CLEARWATER, Fla.—The Asians for Liberty organization made its public debut recently when co-founder Cathy Kiang stepped up to the podium.
On the first day of the With Liberty and Justice for All conference organized by Sovereign Nations, Ms. Kiang shared how her great-grandparents escaped Communist China and made it to America.
It’s important to tell about that history so that it’s never repeated, she said.
“I will never truly understand the struggles that they went through and the sacrifices that they made,” she said at the July 20 conference.
“But it’s my mission to never forget and to always strive to preserve freedoms and liberties.”
Cathy Kiang, president of Asians for Liberty, speaks at Countryside Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla., on July 20, 2023. Courtesy Asians for Liberty
Ms. Kiang founded Asians for Liberty in 2022 with her aunt, Sau O’Fallon, host of the podcast “The Asian American.”
The organization’s goal, they said, is to educate both the young and old about the horrors of Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution in China.
They also want people to see the parallels between what happened then and what is happening now in the United States, they said.
‘The Communists Won’
After the 2020 election, Mrs. O'Fallon’s mother said to her daughter, “The communists won.”“I think that was probably a shock to her,” Mrs. O'Fallon said. “Like, she never thought she would be saying that here” in the United States.
The new organization is a family affair kicked into action by the death of Mrs. O’Fallon’s mother.
She was the last of Ms. Kiang’s grandparents. Her passing triggered a painful realization:
“They’re gone. There’s no one in our family left to share their stories. It’s up to us.”
Her aunt embraced the mission, too.
“We got to wake people up,” Mrs. O'Fallon said. “We need more people–you know, soldiers–on our side to combat the communist forces that come in different disguises.”
Sau O Fallon, vice president of Asians for Liberty, speaks at Countryside Baptist Church in Clearwater, Fla. on July 20, 2023. Courtesy Asians for Liberty
Ms. Kiang told conference attendees: “Students are being taught America was not a great country built on principles of freedom and liberty, [where] regardless of your background, your skin color, that anyone can prosper, anyone can succeed.
“These dangerous ideologies have infiltrated every facet of our society, including our churches, our workplaces, government, communities–even our military. Many of us have awakened to this.”
But others have not, she said.
Families Escaping Communism
Mrs. O’Fallon told conference attendees that her parents would never talk about communism directly with her and her siblings, but they would talk about it with the other adults.She would overhear enough to know that communism and communists were bad.
“Even the name Mao...gave me chills in a bad way,” she recalled.
To her, the name meant “bad man” and “killer.”
The family came to America after first escaping mainland China and going to Hong Kong, then a territory of the United Kingdom.
Mrs. O’Fallon and Ms. Kiang’s mother were two of six children who made the journey across the Pacific in 1968.
When their mother stepped onto American soil, it was “the happiest moment of her life,” she later told her family.
They were poor, so it was easier to not be noticed, Mrs. O'Fallon explained.
Things were different for the family of Ms. Kiang’s father.
His grandfather was mayor of a province in China, she said. His family was blessed with wealth and land. But that also meant he was watched by communist officials.
He escaped to Taiwan by disguising himself as a poor fisherman. But his wife was caught and thrown in prison, enduring intense suffering before committing suicide. Ms. Kiang said.
The family didn’t talk much about the tragedy, and when she was younger, the stories didn’t interest her much anyway, she said.
But within the last decade, she had a sudden realization and became alarmed, asking herself, “Wow, what’s going on around us?”
Sharing Survivors’ Stories
Ms. Kiang and Mrs. O’Fallon spoke at the conference alongside living survivors of Mao’s cultural revolution, Xi Van Fleet and Lily Tang Williams.They were eager to share their stories and their warning.
“My parents, they chose communism. They joined the revolution,” Ms. Van Fleet said. “And then they helped to take over China.
“I did not make the choice.
“And many of the young people today in America—they choose communism over capitalism.”
Xi Van Fleet shares her story of surviving China’s Cultural Revolution. The Epoch Times
Her earliest memory is of the Cultural Revolution, led by Mao Zedong. It began when she was in the first grade and lasted ten of her school years.
After high school, she was sent to the countryside like so many of her people to do “primitive work” and “be re-educated by the peasants.”
The revolution terrorized China from 1966 to 1976. Radical youth, known as The Red Guards, enforced Mao’s objective to rid the nation of what he called The Four Olds: Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Customs, and Old Habits.
In the societal upheaval, traditional ideas such as family bonds, femininity, criminal justice, and meritocracy were tossed aside, Ms. Van Fleet said.
They were replaced with a “new culture” of justified rebellion, class struggle, political correctness, snitch culture, and what became known as a “cult of personality"—Mao’s personality, she said.
