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Biden Proposal Would Give Foreign Climate Group Veto Power Over U.S. Military Contracts
British environmentalist group was founded with money from a liberal dark money group
A new Biden administration rule aimed at reducing carbon emissions would give approval authority over large U.S. defense contracts to a little-known British environmentalist group that just incorporated two weeks ago.
Under the White House’s proposed rule change, a London-based group called the Science Based Targets Initiative that is funded by the Democratic Party’s main dark money network would be responsible for approving the carbon emissions reduction plans of large federal contractors.
The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) is a fee-based service that helps companies set emissions reduction targets in line with the Paris Climate Agreement and verifies their progress. But its foreign status and murky financial background raise questions about the Biden administration’s decision to outsource its vetting process to the group. Critics say the proposal would give SBTi enormous veto power over American defense contracts and access to potentially sensitive data about U.S. military suppliers.
"I think Americans will be upset when they realize the Biden administration is trying to put a bunch of unelected bureaucrats and a climate activist group—headquartered in London—in charge of long-term planning for our national defense contractors," said Travis Fisher, a senior energy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The rule change is expected to impact 671 large contractors across multiple federal agencies, and steer an estimated $1.2 million in mandatory fees to SBTi each year, according to the proposal, which is still awaiting approval from government administrators.
Although SBTi publicly launched in 2015, the organization didn’t officially exist until June 26, when it filed incorporation papers in London, according to United Kingdom business records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The group is not registered in the United States. SBTi didn't respond to a request for comment.
Before its incorporation, SBTi was a partnership co-managed by five activist groups, including the "We Mean Business Coalition," a front group for a $900 million left-leaning dark money organization called the New Venture Fund. The off-the-books arrangement allowed SBTi to operate without filing financial disclosures for nearly a decade.
In 2015, the New Venture Fund, which promotes Democratic policies through an array of unincorporated shell organizations, helped launch and fund SBTi through the We Mean Business Coalition.
"Since its inception, [the We Mean Business Coalition] has been funding SBTi and mobilizing business towards science-based targets. One of our earliest milestones was reaching 150 corporate commitments to SBTi in 2016," said the We Mean Business website, where it also described itself as a "project of the New Venture Fund."
SBTi's connection to the New Venture Fund could raise questions about its political leanings. The New Venture Fund is facing scrutiny over its charity status, after the Free Beacon reported this week on a trove of internal documents and whistleblower allegations that indicate the group engaged in prohibited political activities during the 2020 elections. The documents also show that the liberal network maintains a high level of involvement in groups that it funds.
SBTi has also faced criticism from former allies over potential conflicts of interest and lack of transparency. Bill Baue, a sustainability expert who served on SBTi’s technical advisory board until 2020, described its operations as "ad hoc and haphazard" and compared the group’s leadership to the "Keystone Cops."
Baue said the organization doesn’t appear to have any procedures in place to address financial conflicts, ethics issues, or proper governance. When he voiced these issues internally, and later, in a formal complaint, he said leadership brushed him off and refused to respond.
SBTi would be "operating in a quasi-regulatory stance" under the Biden administration’s proposed rule change, Baue told the Free Beacon. "And yet it doesn’t have the kind of checks and balances or transparency for such an organization…certainly there’s reason to be concerned."
These issues could add to objections already raised by lawmakers and U.S. businesses. The American Bankers Association submitted a public comment criticizing the rule change in February, saying it "hands practical regulatory powers to non-governmental organizations" without verifying the "suitability of these organizations" to carry out the work. BP questioned the legality of the rule, saying it "effectively appoint[s] a third-party arbiter to determine which companies are eligible to be major contractors."
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), who sent a letter to the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council in March warning that the proposal could have "detrimental consequences for our national security and mission readiness," is looking into holding hearings on the matter, sources told the Free Beacon.
The idea for SBTi first took shape in 2013 during a meeting between climate activists and researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based offices of the World Resources Institute, a well-established environmental nonprofit funded by many of the left’s top benefactors, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
SBTi didn’t register as a stand-alone entity for eight years after its launch. Instead, it was staffed and co-managed by five activist groups: the New Venture Fund’s We Mean Business Coalition, the World Resources Institute, the Carbon Disclosure Project, the World Wildlife Fund, and the UN Global Compact.
