Gong attracted Chinese elites, including high-ranking officials and military officers. In Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound, there was a Falun Gong practice group. All seven politburo standing committee members had family members practicing it. This included Jiang Zemin, the CCP leader who ordered the crackdown. Jiang’s wife practiced Falun Gong and Jiang was given a copy of Falun Gong’s main book, Zhuan Falun by his neighbor, former premier Li Peng, who got the book from one of his subordinates.
Despite the brutal persecution of the past 25 years, many of the Chinese elites are still practicing. During major holidays such as the Lunar New Year or Moon Festivals, greetings to Falun Gong’s founder, Mr. Li Hongzhi, from government officials and active-duty military and police officers can be seen on the Falun Gong website every year.
Persistence and non-violence
The communist ideology is built on class struggle and revolution. To take down opponents, the CCP has resorted to violent provocation and instigation of hatred. For the past 25 years, The CCP has subjected Falun Gong followers to illegal detainment, imprisonment, labor camps, torture, expulsion from schools and jobs, and forced live organ harvesting. These atrocities have been documented by the UN’s office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, independent investigators, (David Kilgore and David Matas,) and the China Tribunal in the UK.
However, Falun Gong has remained nonviolent in their response. In the past 25 years, there has not been a single case in which Falun Gong people fought back or sought revenge against the police or those who tortured them. Instead of fighting back, Falun Gong has resorted to telling the public the facts about the practice, the persecution, and the CCP. Falun Gong’s ability to remain nonviolent as well as its persistence in reaching out to the masses scares the CCP.
Breaking down the firewall
The CCP has devoted national resources to building a national digital surveillance system to block, filter, censor information, and monitor people. As early as 2001, Falun Gong practitioners living outside China developed anti-censorship software to help internet users in China access the internet without surveillance. They formed the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, and their most popular applications are Freegate and Ultra Surf. These apps have helped not only Falun Gong but also people in other closed societies access the internet. Freegate was used by users in Iran and Syria during the Arab Spring movement in 2011.
The Voice for the Voiceless
Since no media outlets were telling their side of the story, Falun Gong practitioners established media organizations to tell the truth, initially serving Chinese-speaking readers and now a global audience. NTD Television has been the only TV network sending uncensored, Chinese language information into China via satellite for two decades. Members of the CCP’s highest governing body, the politburo, read the New York edition of the Chinese Epoch Times. You can safely say this: The CCP leaders care about what the Epoch Times says because they have no control over its editorial content. The leaders aren’t interested in reports published by media outlets that they can influence and manipulate; this includes many Western media.
Reviving Traditional Chinese Culture
The most terrible thing the communists have done to the Chinese is destroy their 5000 years of divinely inspired culture. Confucianism has historically influenced many Asian countries but its five cardinal values––kindness, justice, propriety, wisdom, faith––have been forgotten in today’s China. A nation without its cultural roots involuntarily accepts the CCP’s culture and becomes an easy target for manipulation. This is also the root cause of Chinese people’s rude behavior, bad manners, and the consequential xenophobic problems we have seen.
Falun Gong practitioners established Shen Yun Performing Arts to reintroduce traditional Chinese culture by showing China before communism. These performances helped the Chinese people regain confidence in becoming a civilized nation again. They also help the outside world appreciate the real China without the communist party. Reviving culture is no small feat. Usually, it takes a government’s effort to do this. In China, the government is the one that has destroyed the culture. And the group of people suffering the most brutal persecution are reviving it.
The CCP sees Falun Gong as the biggest threat because it is everything the CCP is not. Some people say Falun Gong is political. All religious persecution by a government is political in nature. Falun Gong hasn’t raised any political agenda other than demanding their freedom of belief and the right to meditate to be restored and respected. It’s the persecution that made Falun Gong’s efforts to expose and counter it “political.
I think the fact that the CCP fears Falun Gong so much should give Western governments and experts some inspiration and ideas to develop new strategies. By studying why the CCP fears Falun Gong, they’ll find better solutions to counter the threats from the CCP.
