China's transnational crackdown intensifies as Falun Gong faces hostility abroad

Beijing [China] September 1 Beijing has significantly ramped up its campaign of transnational repression, extending its decades-long persecution of Falun Gong beyond China's borders and into the United States, under the leadership of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief Xi Jinping, according to the report by The Epoch Times.

Reports indicate that since spring 2024, China has resorted to extreme methods such as bomb threats, arson threats, disinformation drives, legal harassment, and orchestrated media smears to intimidate and silence dissidents overseas.

According to The Epoch Times, the CCP is operating with a level of aggression that highlights its growing reach and determination to suppress voices of dissent even in democratic societies.

Feng Chongyi, an associate professor of China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, explained that the CCP's campaign against Falun Gong, which began in 1999, remains at the core of its repression efforts, as per The Epoch Times.

He noted that Falun Gong is viewed by Beijing not merely as a spiritual practice but as a rival worldview that undermines the Party's ideological monopoly. "Its essence is control," Feng said, pointing out that the CCP regards any group capable of mobilising people, whether political, material, or spiritual, as a direct threat to its authority.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a meditative discipline inspired by Buddhist and Taoist traditions and guided by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Its rapid rise in popularity during the 1990s, with estimates of 70 million to 100 million adherents in China, alarmed the regime, which outlawed the practice in 1999.

Since then, countless practitioners have endured arbitrary detention, torture, forced labour, and accusations of forced organ harvesting. Feng stated that this campaign represents one of the most far-reaching and brutal repressions of a faith group in modern history.

According to Feng, the CCP's strategies now extend into foreign democracies, where the Party manipulates freedoms of speech and press to erode the very values they are meant to protect. He cited recent negative portrayals of Falun Gong and Shen Yun Performing Arts, a renowned New York-based company founded by practitioners, as examples of CCP-inspired narratives.

"These articles carry the clear fingerprints of CCP propaganda," Feng observed, adding that coordinated lawsuits against Shen Yun and affiliated individuals also threaten freedom of belief and expression outside China.

International concern about Beijing's global repression has grown steadily. On June 17, leaders of the G7 issued a joint statement condemning the practice of transnational repression, with particular alarm over the CCP's overseas influence tactics.

A month later, bipartisan U.S. lawmakers introduced the Transnational Repression Policy Act, a bill designed to strengthen legal tools to counter such operations. Analysts cited by The Epoch Times argue that the legislation represents a crucial step in safeguarding democratic institutions from Beijing's encroachment.

Feng concluded that Falun Gong embodies a return to moral clarity, conscience, and integrity after decades of CCP indoctrination that eroded the values of Chinese society, as cited by The Epoch Times.

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