Because of this arrangement, SBTi was not required to file public financial records disclosing its income, spending, salaries, and other information. The We Mean Business Coalition was also able to avoid filing such disclosures until 2021, when it spun off from the New Venture Fund and registered as a stand-alone nonprofit group.
Parker Thayer, a researcher at the Capital Research Center watchdog group, said this lack of transparency is common for projects associated with the New Venture Fund.
"The New Venture Fund is a dark money titan from the left that specializes in creating the appearance of broad public support" through unregistered front groups, said Thayer. "[They] allow the left to create the image that numerous organizations support their cause when in reality it’s all a one-man puppet show."
SBTi has also faced internal complaints. Baue said he was dropped from the technology advisory committee without explanation in 2020 after he expressed concerns that SBTi was using a weak methodology for setting emissions reduction targets. That method was created by one of SBTi’s parent groups, the World Wildlife Fund, which Baue said raised questions about "conflicts of interest and self-dealing."
"The effect is that [SBTi] monopolized the marketplace by removing any competition" from independent measurement standards, he said.
Baue added that SBTi’s validation service—in which it charges companies a fee to approve their emissions reduction targets and plans—also poses a conflict of interest, because it could give the group a financial incentive to weaken its standards in order to attract more paying clients.
"If you’re the standard-setter and you’re also making money from the validations there’s at least a temptation to water down your standards in order to continue to have a flow of validation revenue," said Baue.
Published under: Biden Administration , Climate Change , Dark Money , New Venture Fund , Paris Climate Accords
A high-paid adviser to the Biden administration's Federal Trade Commission disclosed in April that she has also in recent years worked for the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
Cristina Caffarra, a European economic expert with Keystone Strategy, was brought in by the FTC as a consultant for an unsuccessful antitrust case against Facebook that was dropped in February. She also served "within the last three years" as an adviser to ByteDance, according to her April 4 disclosure statement to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a think tank for which she spoke on a panel in the spring.
The FTC paid Caffarra's firm $2.7 million last July for a one-year consulting contract that is still ongoing and expires on Friday, according to federal spending records. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.
Caffarra told the Washington Free Beacon that her work for ByteDance didn't overlap with her work for the FTC. She declined to comment on whether she was hired by ByteDance before or after her consulting work with the agency. Her work from ByteDance also doesn't appear on her official Keystone Strategy biography, which lists several other tech companies with which she has worked.
ByteDance has mounted a massive public influence campaign as it fights against the prospect of American lawmakers banning its subsidiary, TikTok. The Chinese company has hired firms and lobbyists with deep connections to the Biden administration, such as Democratic powerhouse SKDK. Though some states have moved against the Chinese social media platform, TikTok has thus far avoided any concrete federal action.
The disclosure by Caffarra could raise questions about the potential for foreign influence at the FTC, which is heavily reliant on outside advisers. Under FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, the agency has "deployed unpaid consultants and experts at an increasing rate," according to an inspector general report last August, and "lacks an important layer of assurance against potential ethical dilemmas, such as conflicts of interest."
Caffarra said in an article last month that she "had a role advising the FTC in Meta/Within." The FTC brought the case against Meta last July, shortly after inking the multimillion-dollar consulting contract with Caffarra's firm. The FTC objected to Meta's merger with Within Unlimited, a virtual reality gaming company, on the grounds that Meta was trying to monopolize the VR market. ByteDance's subsidiary Pico is a competitor to Meta in the virtual reality industry.
The Chinese government-linked ByteDance is fighting U.S. congressional efforts to ban its subsidiary, TikTok. Lawmakers from both parties have slammed the social media app as a national security risk and criticized its influence on children and its data-collection practices.
In response, ByteDance has ramped up its lobbying efforts, splashing out millions on consultants and lobbyists with ties to the Biden administration and to prominent legislators. Executives at high-powered firms working for TikTok visited the White House at least 40 times as of April, the Free Beacon reported.