She and Ms. Williams both came from Sichuan Province, where an estimated eight million people died in those 10 years of the revolution.
“I was so brainwashed,” Ms. Williams told attendees at the conference. “Sometimes, I'd see Mao’s face in the sky behind the clouds, and I would see him smiling in the fire.”
Students turned on their teachers, she said. All religions were labeled cults. And 95 percent of criminal justice personnel were exiled.
Children were encouraged to “educate” their parents and turn in if they failed to adapt.
“I would go home, and my mom would sometimes pray, and [I’d say] ‘Mom! Don’t do that! That’s how capitalism holds your lifestyle. You need to believe [in] the Party, come on!’” Ms. Williams recalled.
“I would lecture my mom because I was so red. I was a red child.”
Lily Tang Williams, a survivor of communist China’s Cultural Revolution and congressional candidate in New Hampshire. Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times
Both women came to the United States on student visas in the later 1980s.
“I gave up on China when I became a faculty member in law school,” Ms. Williams said.
“I was told, ‘Law is not for justice or equal protection for the regular people. Law is the communist party’s tool to govern the masses. And you are just one of the masses.’”
Then, she said, an American college student her about “the Declaration of Independence and that individuals have rights not given by the government but given by my Creator,” she said.
“My lightbulb came on, and it never turned off.”
Spot the Signs
More than 30 years later, Ms. Williams is a wife, mother of three, entrepreneur, and Republican candidate, making her second bid for Congress in New Hampshire.She’s begun to see “the Chinese Communist Playbook” show itself on American soil during the past four years, she said.
“I never thought I would come to my promised land–a great country–to see the sitting president get censored,” she said. “A presidential candidate today–RFK–also being censored, interviews taken down.”
The Chinese women warned of the parallels between Mao’s infamous Red Guards and today’s “cancel culture” and “woke” movement. Those ideologies have been promoted to children in public schools for years, the women said, forming what they called a modern “Blue Guard.”
“Many of the tactics that were used during his cultural revolution in China are now being used in our very own country,” Ms. Kiang said.
Red Guard members wave copies of Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” during a parade in Beijing in June 1966. Jean Vincent/AFP via Getty Images
Instead of being put through physically intensive “struggle sessions” in the public square, today’s “enemies of the people,” the women said, are outed and punished in more passive ways.
These include “Facebook jail,” attention from “Twitter mobs,” and the possibility of unemployment if one speaks out against progressive social policies involving Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
“And with my line of business in the travel events industry,” Ms. Kiang said, “our conservative organizations are being declined access into certain venues because of their conservative values.“
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how easily Americans’ freedom of movement could be taken away and how each person could be labeled “an enemy of the people” if they refused to comply with vaccine mandates and lockdowns, the women said.
James Lindsay (3R) speaks during a panel on the American Cultural Revolution in Clearwater, Fla., on July 20, 2023. Courtesy Asians for Liberty
“In 2020, when the BLMers and Antifa took over our cities and terrorized our communities, many Americans were shocked,” Ms. Van Fleet told conference attendees. “They’ve never seen anything like this. But for people like me and Lily, we know right away.”
Ms. Williams warned: “Remember, the communists got to use identity politics to achieve their power. They want absolute power, but they cannot use the classic struggles theory anymore. So they are using race.
“They are using transgenderism and whatever offensive words that might come next. Just get prepared. It’s always–like Mao–every 2, 3, 5 years. A new campaign and new fancy terms. And the state media lies every day until that [new campaign] becomes a truth accepted by the public.”
Just Getting Started
Ms. Kiang and Mrs. O'Fallon hope to call attention to these issues enough to make a difference quickly.“That would be a dream,” Mrs. O'Fallon said. “But if we can just do slow baby steps–and they’re all these baby steps going different directions–that would be very, very excellent.”
They hope to add chapters in Asian-American communities in Florida, and then add more affiliates across the country. They also are setting up a scholarship to promote the ideas of entrepreneurship and capitalism.
They see challenges ahead in spreading their message.
History is barely taught in schools, especially the history of communism, they said.
Older generations who’ve experienced communism don’t talk about it because they either want to forget about it, or believe such a revolution could not happen here, they said. And some may hold some admiration for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they said.
Falun Gong adherents march to mark the 24th anniversary of the Chinese regime’s persecution of the spiritual discipline in Washington, on July 20, 2023. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times
But they have hope, they said.
“It’s about lighting that fire and letting the people in the community know that anything done to get the message out can make a difference,” Ms. Kiang said.
“But my heart really goes out to those who have fallen for the lies. Just like the Red Guard, they are being used to do evil, and we want them to wake up.”
