In the early morning hours of April 12, Hong Kong New Era Printing Factory Limited, a printing facility of The Epoch Times Hong Kong edition, was attacked by four intruders who are allegedly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). They smashed the printing equipment and computers with sledgehammers, and the damage forced The Epoch Times Hong Kong edition to temporarily suspend distribution.
Over the years, The Epoch Times has become a threat to the CCPbecause the independent media outlet has become known for its uncensored coverage on China, including the regime’s human rights abuses. The printing press in Hong Kong has been attacked multiple times in the past. In November 2019, during the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, four masked men broke into the printing factory and set fire to two printing machines and printing paper.
This incident reminds me of a series of violent attacks and threats carried out by the CCP in Hong Kong and New York decades ago, using triad gang tactics.
The CCP was founded on violence and lies, and during the 70 years of its rule over China, it also relied on violence and lies to control the Chinese people. Since coming to power, it slaughtered its compatriots in the mainland and attempts to spread its malign influence around the world.
The following are just a few cases of the CCP’s attempts to silence outspoken critics and dissenters in Hong Kong and New York through intimidation and violence.
The CCP’s Terrorist Attacks in Hong Kong in the 1950s
1. Refugees From Mainland China Attacked
A view as Chinese refugees wait their turn for water in Hong Kong. Circa 1940. (Pictorial Parade/Getty Images)
In 1949, China was occupied by the CCP through armed attacks and civil wars fought with the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China (ROC), forcing the leadership of the ROC to retreat to Taiwan in that year. In the following two years, millions of mainland Chinese fled from China to Hong Kong, either to settle in the city or transfer via Hong Kong to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and other countries.
Among the refugees who arrived in Hong Kong, over 7,000 were wounded and disabled soldiers of the National Revolutionary Army, who arrived with their families. For humanitarian reasons, the British Hong Kong government accepted them and placed the wounded in hospitals and sent others to the area of Mount Davis, where hundreds of shelters were built as temporary refugee camps.
But the CCP strongly opposed this humane measure, saying that these refugees were roving bandits and that the Hong Kong government should repatriate them to mainland China to be executed by the Party and the people.
The British government refused to comply with the CCP’s demands. Of course, the CCP would not give up and it deliberately sent their minions to the Mount Davis area to perform the Yangge dance (or Yangko dance) to provoke the refugees.
The Yangge dance is a very popular folk dance in rural areas in northern China, but the CCP has turned it into a political tool to spread its communist ideology of struggle to the people and used it as a form of celebration of the CCP’s victory.
When a group from China arrived in Hong Kong to perform the Yangge dance on June 18, 1950, the refugees got upset. When they started to complain, the CCP agents hidden in the crowd pulled out their guns and shot at the refugees, shouting: “Kill the reactionaries!” This confrontation was later known as the “Yangge dance incident.”
The British Hong Kong government transported 7,719 people in wooden boats from the Mount Davis area to a deserted hill called Tiu Keng Leng, also known as Rennie’s Mill, near Tseung Kwan O (Junk Bay) in two days, on June 25 and 26, 1950.
More mainland refugees kept coming to Rennie’s Mill and settled there. They were supporters of the Republic government, and they hoisted the national flag of the ROC in the area, hoping that Taiwan’s national army would soon counterattack the mainland and restore the country.
During the early 1950s, the CCP kept sending its minions to set fire to the huts in Rennie’s Mill and poison the water in local brooks. More than 7,000 people were left homeless because their dwellings were burned down. The incidents drew international attention and concern, but this didn’t stop the CCP.
2. Assassination of Former Chinese Spy Chen Hanbo
On the evening of Jan. 16, 1952, Chen Hanbo, a 31-year-old native of Taishan, Guangdong Province, was shot in the chest by an assassin near his residence in Kowloon.
After an investigation by the Hong Kong police, it was revealed that Chen was a secret agent who once worked under Yang Fan, a special agent in charge of the CCP’s intelligence work of eastern China, and carried out important and special missions of the CCP before it seized power.
