China’s Gestapo-Like Agency Under Scrutiny After Death of Its Founder

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China, in New York's Chinatown on July 10, 2022. Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times

Nazi Germany’s infamous Gestapo is long gone, but its crimes have not been forgotten. What’s less known is that the communist regime in China also has a Gestapo-like agency whose sole mission is to brutalize and persecute innocent civilians who are deemed enemies of the state.

The agency, called the “610 Office,” has been in existence since 1999.

Hu Shaobin, a former director at the 610 office in central China’s Wuhan city, openly acknowledged that the agency he worked for was a current-day Gestapo, with the power to mobilize officials working in the military, police department, judiciary, and public security.

Over the years, victims have recounted the merciless attitude of those working at the shadowy body.

“When no one is around, nobody will ever know if I beat you to death,” Wang Xin said. Wang, a staff member at a county-level 610 Office in China’s northeastern Shangdong Province, was known for brutally beating his victims and subjecting them to forced feeding.

“I could throw you into a brainwashing class,” Zheng Guolun, who worked at the regional 610 Office in central China’s Chongqing city, said in 2015. “Tomorrow is New Year’s Day and you wouldn’t be left in peace until the Lunar Chinese New Year.”

Xie Shinong, of a 610 Office in southwest China’s Chengdu city, said, “We don’t follow the law.”

“Here is $4,000 yuan [$560]. If you don’t want it, you won’t receive anything else. It is useless if you take it to any other authority,” Lei Yancheng, a regional deputy director, told the family of Liu Shufen, who had died from the persecution in 2003.

These unsettling words were all directed at Chinese citizens who shared one thing in common—they were all practitioners of a spiritual discipline known as Falun Gong. Their accounts were reported on Minghui.org, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to reporting on the persecution of the group in China.

The 610 Office, while its crimes have been documented for years, is now under deep scrutiny after being thrown into the spotlight following the death of its founder, former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin, who died due to leukemia and multiple organ failure on Nov. 30, aged 96.

Former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Nov. 8, 2012. Feng Li/Getty Images

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Millions of Chinese citizens embraced the practice after it was introduced to the public in 1992. By the end of the decade, there were 70 million to 100 million adherents in China, according to estimates at the time.

“Jiang Zemin saw this as a threat to the survival of the Party, which could not tolerate the existence of a social structure beyond its control,” a French military think tank wrote in a report published last year.

Jiang set up the 610 Office on June 10, 1999, with its name being drawn from the date of its founding. A little more than a month later, he officially launched a brutal campaign to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in an attempt to eradicate the practice, targeting innocents in a violent, deadly suppression that experts have described as a genocide.

610 Office

The office is an extralegal Party organization with offices and branches throughout China, including state-run companies and universities.

Its very existence is illegal, since it has never been approved by the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp legislature, nor the 24-member Politburo made up of Party elites.

Nonetheless, the office holds enormous power, wielding influence over nearly all government agencies, including law enforcement, courts, prosecution, and justice.

The 610 Office has been accused of committing a litany of crimes against Falun Gong practitioners, including kidnapping, unlawful detention, torture, and state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting.

The number of staff at the 610 Office is not publicly known. Sarah Cook, research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Washington-based nonprofit Freedom House, estimated in 2011 that at least 15,000 officers were working for the office, according to data extrapolation based on district-level numbers on local government websites.

The Chinese regime has also provided ample funding to the body. In a 2017 report, Freedom House estimated that the annual budget for all 610 Offices in China was around 879 million yuan (approx. $135 million).

The 610 Office derived its authority from its connection with the Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC)—once a powerful Party organ controlling China’s entire security apparatus that was dominated by CCP officials loyal to Jiang. The commission is still in existence, though its power has been weakened under current Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

From 1999 to 2012, the first three heads of the CCP Leading Group that oversees the 610 Office—Li Lanqing, Luo Gan, and Zhou Yongkang—were all loyal to Jiang. While in charge of the office, Luo and Zhou were also the heads of the PLAC.

Zhou Yongkang in the Great Hall of the People on in Beijing, China, on March 3, 2011. Feng Li/Getty Images

Internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times show that the 610 Office was disbanded between 2018 and 2019 and that its functions were merged into other CCP organs, including the PLAC, as well as the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

“Since the 2018 consolidation, Bureau 4 [of the MPS] has taken over the responsibilities and functions of the former Central 610 Office,” the Falun Dafa Information Center reported in May. “References to the 610 Office continue to appear on some local websites and in victim accounts, but much less frequently than in the past.”

The report also noted that “several million” Falun Gong practitioners have been detained since 1999.

“There are at least 100,000 cases of torture documented by Minghui.org, and reason to believe the true number is several times higher,” the report stated.

Insiders

Some former 610 Office officials have stepped forward, exposing details of what they had done in persecuting Falun Gong practitioners.

One of them, in a letter submitted to Minghui.org in 2016 recounting his involvement, said how he regretted taking part in the regime’s suppression. He didn’t provide his real name, but stated that he used to hold the position of an office clerk and his main duty was working with local police.