The aggressive lobbying campaign has been effective, Reuters reported this week. Democratic senator Mark Warner (Va.), who cosponsored a bill to rein in TikTok, said the social media app's public relations blitz has "slowed a bit of our momentum" on the legislation.
Khan is scheduled on Thursday to testify for the first time before the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers are expected to grill her over the agency's investigation of Twitter under Elon Musk.
Suspected Chinese Hackers Exploited Microsoft Vulnerabilities to Breach Government Email Systems
Hackers believed to be linked to China have exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft software to breach the email systems at over two dozen organizations, including some U.S. government agencies, as part of a suspected cyber-espionage campaign.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the hackers, identified as “Storm-0558,” exploited a security weakness in Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment to gain access to sensitive computer networks. This development is especially concerning for officials and security researchers, as it is seen as part of a larger espionage campaign that could have compromised valuable U.S. government information.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shows his fist ( Stephen Brashear /Getty)
“Last month, U.S. government safeguards identified an intrusion in Microsoft’s cloud security, which affected unclassified systems. Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and vulnerability in their cloud service,” said Adam Hodge, spokesman for the White House National Security Council. He added, “We continue to hold the procurement providers of the U.S. government to a high security threshold.”
The full extent and severity of the incident, including the specific institutions and individuals affected, are not yet known. The incident has underscored the growing concerns among senior Western intelligence officials about the ability of Chinese hackers to orchestrate stealthy attacks that can evade detection for years.
China, however, has consistently denied hacking U.S. organizations and has accused the U.S. and its allies of targeting Chinese networks. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment on the incident.
Microsoft has confirmed that the hackers took advantage of a security weakness in its cloud-computing environment. “The hackers broke into email accounts at about 25 organizations and hit consumer accounts that were likely linked to these entities,” Microsoft said in a statement. The company has since mitigated the security weakness and is working with the impacted customers.
“We have been working with the impacted customers and notifying them prior to going public with further details,” Microsoft stated.
Breitbart News reported in June on another major hack perpetrated by the Chinese:
The new Chinese attack Mandiant detected once again exploited security flaws in an email program to infect an as-yet-unknown number of computer systems. In this case, the email package is called Barracuda Email Security Gateway (ESG).
Barracuda announced on May 23 that it discovered a zero-day vulnerability – a previously undetected gap in software security that hackers exploited before security experts became aware of it. The vulnerability allowed attackers to gain unauthorized access to parts of the email system and deposit malicious code by formatting filenames in a manner that tricked the ESG system into executing them without requiring proper authentication.
Barracuda quickly patched the vulnerability but warned that hackers may have been exploiting it for up to seven months before it was discovered. On June 11, Barracuda issued an urgent update that advised users to replace affected ESG devices immediately, regardless of installed patches or software version level – a sobering testament to the severity of the flaw, and how ruthlessly it was exploited by hackers before security professionals discovered it.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
Biden Gives Away Sensitive U.S. Military Info During CNN Interview
Meet the Sellout-in-Chief.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
Was it dementia, or was Old Joe rubbing it in that we now have a two-tier justice system in the this country, such that he and his cronies can do whatever they want without fear of penalty while the entire massive apparatus of the United States government is devoted to finding new crimes for which Donald Trump can be charged? Either way, he sat for a softball interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday but ended up revealing information about our military that could make our most formidable global enemies newly emboldened and aggressive. Is there nothing Old Joe won’t do to make America weaker and more vulnerable?
Zakaria reminded Biden about “weapons that 100 nations banned, including some of our closest NATO allies. When there was news that the Russians might be using it admittedly against civilians your then press secretary said this might be — constitute war crimes.” Then he asked, “What made you change your mind and decide to give them these weapons?”
Old Joe’s answer won’t get him arrested, because he is Joe Biden, a key element of the authoritarian Left’s machine, but if Donald Trump had given the same answer, the feds would be drawing up a new indictment right now. “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” Old Joe informed the world. He continued semi-coherently, “The ammunition, that they used to call them 155-millimeter weapons. This is a war relating to munitions, and they are running out of that ammunition and we’re low on it.” Will Putin send Old Joe a thank-you letter for revealing this?
