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False Friends
DOS might begin to understand these dramatic events by talking with Falun Gong practitioners.
Nieh says, “In Washington, D.C., we have a number of Chinese practitioners who are experts in various fields. We also have a large community of Westerners who practice Falun Gong. Practitioners do the Falun Gong exercises on the National Mall regularly. We are easy to find.”
Might DOS be relying on other sources?
Erping Zhang, the spokesperson for FDIC, is concerned DOS officials may have been subjected to a disinformation campaign conducted by Chinese authorities. He pointed to an email recently sent to a U.S. senator’s office that claimed to be from Zhang. The email made irrational statements and demands.
An IT expert was able to show that this fraudulent email originated from an IP address in mainland China.
“We have seen this kind of email—in which someone claims to represent Falun Gong and then writes irrationally in order to discredit Falun Gong—many times in the last few years. I would not be surprised if other congressional offices and the State Department also received these emails,” Zhang said.
Heng He is an expert on the CCP and writes commentary regularly for The Epoch Times. He says that the CCP is very skilled at influencing government officials through the use of united-front tactics—having individuals or groups in society not formally related to the CCP advance its interests.
“The typical practice of the CCP is to have Chinese who are loyal to the Party cultivate friendships with government officials. The officials think they are dealing with independent individuals and go to their ‘friends’ for advice about China issues. Those friends can be counted on to steer the government officials’ thinking in the Party’s direction,” Heng said.
Chen Yonglin, the former consul for political affairs for the Chinese Consulate in Sydney who defected in 2005, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations that his consulate often used “friends” to deliver information to Australian government officials.
Heng pointed to an article published by a research group of the Xinhua News Agency as an example of how the CCP uses friendship to influence the opinions of VIPs so that they will disseminate the CCP’s views.
That article says: “The main targets of foreign propaganda should be the middle and upper class in the target countries, including politicians, people in business circles, and intellectuals because they control either the political or the economic power and have the influence on the ideology and public opinion of those countries. …
“Especially, we should make friends with the famous people in foreign media. We should have an intimate relationship with them and do well the work of foreign propaganda with their help.”
The Xinhua correspondents who use friendship as a propaganda tool are obviously employees of the CCP. Heng says that in capitals around the world, the “friends” who approach government officials often have no obvious ties to the CCP.
Nieh says: “The persecution of Falun Gong in China tests the imagination and the character of State Department officials. The United States was founded by individuals fleeing religious persecution, and the Falun Gong issue should be very easy for Americans to understand. Yet in the face of such a huge atrocity, the State Department has chosen to meet with the torturers and the murderers, while refusing to take a stand against the persecution.
“In the past 10 years, those who make China policy at the State Department have never contacted us—never contacted a single one of us. The persecution of Falun Gong is a fundamental moral challenge everyone has to face. Everyone has to answer for how they respond to it.”
Correction: In the original version of this article, Ethan Gutmann was cited as saying "2 million" Falun Gong practitioners are detained in China at any one time. This should have read "450,000 to 1 million." The Epoch Times regrets the error.