After witnessing the CCP’s brutality toward the people and its damage to the country, Chen fled from China to Hong Kong in 1949 and published articles in the newspapers criticizing the CCP. He became known as an anti-CCP writer.
One of his best-selling books titled, “Defection of Mao Zedong’s Special Agents: The New Life of a Red Female Spy,” was attacked by the CCP’s newspapers in Hong Kong, calling Chen “anti-communist” and “anti-China.”
The Hong Kong police ruled that Chen’s murder was a political assassination and that it was impossible to solve the case, and they eventually dropped it.
3. Two Catholic Priests Murdered
Two Catholic priests of the Holy Souls Church in Wanchai, Hong Kong—Rev. Father Peter Ngai and Rev. Father John Cheng—were murdered in their sleep in the early hours of Sept. 7, 1953.
Catholics pray at mass in Hong Kong's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Central district wearing masks to protect against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) on Good Friday, on April 18, 2003. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)
“Nothing had been stolen from the scene of the crime. ... Diocesan archives report that telephone and electricity lines leading to the priests’ rooms were found cut,” according to an article published by Sunday Examiner on Sept. 23, 2018.
Ngai and Cheng were outspoken critics of the CCP and they expressed their views in the two Chinese publications they ran, Kung Kao Po (Catholic newspaper) and The Modern Students. Cheng reportedly received death threats before he was murdered.
4. Female Journalist Threatened
In April 1953, Xu Jin, a female journalist who fled from Shanghai to Hong Kong, published a book called, “Mao Zedong Killed My Husband.” The 142-page book, published by Asia Press in Hong Kong, recounts the shooting of Xu’s husband, Mo Zixin, by Chinese authorities in Shanghai, and reveals how the bloody political campaign in Shanghai unfolded under the CCP’s rule.
Mo Zixin, a professor at Fudan University and a journalist, was arrested by Chinese authorities and executed within a few months after his arrest.
The book told readers the exact opposite of what the CCP had propagated with regards to the so-called new China that had won the hearts of the people. Xu was thus subjected to a series of threats, along with other outspoken critics.
The CCP revealed a blacklist of targets for execution at the time. Xu was at the top of the list, followed by Li Yansheng (also known as Ma Er)—a famous writer who wrote anti-communist political commentaries, Bu Shaofu of Xinwentiandi (News World) Magazine, and Li Jinwei—another political commentator. These targeted individuals received death threats in the mail, along with bullets and razor blades.
Xu did not stay in Hong Kong—she moved to Taiwan, then Spain, and finally settled in New York. She told me about her horrible experiences and the hardships she endured.
The CCP’s Terrorist Attacks in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s
1. RMS Queen Elizabeth Cruise Ship Set on Fire
RMS Queen Elizabeth was claimed to be the largest and most luxurious cruise ship in the world from the 1930s to the 1970s. Tung Chao Yung (C Y Tung, also known as Tung Hao-yun) bought the ship for $3.2 million in 1971 and planned to turn it into a floating school called “Seawise University.”
View of the bow of the RMS Queen Elizabeth as seen from the water line while the ship was berthed in New York Harbor, New York City, circa 1945. (George Enell/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
CY Tung was the founder of Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), which started in Taiwan and later moved to Hong Kong, where it became one of the largest shipping companies in Asia. He was said to be an “ardent Nationalist”—he used the plum blossom, which is the national flower of Taiwan, as OOCL’s company logo. He was regarded by the CCP as “anti-revolutionary.”
When the Queen Elizabeth was undergoing a major renovation, several mysterious fires broke out in different places around the ship on the morning of Jan. 9, 1972, according to an archived source from cruisetalkshow.com. And for the next 24 hours, Hong Kong firefighters tried in vain to put out the fire. The ship, still burning the next day, capsized. An initial court of inquiry in Hong Kong concluded that the fire was a “deliberate act by persons or persons unknown,” and it was suspected that the workers aboard the ship set the fires.
