CCP’s Playbook Revealed

SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE

JUNE 22, 2025

Over the past few years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has escalated attacks on some of its most vocal critics in the United States, deploying a comprehensive playbook to silence them.

The operation has highlighted the level of infiltration and influence the CCP possesses in the United States, and if the plan gains traction, the CCP is likely to use the same toolkit against other targets, experts told The Epoch Times.

The operation kicked into high gear in 2022, when CCP leader Xi Jinping complained to top officials that practitioners of Falun Gong, a faith group persecuted by the CCP in China, have been increasingly effective at exposing the CCP’s crimes overseas, several internal sources told Chinese dissident and legal scholar Yuan Hongbin last year.

According to the sources, Xi chastised the officials, saying their previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong overseas were ineffective, and ordered a new campaign that would focus on the most prominent companies started by Falun Gong practitioners abroad. Those include Shen Yun Performing Arts, a premier classical Chinese dance and music company that puts on hundreds of performances a year under the tagline “China before communism,” as well as several media companies, including The Epoch Times and NTD.

Shen Yun, it appears, has borne the brunt of the new campaign, facing hit pieces in Western media and from social media influencers; attacks by social media bots and trolls; legal warfare; and even bomb threats and death threats.

Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners have faced brutal persecution in China involving imprisonment, torture, and even forced organ harvesting. Incessant harassment by the regime’s henchmen has extended to American soil.

The CCP sees Shen Yun as undermining its ideological grip on China and the image it presents to the world, which in turn threatens its grip on power and its ambition for dominance overseas, multiple experts previously told The Epoch Times.

The State Department on Feb. 7 denounced the CCP’s continued targeting of Shen Yun, telling The Epoch Times: “We condemn such acts of intimidation and urge protection of the right to free expression.

“We urge the Chinese Communist Party to end its now 25-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”

The spokesperson added that the department’s annual international religious freedom report had documented “incidents of interference against Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun Performing Arts in many countries.”

Several CCP whistleblowers came forward last year with more details about the anti-Falun Gong campaign.

The campaign mainly relies on information laundering via social media influencers and Western media outlets that can’t easily be traced back to the CCP. In tandem, it utilizes the U.S. legal and law enforcement system to go after companies started by Falun Gong practitioners, particularly Shen Yun, the whistleblowers said.

The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, personally oversees the campaign, one whistleblower said, though other agencies are also involved, including the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

Notably, officials believe the Ministry of State Security was behind other high-profile operations in the United States, including the “Salt Typhoon” attack that hit most of the U.S. telecommunications system and targeted top political figures.

The campaign is particularly pernicious for its use of undercover MPS operatives in the United States, according to the whistleblower, who said, “Once these people are mobilized, the threat is very high.”

Media

Last year, multiple Western media outlets, led by The New York Times, published an unusually large number of hit pieces on Falun Gong.

The New York Times alone has produced about a dozen such articles since August 2024, relying heavily on the claims of a small group of former Shen Yun performers, some with ties to CCP entities.

The articles center on two main claims. One is that the success of companies started by Falun Gong practitioners in the United States is somehow nefarious. The other is an allegation that Falun Gong prevents people from getting medical treatment—an old CCP propaganda canard deployed by the regime in the early years of the persecution to justify its campaign. The claim has been repeatedly debunked, mainly by Falun Gong practitioners themselves explaining that they do, in fact, see doctors when needed, as well as by physicians who have treated them.

Almost 800 current and former Shen Yun artists and production staff members, including virtually all current performers and staff, have signed a petition condemning the media attacks.

Social Media

U.S. social media have been manipulated to promote anti-Falun Gong content. On X, an Epoch Times investigation found thousands of fake accounts had been used to share The New York Times’ hit pieces and other anti-Falun Gong propaganda. The platform, when alerted, removed many of the accounts, but new ones have been continuously created.

Some of the fake accounts have been sophisticated, building a following for months, or even years, by posting various kinds of unrelated content, such as nature, food, animal, and travel photos, before abruptly mixing in anti-Falun Gong content.

According to whistleblowers, Chinese public security officials have been ordered to support YouTubers who portray Falun Gong and Shen Yun in a negative light.

One of the YouTubers specifically mentioned by the whistleblowers has claimed credit for supplying sources to the New York Times reporters.

Lawfare

In the past few years, an American man with longtime business ties to China repeatedly filed defective environmental lawsuits against Shen Yun’s campus in Orange County, New York. The most recent one was dismissed by a federal judge in September 2024—this time “with prejudice,” so it can’t be refiled.

In July 2024, two Chinese Americans—John Chen and Lin Feng—pleaded guilty to acting as agents of Beijing after they attempted to bribe an IRS agent to open a bogus investigation into Shen Yun.

Lin told the FBI that he and Chen also surveilled the Falun Gong community in Orange County to collect information for an environmental lawsuit meant to inhibit the growth of the community in the area, according to court documents.

Eva Fu contributed.

Peter Svab

To dig deeper into the subject, read the following original reporting by our journalists:

Unraveling the CCP’s Playbook for Transnational Repression in America

By Petr Svab

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