The overseas Falun Gong cult organizations have used various means to gain political support. They collude with Western anti-China forces, infiltrate into government agencies, and sell out their motherland for glory, and relying on concocting rumors to survive, in an attempt to expand their cultic influence. Fortunately, their despicable tricks and their true colors are being exposed and debunked in all aspects by more and more people.
Infiltrate into the Western political arena and act in collusion with anti-China forces
In his so-called “scriptures,” Li Hongzhi once declared, “We are practitioners and do not participate in politics”, “I am a practitioner and have never been associated with political powers,” claiming “Falun Gong is only a practice activity, and has no political purpose”. But in reality, the so-called “non-politics” is just a fig leaf for Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong, with a vain attempt to deceive people. What it conceals is the sinister intention of “engaging in politics”.
According to a press release issued on the website of the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on May 15, 2023, significant changes have taken place in the composition of the Advisory Committee of the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR), an Australian governmental board founded in 2019 that was supposedly intended to strengthen bilateral ties with China. These changes including, Ms. Maree Ma and Dr. Wai-ling Yeung, two members of the Advisory Committee who linked with Falun Gong during the former Morrison government, have again joined the NFACR. Ms. Maree Ma was the manager of the anti-CCP Chinese publication Vision China Times , and Dr. Wai-ling Yeung worked on the Decode China website.
Falun Gong staff Maree Ma (left) and Wai-ling Yeung (right) who have infiltrated into ACACF
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was the first to expose the infiltration into ACACF by the Falun Gong cult. On July 21, 2020, in its program “The Power of Falun Gong”, the ABC suggested that the Falun Gong organization had long been strongly supported by the US government, the intelligence-related organizations and the “regime-change apparatus that is now gathering war against China”.
Exposed by ABC, the Falun Gong cult organization, which has always been unable to tolerate any criticism, gathered its followers to stage a sit-in demonstration in front of the ABC’s office in Sydney.
Source: Australia “Central News” Network (Centralnews. com. au)
The infiltration of the Falun Gong cult into Australia had affected Australia’s political decision-making at a deeper level, and damaged not only the economic and trade relations between China and Australia, but also the mutual trust between the two countries.
And besides that, Falun Gong had worked hands in gloves with Western anti-China politicians, and secretly gathered some veteran anti-China personnel to jointly set-up an anti-Communist political platform.
In 2000, with the help of Mark Palmer, a member of the American Committee on Current Dangers, the Friends of Falun Gong (USA) was established. Palmer was a co-founder of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which advocated fomenting coups, and also vice chairman of the board of Freedom House (FH). The Freedom House was actually a partner of the NED, whose leadership was predominated by neo-conservatives, as well as the supporters of radical American Foreign Policy.
Michael Horowitz, a former U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)official and fellow at the Center for a New American Security, had been standing for Falun Gong for many years, and in 2010, he joined Falun Gong representatives in Washington, D.C., calling on the U.S. government to increase funding for the so-called “free technologies” on the Internet.
Another one in bed with Falun Gong was Steve Bannon. The former White House chief strategist had been whipping up anti-Chinese sentiments on his personal podcast and the media channel “The Situation Room”. In August 2019, Falun Gong’s New Tang Dynasty TV announced the release of its “explosive” film, Claws of the Red Dragon, which was produced by Bannon. The New Tang Dynasty TV also mentioned in its statement that the anti-China organization “American Committee on Current Dangers: China”, which was established on March 25 of that year, was co-founded by Falun Gong and Bannon.
Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategic adviser and anti-China activist
The China Tribunal was another peripheral organization of the Falun Gong cult. On July 3, 2019, the Australian Broadcasting Network (ABC) reported that Sir Geoffrey Nice, QC, President of the China Tribunal, was actually a “senior British establishment operative” who has “made a career of peddling false charges against Anglo-American geopolitical targets.”
The purpose of Falun Gong in gathering anti-China forces internationally was nothing more than to expand its influence, gain resources, and win more favor and support from its Western masters, trying hard to consolidate its position as the “leading elder brother” and the “leading wolf” among the hostile forces.