It’s interesting that CY Tung’s son, Tung Chee-hwa, was honored by the CCP as the first chief executive of Hong Kong and that he would later give the highest honor to Yeung Kwong, former head of Hong Kong’s trade unions who led the 1967 Hong Kong riots. Yeung was also head of the workers aboard CY Tung’s Queen Elizabeth.
2. Death of Lam Bun
What is even more frightening and abhorrent than the fire that destroyed the Queen Elizabeth ship is the death of Lam Bun in the 1960s in Hong Kong.
Lam Bun was a radio commentator at Commercial Radio Hong Kong. He often criticized the leftists and agitators, and condemned the violence during the 1967 riots on his own radio programs. He called those engaged in armed violence “filthy and despicable.”
On Aug. 24, 1967, on his way to work, Lam’s car was stopped by people disguised as road maintenance workers, who doused Lam and his cousin with gasoline and set them on fire. Lam died that day, and his cousin died several days later.
No one was arrested for the murder, but Yeung Kwong, then leader of the riots, was believed to have ordered the assassination.
3. Attempted Murder of Wan Renjie
Another literary figure who was feared and despised by the CCP was Wan Renjie, also known as Chen Zijun. The famous journalist had a column in Sing Tao Wan Pao (Sing Tao Evening News)around 1967, in which he criticized the communist agitators who disturbed the peace in Hong Kong. Hong Kong readers loved his columns so much that Sing Tao Wan Pao became a best seller in the city at that time, and readers called and wrote to Wan every day to tell him the inside stories of the CCP’s brutality in the mainland.
The CCP’s minions in Hong Kong threatened Wan through letters and phone calls.
After the death of Lam Bun, Hong Kong authorities sent police to Wan’s residence and office building to offer protection. Police officers and security found time bombs placed underneath Wan’s car on more than one occasion.
The CCP Threatened Critics in New York
1. World Journal Vandalized
In the early days, World Journal, a Chinese-language newspaper founded by Wang Tih-wu from Taiwan, was regarded by pro-Communists as a mouthpiece of the Kuomintang, an obstacle to the CCP’s infiltration to Western society.
The communist agitators did not dare to publicly carry out violent attacks in the daytime. They would go out at night and vandalize the newspaper’s office, which was located at 47 Walker Street in New York’s Chinatown at that time.
On May 11, 1979, a group of thugs destroyed the doors and windows of the office building with lead pipes and rocks, smashing the glass.
On April 10, 1980, the media company’s headquarters in Whitestone, New York was set on fire. Two months later on June 11, strong plastic glue was injected into the keyhole of the door, which made it impossible to open.
2. Confucius Statue Attacked
In 1976, a bronze statue of Confucius was erected at the Confucius Plaza in Chinatown, New York. But a group of thugs almost destroyed the statue.
Bust of Confucius, Confucius Institute building on the Troy University campus, Troy, Alabama, on March 16, 2018 (Kreeder13 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
At that time, China was in the middle of a political campaign to “criticize Lin Biao (second in command of the CCP, after Mao Zedong) and criticize Confucius,” and the CCP’s minions and their supporters overseas followed suit. They regarded Confucius as a reactionary and class enemy who should be fought against.
So, on the day the statue was unveiled in front of all the guests, a group of thugs beat it with iron rods, poured red paint and stuck posters and banners on it, and shouted in protest against Confucius, Lin Biao, and the Kuomintang.
Luckily, local police arrived at the scene before the situation got out of control.
About 1.4 billion Chinese people are still under the rule of the Chinese Communist regime. U.S. Congressman Scott Perry said in an interview that the CCP is a “criminal organization.” The CCP must disintegrate soon, otherwise, there will never be peace in the world.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Li Yong is a veteran media professional who has worked as a reporter and editor-in-chief for several Chinese newspapers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and North America, and has founded several North American Chinese-language newspapers. He is the author of several books in Chinese on China’s politics, media, and intelligence.
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