“Our 610 Office not only physically harmed Falun Gong practitioners but also despicably cut off their source of income,” the man wrote.

“There was an elderly couple who were owners of a very good hotel. Because they were Falun Gong practitioners, we brought the police along to harass them, with police vehicles frequently appearing before its front doors. In the end, the hotel could not maintain its normal operations and the family lost their livelihood.”

Once, he and others in the office tracked down a senior female practitioner in a remote village, who had to give up her life in a city because she was being harassed.

“She told us that her body used to be frail, but practicing Falun Gong had allowed her to become healthy,” the man wrote. “But we intimidated her, threatened her, and told her to turn over her Falun Gong texts, preventing her from continuing to be a practitioner.

“Because she couldn’t practice Falun Gong under normal conditions, her health deteriorated quickly. She had a relapse of heart disease, had blood in her urine, and her legs became swollen like an elephant. Eventually, I saw that her family sent her to the hospital for emergency treatment.”

The man added that after learning from his friend what Falun Gong was really about, he decided to try out the practice for himself.

“Through rational analysis, I gradually realized that I was deceived by the evil Party’s propaganda. Falun Gong is not like what [China’s state-run] television said it was,” he wrote. “It is us, the poor ‘610 Office’ members, who have been brainwashed.”

Incentives

Another insider who came forward was Hao Fengjun, who once worked for the 610 Office in the National Security Bureau in northern China’s Tianjin city but fled to Australia in 2005 because he didn’t want to participate in the persecution anymore.

Hao said in 2005 that some of his former co-workers saw the persecution as a way to make money.

“In the 610 Office, of course, there were people who worked very hard because the more Falun Gong practitioners they arrested, the more bonus they got,” Hao said.

Even more profitable than making arrests in China was collecting intelligence on overseas Falun Gong adherents. According to Hao, basic information about practitioners’ personal lives, if deemed valuable, could be worth as much as 50,000 yuan (about $7,200).

The 610 Office has offered a lot of money to those willing to take a job. According to leaked documents obtained by The Epoch Times, staff members working at the regional 610 Office in northeastern China’s Harbin city in 2018 had an average annual salary of about 200,000 yuan (about $28,400)—which was approximately seven times higher than the average salary of the city’s residents that year.

Police officers stand guard outside the No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, where human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was being sentenced, in Beijing on Dec. 22, 2015. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

To encourage police officers to arrest more people of faith, China also set up a quota system. According to Bitter Winter magazine, an online publication that reports on religious persecution in China, the National Security Bureau in northeastern China’s Dalian city set up a “quarterly performance assessment plan” to combat religious beliefs for police stations in its jurisdiction in 2018.

“The assessment is based on a 100-point evaluation system with specific scores assigned for each arrested believer depending on his or her faith,” Bitter Winter reported.

A police station was awarded 10 points for arresting a Falun Gong practitioner, and five points for throwing one into detention. Any station chief could lose his job over failure to fulfill the quota.

Even regular citizens are encouraged to aid the state’s oppression. The CCP has rewarded those who are willing to reveal information about anyone who is practicing Falun Gong. In July 2021, Bitter Winter reported that a Chinese citizen surnamed Xu received 2,000 yuan (about $300) for providing tips that led the police to arrest two Falun Gong practitioners in September 2020.

“We wonder whether Xu realizes that for $300 he sent two fellow citizens to jail and most probably to torture, which is a common fate for Falun Gong practitioners,” the author of the Bitter Winter report stated. “There should be something deeply wrong in a system that would encourage you to sell the life and liberty of your neighbors for $300.”

Canada and US

Hao also revealed that there were more than 1,000 spies watching and informing on Falun Gong adherents in Canada.

A regional 610 Office in China has gained a foothold in the North American country. According to leaked 2018 documents obtained by The Epoch Times, the regional PLAC in Beijing’s Fangshan District instructed its 610 Office officials to travel to Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, where they would conduct sessions to promote the Party’s hate propaganda against the spiritual practice.

According to the document, “anti-heretical religion seminars” were held in the Chinese communities in those three Canadian cities “to publicize related Chinese laws and regulations for dealing with heretical religions, and basic knowledge of anti-heretical religions.”

The document emphasized that the seminars had achieved their intended purpose, with local citizens who attended expressing that they will not “believe in,” “promote,” or “participate in” Falun Gong or other religions targeted by the Party.

More than 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners hold a candlelight vigil at the Washington Monument on July 21, 2022. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

In 2021, the State Department announced sanctions against Yu Hui, a former director of the regional 610 Office in southwestern China’s Chengdu city.

Yu was sanctioned “for his involvement in gross violations of human rights, namely the arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners for their spiritual beliefs,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

Following the announcement, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took to Twitter to applaud the U.S. administration for its decision.

“For over 20 yrs, the CCP has persecuted millions of Falun Gong practitioners, reportedly arresting 6,600 in 2020 alone,” Rubio wrote. “More sanctions are needed to punish officials who violate religious freedom in #China, #Xinjiang, & #Tibet.”