Beijing’s Global Propaganda Efforts Are ‘Warfare Without Bullets,’ Former Chinese Professor Says

A China Daily newspaper box is with other free daily papers in New York on Jan. 20, 2021. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging an intensified propaganda campaign beyond its borders to repress the spiritual group Falun Gong, according to Li Yuanhua, a former Chinese history professor now living in Australia.

The regime’s tactics include utilizing the legal and political systems of democracies to suppress the group, as well as injecting its propaganda and disinformation through Western media outlets in the hopes of influencing public perception, he said.

“This is warfare without bullets, aimed at the mind of every person in the free world,” Li told The Epoch Times.

He described the CCP’s transnational repression waged through media attacks as an “ideological infiltration campaign.”

Li said that the CCP has been infiltrating Western media for years and has learned how to use overseas media professionals to its advantage. Besides paid ads and op-eds, the CCP collects personal data on journalists to look for “pressure points” it can exploit—things like personal weaknesses or family ties, he said.

Li expressed concern that Western media professionals are being asked to apply their skills to package information on a topic that is heavily controlled in China, and giving the regime power to also control the narrative overseas, especially when the views of Falun Gong practitioners are not treated equally in media reporting.

In recent months, The New York Times has published more than 10 articles attacking Falun Gong and Falun Gong-founded dance company Shen Yun Performing Arts, which is based in New York. The articles omit information that would have undermined the articles’ premises, a review by The Epoch Times found.

Media companies in other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, have also published negative rhetoric targeting Shen Yun.

“If an entire newsroom is complicit in this kind of behavior, the media becomes weaponized and is turned into a tool for manipulating public opinion, which will ultimately do serious damage to public trust and the integrity of information,” Li said.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a mind-body self improvement practice based on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, along with five gentle exercises.

The CCP first considered Falun Gong a benefit to society, as many practitioners improved their mental and physical condition. But the CCP soon viewed the popularity of the group as a threat to its control and atheist values and it began a nationwide campaign to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in 1999, with a stated policy of “defaming their reputations, bankrupting them financially, and destroying them physically.”

Then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin mobilized the whole state apparatus, including state-run media at home as well as foreign media, in an attempt to “eradicate” Falun Gong within three months.

In January 2001, the CCP staged a self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square under the direction of then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin and blamed it on Falun Gong practitioners; a finding reported by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in 2004. The hoax, aired nationally by CCTV on Jan. 31, 2001, became a key part of an intensified propaganda campaign to vilify Falun Gong and incite hatred in the Chinese populace against it.

Jiang gave two high-profile interviews—one in writing to France’s Le Figaro in October 1999, and another in person to CBS in August 2000—where he made negative remarks about Falun Gong. This marked the first time a top CCP leader had made public statements on Falun Gong to major international media, expanding Beijing’s propaganda efforts to a global audience.

The CCP continued to expand its global propaganda campaign, pulling together its intelligence apparatus and diplomatic resources to infiltrate Western media and academic institutions.

The CCP’s state-run English-language media, China Daily, paid more than $1 million in printing and advertisement expenses to nine U.S. media outlets from May 1 to Oct. 3, 2023. In return, the media companies printed its “China Watch” supplement, helping spread CCP’s narratives.

Last year, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, sent letters to the heads of the nine U.S. media companies, urging them to stop accepting money from, and cut ties with China Daily.

The letters were sent to The Seattle Times, the Houston Chronicle, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Time, USA Today, the Financial Times, the Sun Sentinel, and the Chicago Tribune.

China Daily has since been designated by the U.S. Department of State as a “foreign mission” controlled by the CCP.

In its 2022 report on Beijing’s Global Media Influence, Freedom House, a U.S.-based nonpartisan organization, found that the CCP was “using more sophisticated and coercive tactics to shape media narratives and suppress critical reporting.”

The United States, United Kingdom, and Taiwan were among the countries that “faced a very high degree of media influence efforts from Beijing” and “displayed a very high level of resilience” according to the report.

Australia was rated in the category of facing a “high degree of media influence efforts from Beijing.”

According to party insiders, in 2022, CCP leader Xi Jinping ordered an escalation of the suppression of Falun Gong groups overseas, deploying propaganda campaigns and legal warfare in a broader “unrestricted warfare” strategy to target both Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

CCP Focuses Attacks on Shen Yun

For years, Shen Yun has been a thorn in the party’s side, Li told The Epoch Times.

This is because Shen Yun is getting people talking about the CCP’s human rights abuses, and promoting religious freedom, he said. Shen Yun’s tagline is “China before communism.”

He said the CCP has responded to this artistic expression by launching a coordinated smear campaign and legal challenges attacking Shen Yun.

Shen Yun stated in August 2024 that Beijing had escalated its suppression efforts, citing a report by the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC) that the regime is instructing agents to feed “malicious” and “negative” content about people who practice Falun Gong to Western media and social media influencers.

The report said the CCP’s aim is to breed public hostility toward Falun Gong in the hopes of prompting action from U.S. law enforcement.

Whistleblowers in China provided meeting notes from June, in which provincial-level Ministry of Public Security officials—the CCP’s top secret police—directed all provinces to “fully support” two YouTubers producing anti-Falun Gong and anti-Shen Yun videos.

The FDIC report states that in early August 2024, one of the YouTubers explicitly listed “media like the New York Times” as one of three target “battlefields” for discrediting Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

Li urged democratic nations to stay vigilant or risk having their speech and core values manipulated by foreign totalitarian powers.

In February, the State Department denounced the CCP’s “acts of intimidation” directed at Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

In June, G7 leaders concluded their two-day summit in Canada. In one of their statements, leaders vowed to cooperate to counter the CCP’s transnational repression, which it said “often impacts dissidents, journalists, human rights defenders, religious minorities, and those identified as part of diaspora communities.”

Li stressed that once the media becomes a tool of political infiltration, the victims aren’t just a specific faith group—the free speech and values of the democratic world are at stake.

“Today they’re targeting Shen Yun,” he warned, “Tomorrow it could be a political party or public figure they don’t like.”

Yuan Li, Eva Fu, Petr Svab, Aldgra Fredly, and Frank Fang contributed to this report.