CCP Fears Crimes Against Dissident Group May Spell Party’s Doom, Source Says

A security guard stands outside a meeting at the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on March 6, 2024. Greg Baker/AFP

Top officials within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worry that if their crimes against their own people are fully exposed, the backlash at home and internationally could undermine or even topple the regime, according to a well-positioned source within the Party security apparatus.

The officials are particularly concerned that their crimes of torture as well as the killing of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs will be exposed on an international scale, the source told The Epoch Times.

The details of the crimes are so “inhuman,” he said, that if they break into the mainstream of public awareness, it would prompt widespread calls for accountability. Top CCP officials may face formal investigations, prosecution, and international tribunals, which would then destabilize the regime domestically, he said.

“This could lead not only to the collapse of the Party and the nation but also to the prosecution of all major CCP leaders,“ he said, including CCP leader Xi Jinping “in an international court.”

The source has access to information within the highest echelons of the CCP security apparatus. He has previously provided credible information.

Reports of torture in China’s prisons and labor camps surged in 1999 with the onset of the persecution of Falun Gong, a faith group the regime set out to “eradicate” after government surveys indicated some 70 million people picked up the spiritual practice, outgrowing CCP membership.

The regime imprisoned millions in its ensuing persecution campaign, and verified deaths quickly numbered into the thousands.

Around the same time, China’s transplant industry exploded. In a nation culturally reluctant to donate organs, there was suddenly an overabundant organ supply, with hospitals offering wait times as short as one week.

Starting in 2006, several whistleblowers came forward to testify that the regime was killing prisoners of conscience, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, to fuel the lucrative state-sanctioned organ trade.

While these crimes have drawn some media attention, they’ve never been formally investigated by a major government—at least not with publicly released results.

In recent years, though, it appears the dam has been breaking, with mentions of the crimes in Congressional resolutions and U.S. State Department reports.

In 2019, the China Tribunal, a civil tribunal in the U.K., concluded “beyond reasonable doubt” that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one—and probably the main—source of organ supply.”

Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of the China Tribunal on forced organ harvesting, on the first day of public hearings, London, UK, on Dec. 8, 2018. Justin Palmer

On March 27, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023” (H.R.1154) with an overwhelming majority, marking the first instance of legislation with real punitive measures aimed at halting the CCP’s organ harvesting atrocities.

According to the source, the CCP leaders consider these developments more consequential than economic sanctions because a slowed economy doesn’t affect them personally in the immediate term.

“What the CCP fears most is the U.S. government fully backing Falun Gong and launching investigations into the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong in China; this is the CCP’s Achilles’ heel,” the source said.

This matter is all the more urgent for the CCP amid the ascent of a more hawkish U.S foreign policy approach toward China that began in the first Trump administration and was maintained through the Biden administration.

“In the past, the China–U.S. relationship was mainly about economic conflicts. But with all the changes in the global situation … it’s now a direct confrontation between China and the U.S.—or more like a fight for the top spot, a fight to the death,” the source said. “At this point, the CCP can’t afford to leave this weak spot in American hands.”

Lawfare

The CCP won’t just sit back and wait for disaster to come its way, the source suggested. Instead, the regime is executing a plan to preempt the Falun Gong issue from reaching critical mass.

The plan aims to discredit Falun Gong overseas and thus sap credibility of the evidence against the CCP in China, he said, pinpointing lawfare as the core tactic. Using this tactic, entities and individuals associated with Falun Gong are targeted with lawsuits while government agencies are pressured to launch investigations.

Similar plans have been revealed by several other CCP insiders who have come forward over the past six months.

The regime is using undercover operatives to orchestrate the attacks while also working to influence individuals within the American government to aid the effort, the source said.

“Certain deals have been struck between senior CCP officials and some American officials, who assist the CCP in suppressing Falun Gong in the U.S. in exchange for specific benefits from the CCP, the details of which remain unclear,” the source said.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify this claim.

The goal, he suggested, was for American authorities to do the CCP’s dirty work, lending it a patina of credibility and, ultimately, letting the CCP off the hook.

“Once the U.S. government discredits Falun Gong, all the atrocities committed in China will go unpunished, and it will be impossible to draw international attention to these issues—let alone prosecute those responsible,” he said.

‘Relentless, Nonstop Pressure’

Falun Gong practitioners have been active in raising awareness of CCP’s human rights abuses. They have also challenged the CCP on cultural grounds, mainly through the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts company, which puts on acclaimed classical Chinese dance shows around the world under the tagline “China before communism.”

Over the past few years, Shen Yun, and Falun Gong more broadly, have been constantly harassed in the United States, including through bomb threats, mass shooting threats, social media trolling, impersonation, lawsuits, media smears, and even physical attacks.

“They’re under relentless, nonstop pressure,” said Nicholas Eftimiades, a veteran of the CIA, State Department, and Defense Intelligence Agency, and an expert on CCP overseas operations.

“It is a multiple level front that they, as Falun Gong, face against China. It is warfare on multiple levels,” he told The Epoch Times.

Over the past few years, a U.S. national who lived in China for years and has longtime business ties to China has repeatedly filed defective environmental lawsuits against Shen Yun campus in upstate New York. The most recent one was dismissed by a federal judge in September, this time “with prejudice,” so it can’t be refiled.

Falun Gong practitioners re-enact illegal payment for human organs in Washington on April 19, 2016. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

In July, two Chinese Americans, John Chen and Lin Feng, pleaded guilty to acting as Chinese agents after they tried to bribe an IRS agent to open an investigation into Shen Yun based on meritless claims.

Lin told the FBI that he and Chen also surveilled the Falun Gong community in Orange County, New York, where the Shen Yun campus is located, to collect information for an environmental suit meant to inhibit the growth of the Falun Gong community in the area, according to court documents.

In November, Shen Yun was hit with another lawsuit, filed by an ex-performer who left the company about five years ago. Parts of the suit appear to be lifted from a New York Times article attacking Shen Yun.

The New York Times has run at least nine articles attacking Shen Yun over the past half a year and the former performer has been a key source of the allegations. The lead author of the articles, reporter Nicole Hong, said in an interview with her paper that she and her colleague, Michael Rothfeld, started working on the articles after a “tipster” approached them with supposed information on the “inner workings” of Shen Yun and introduced them to a former performer.

Meanwhile, a Chinese American man who frequently attacks Shen Yun and Falun Gong on social media has publicly claimed credit for supplying some sources for the articles. The same individual was identified earlier this year by CCP whistleblowers  as being used by the regime as a vehicle for a smear campaign against Falun Gong, according to a report by the Falun Dafa Information Center, a nonprofit monitoring the persecution of Falun Gong.

The man has also made threatening comments toward Shen Yun personnel, and in 2023, the FBI issued a warning to local law enforcement that he was “potentially armed and dangerous” after he was spotted near the Shen Yun campus.

The man was subsequently arrested and charged with illegal firearms possession.

Last year, he boasted online about reporting Shen Yun to federal authorities and urged others to do the same.