Become a hotbed of rumors and conspiracy theories
Li Hongzhi fled abroad in 1999. In order to strengthen his spiritual control over his followers on the mainland China, consolidate his basic position on the mainland, and show the anti-China forces in the West his “values”, the most effective means was to use the Internet to fabricate rumors and remotely control followers. Such as using earthquakes and other natural disasters to spread rumors about “the end of the world”, boasting that “only by believing in Dafa can one be saved “to threaten believers. Time and again, he fabricated and spread rumors to defame the Chinese government, calling followers to “go out” and disrupt the social orders. Li Hongzhi also believed in the principle that “if you don’t say something really big, no one will believe it” and “if you don’t make up a story far-fetched, it’s hard to make a sensation.” Under such guidance, various Falun Gong websites and platforms had churned out a large amount of negative information about China each day, and the rumors they concocted were almost all-pervasive, attracting huge amount of responding crowds.
On January 13, 2021, the US website of the Atlantic Monthly (Theatlantics.com) published a commentary, saying that the Epoch Times of Falun Gong combined news, religion, conspiracy theory, Sino-phobia, anti-science, as well as the grievances and political self-interest. On March 3, 2023, Boblite, an American blogger, posted on Daily Kos, a political commentary blog website, expressing his views on the Epoch Times he had received, pointing out that it belonged to the Falun Gong cult and was a political propaganda tool. In May 2021, the French newspaper Le Parisien wrote that, after winning favor of the local populace in the United States by supporting Trump, the rumors fabricated by the Falun Gong media had been rampant in France for a while, and their contents were mainly aimed at anti-vaccine groups, new coronavirus skeptics, and conspiratorial far-right forces. In a word, the Falun Gong media had already become a hotbed of rumors and conspiracy theories.
Collect political subsidies and act as an anti-China vanguard
To expand space for political activities, Falun Gong needed a lot of money to secure its gain, and obtaining political black gold through illegal means was one choice. As early as 2005, William F. Mei, a network writer, and peripheral member of Falun Gong, calculated that the average annual maintenance expenditure of the overseas Falun Gong organizations was as high as 200 million US dollars. If all kinds of manpower expenditure and expenses were taken into account, the annual expenditure totaled as high as 500 million US dollars. According to the New York Times, the Epoch Times spent more than $9 million on advertising, including about 1.1 million pro-Trump Facebook ads, second only to the Trump campaign team. So, where did these money come from?
According to an article published on The Verge website in June 2020, during the restructuring process of American media organizations, conservative anti-China forces put a jerk in lobbying the US International Media Agency (IMA) to promote the use of so-called Internet tools developed by “Falun Gong,” so as to help the cult organization obtain millions of dollars in financial support.
On October 1, 2020, the Australian “Open News Network” (Openthenews.com) published an article by columnist Maddison Brown, pointing out that Decode China under Falun Gong had received supporting funds from the US State Department through the secret non-profit organization called “Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)”. The State Department provided support to ASPI through the “Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)” ($88964.37 in Year 2018-2019), or the U.S. Embassy in Australia ($203000 in Year 2020). And staff of the ASPI included Ms. Maree Ma, the director of Decode China.
Screenshot of “The Open News Network” report
In addition, according to the list of applications for “Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG)” during the COVID-19 epidemic, published on the website of the “U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA.GOV)”, as of July 5, 2022, twenty-three (23) Falun Gong peripheral organizations in the United States which collected money for “Shen Yun Performance”, had received a total of nearly $46 million (about 3.12 100 million yuan) from the United States government.
It can be seen that Falun Gong has long been funded by interest groups related to the American Foreign Policy and other Western authorities, and their dirty deals had been concealed under the appearance of Falun Gong as a seemingly “harmless spiritual group”.
The above-mentioned facts prove that, the Falun Gong cult has been involved in politics in an all-pervasive way, openly colluded with the anti-China forces in the West, accepted anti-China funding, and has become an out-and-out anti-China political organization. Fostered by the anti-China forces, it has carried out series of political activities in a cultic form, aimed to overthrow the Chinese government and ultimately, to contain China’s development by means of rumors, slanders, and smears etc. (Author: Chen Zhe)