CCP Uses Psychiatric Drugs to Persecute Its Own Officials: Insider

‘This is an extremely shocking situation—such things didn’t even happen during the Cultural Revolution,’ said former law professor Yuan Hongbing.

Wang Qishan (C), China's newly elected Vice President, receives applause after being elected during the fifth plenary session of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 17, 2018. GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using psychiatric drugs against internal officials who are being purged, according to a source within the communist system, highlighting the intense level of its internal power struggle.

On Feb. 21, Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at Peking University and a renowned dissident living in exile in Australia, told The Epoch Times that three days earlier, a conscience-driven individual within the CCP system disclosed an internal, top-secret directive issued by the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in 2023.

The directive stated that any officials targeted by the purge, if involved in political issues—meaning those disloyal to CCP leader Xi Jinping, according to Yuan—will, after their cases are concluded, be injected with psychiatric drugs, effectively rendering them incapacitated.

According to the leaked information, the cases of former Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe have been concluded. Along with former Air Force General Liu Yazhou, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2024, they are subjects of “psychiatric drug treatment,” Yuan said.

The source disclosed that the cases of several high-ranking officials, including Adm. Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission and director of its political work department, as well as hundreds of other military generals, are still under investigation. The source believes that once their testimonies are fully clarified and the cases are concluded, they, too, will be subjected to the injections.

“In short, any official who shows political disloyalty to Xi Jinping may be injected with psychiatric drugs,” Yuan said.

He added that the CCP regime’s applying such methods to its own officials highlights the brutal internal power struggles within the system.

“You can see that the infighting within the CCP has reached an intense, boiling point.”

Xi–Wang Struggle

Yuan, who had direct contact with Xi in the 1980s and maintains communications inside China’s top political circles, analyzed the background of the situation.

He said China’s former Vice President Wang Qishan became offended after Xi took the advice of other allies such as Cai Qi, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

“Originally, Xi wanted to keep Wang Qishan on the Politburo Standing Committee beyond the retirement age, promising not to let him retire. However, Xi’s close allies, including Cai Qi, believed that Wang harbored personal ambitions and that his continued presence in the Standing Committee would threaten Xi’s position,” he told The Epoch Times.

“As a result, Xi went back on his promise to Wang, assigning him the largely ceremonial role of vice president and pushing him into retirement. This led to a conflict between them.”

Another source of tension between the two stemmed from Xi’s efforts to purge CCP officials, particularly those within the financial and banking sectors, Yuan said.

He said Xi needs to seize astronomical amounts of their wealth to ease his economic and fiscal crises. Wang’s power base was primarily within the banking and financial sectors, as he had spent much of his career in these areas, cultivating a large group of loyal supporters, said Yuan.

“These two reasons have led to what can be described as an irreconcilable conflict between Wang and Xi.

“Recently, the CCP’s princeling faction sought to prevent Xi from securing a third term at the 21st Party Congress, and they are preparing to launch Wang as a replacement for Xi. This has triggered Xi’s plans to launch a decisive and destructive crackdown on Wang’s faction. This sets the backdrop for the entire situation.”

Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan speaks to representatives of the Sino-Russian Friendship Committee for Peace and Development at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on Dec. 5, 2019. Noel Celis-Pool/Getty Images

Yuan said that Xi’s so-called death sentences with reprieve are, in reality, a signal that those he wishes to eliminate will undergo a form of internal punishment.

“Once these individuals are sentenced to death with a reprieve and imprisoned, they will be subjected to special drug treatments that damage their nervous systems. Even if they remain alive, their minds will be severely damaged, rendering them mentally incapacitated,” he said.

Yuan taught at Peking University for eight years and at Guizhou Normal University for ten years, instructing 2,000 to 3,000 undergraduate students and thousands of adult education students.

During his time at Peking University, he taught a significant portion of the officers from the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force. Many of Yuan’s classmates are high-ranking CCP officials.

The former law professor believes that this situation indicates the extreme intensity of the internal power struggle within the CCP.

“This is an extremely shocking situation—such things didn’t even happen during the Cultural Revolution,” he said. “It’s so evil.

“Logically speaking, these officials are their own people, yet they are treating them this way. Just think about how they must treat ordinary citizens.”

CCP’s Drug Persecution of Chinese People

The CCP’s drug persecution started with common Chinese people, with the biggest victim group being practitioners of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a spiritual practice rooted in traditional Chinese culture that consists of moral teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance and meditative exercises.

In July 1999, seeing that the number of Falun Gong practitioners had reached 70 million, surpassing the CCP’s party membership, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin launched a nationwide persecution against the faith group.

During the 25-year persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, CCP officials have sent them to psychiatric hospitals, unlawfully detained them in detention centers and prisons, and subjected them to abuse through drugs, torture, and other forms of mistreatment.

According to the 2004 “Investigative Report on Spiritual Persecution” by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, cases of drug-related persecution of Falun Gong practitioners have been found in psychiatric hospitals, brainwashing centers, drug rehabilitation centers, detention centers, labor camps, prisons, and other facilities across China.

Some were forcibly injected or force-fed various drugs that damaged the central nervous system before they were subjected to electric shocks, prolonged binding, force-feeding, and other forms of abuse.

As a result, some became blind, deaf, fully or partially paralyzed, lost their memory, suffered from mental confusion and insanity, developed long-term skin ulcers, or suffered severe internal organ damage that led to death. The majority of those who died had endured brutal mental torture.

As of Dec. 25, 2024, according to incomplete statistics, Minghui.org, a website dedicated to documenting the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong adherents, has collected and verified through unofficial channels that 5,180 Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death. The death cases are spread across China.

Torture re-enactment: Unknown drugs being forcibly injected into a Falun Gong practitioner to coerce them to renounce their faith. Courtesy of Minghui.org

In 2000, Falun Gong practitioner Lu Hongfeng, a former vice-principal of an elementary school in Lingwu City of Ningxia, a northern autonomous region, was force-fed nerve-damaging drugs by the Lingwu Mental Hospital. The hospital used a German-imported drug, which would cause most people to fall into a coma for three days after taking just one pill. Lu was force-fed 24 pills a day, and after more than 50 days, she died.

In 2022, Wang Yuling, a then 72-year-old Falun Gong practitioner from Zibo City of the eastern Shandong Province, was arrested by the police for explaining the truth about Falun Gong to the public. She was later unlawfully sentenced to one and a half years in prison. In Shandong Women’s Prison, she suffered cruel torture, including being force-fed unidentified drugs. As a result, she endured constant pain after her release and died in October 2024.

Zhou Dongying, a Falun Gong practitioner from Yueyang City of the southern Hunan Province, was repeatedly arrested, sent to brainwashing sessions multiple times, and was twice detained in psychiatric hospitals. She was tortured, subjected to electric shocks, and forcibly injected with drugs that damaged her central nervous system. In 2015, she suffered a brain hemorrhage, cerebral thrombosis, memory loss, speech impairment, and paralysis, becoming completely unable to take care of herself. She died in February 2024.

As of Feb. 25, 2025, a search on the Chinese version of Minghui.org for the term “drug” yielded 14,296 related articles and entries. Searching for “injection” resulted in 7,673 related results. Dissidents and activists in communist China have also fallen victim to drug-induced torment, such as Peng Ming.

Peng, a Chinese entrepreneur and political dissident from the central Hubei Province, founded the “China Development Union” in 1998, with independent intellectuals as its main members. He advocated for a Chinese federalism model, but the authorities shut down the organization. In 2000, Peng fled China, and in the United States, he established the “China Federal Development Committee” as part of the pro-democracy movement.

In 2004, Peng was secretly lured and kidnapped by Chinese agents in Myanmar, then brought back to China. In 2005, the Wuhan court sentenced him to life imprisonment on charges of “organizing and leading a terrorist organization” and stripped him of his political rights for life. Peng died in 2016 in Xianning Prison, Hubei.

Yuan stated that the CCP administration administered an excessive amount of drugs to Peng, leading to brain death, and ultimately, his death.

The highly publicized “709 Incident” occurred in 2015, when the Chinese Ministry of Public Security launched a nationwide clampdown, arresting human rights lawyers across China. By December 2016, at least 319 lawyers, law firm personnel, human rights defenders, and their families had been interrogated, restricted from leaving the country, placed under house arrest, arrested, or forcibly disappeared. The incident involved 23 provinces.

In 2017, The Epoch Times interviewed released lawyers and their families. According to relatives of Li Chunfu, a rights lawyer arrested in the “709 Incident,” nearly all lawyers released from the “709 Incident” had been forced to take unknown drugs during their detention.

Pictures of Beijing lawyers Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu who were beaten by Chongqing police because they took a Falun Gong case. The Epoch Times

Another example is Su Yifeng, a former forklift driver from the southern Guizhou City who was illegally detained in a psychiatric hospital in 2006 for his activism and narrowly survived.

“I had to take medication every day, and I had to take it in front of [doctors]. After I took the medicine, they would even make me open my mouth to check if I had swallowed it,” Su, currently in Los Angeles, told NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media, on Feb. 7.

“There were several types of pills, a whole handful, various kinds, and after taking them, I would sometimes experience swelling.”

Su said the CCP is “the real cult, an anti-human, anti-civilization, and anti-universal values organization.”

“It has no right to represent China or the Chinese people.”