Biden went on, “And so what I finally did, I took the recommendation of the Defense Department to, not permanently, but to allow for, in this transition period where we have more 155 weapons, these shells for the Ukrainians, to provide them with something that has a very low dud rate. It’s about — I think it’s 150, which is the least likely to be blowing.” Riiiight.
Maintaining his weak grasp on the concept of speaking in a way that makes sense to one’s hearers, Old Joe added, “And it’s not used in civilian areas. They’re trying to get through those trenches and stop those tanks from rolling. And so — but it was not an easy decision. And it’s not — we’re not signatories of that agreement. But I — it took me a while to be convinced to do it. But the main thing is they either have the weapons to stop the Russians now from their — keeping them from stopping the Ukrainian offensive through these areas, or they don’t. And I think they needed them.” So either they have them or they don’t, but in any case, they needed them. Got it, Joe!
Biden’s opponent for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was quicker on the uptake, tweeting: “Biden seems to be saying we’re sending cluster bombs to Ukraine because we’re running out of other munitions. Looks like a pretext for even more military spending to me. The time has come to offer diplomatic alternatives to war + bring both sides to negotiating table. #Kennedy24.” Trump has called for peace as well, but apparently the war in Ukraine is just too lucrative for too many of Old Joe’s friends and cronies for that to be a serious consideration.
Patriotic commentator Steve Guest, meanwhile, focused on the tactical blunder involved in Biden’s words as he tweeted, “Joe Biden broadcasting to the world that the US is low on 155mm shells. Moron. Does Biden not care that our adversaries in China are listening?” He probably isn’t thinking about that possibility at all. Can it accurately be said that Old Joe is thinking about anything at all, besides getting in front of the TV set for the next Matlock rerun?
And that’s the problem. Now the world knows that the U.S. military is low on ammunition. No one, however, need fear that the military is running low on pamphlets explaining Critical Race Theory, or warning of terrible punishments for enlisted personnel who dare to “misgender” their fellow soldiers who are men demanding to be known as women, or women who think they’re men. Old Joe Biden’s military has its priorities straight.
Biden will suffer no adverse consequences for giving away sensitive information about our military’s state of readiness. Even if China or Russia or Iran takes advantage of that information and uses it to kill Americans, Old Joe will be one person who is not held accountable. He’s a cardinal member of the Leftist elite. And so no matter what he says to Fareed Zakaria or anyone else, in terms of legal accountability he has nothing, nothing whatsoever, to worry about.
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Reader Interactions
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Bidens don't seem to 'cover their tracks' in alleged China money web: Curley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQkbnOO-mbM
SERVING RED CHINA: JOE BIDEN AT WORK
Biden admin is ‘enormously dangerous’ to the survival of America: Newt Gingrich
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB8YNrfbD_E
Did Hunter Biden Sleep with a Chinese Spy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn83Uk9pX2k
Hunter Biden faces possible subpoena after missing deadline to turn over docs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6hxjrGHJ8I
My colleague Peter Schweizer’s runaway bestseller, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, first revealed that the Biden family received some $31 million from the highest levels of Chinese intelligence at the same time Hunter was paying the vice president’s bills. Schweizer believes that there is a slam dunk case to indict Hunter Biden.
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THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
American people deserve to know what China was up to with Joe Biden, especially when Beijing had already shelled out millions of dollars to Biden family members — including millions in set-asides for “the big guy.” What else is on that infamous Hunter Biden laptop? The conflicted Biden Justice Department cannot be trusted to engage in any meaningful oversight on this issue. We need a special counsel now.
TOM FITTON - JUDICIAL WATCH
Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Hunter has reportedly sold five paintings worth $75,000 each to an anonymous buyer. Hunter’s art dealer, Georges Bergès, has previously boasted he had strong ties to businessmen in Communist China, which has concerned many due to the Biden family’s business ventures abroad.
“We are 95% sure that that artwork went to China,” Comer said. “We don’t know where exactly that went to in China, but we’re going to try to find out when we get subpoena power.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Biden family business dealings with China is a ‘national security issue’: Schweizer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hew-Pm1d-0
Peter Schweizer’s new book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win tells the story of how Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) husband Richard Blum was part owner of a Chinese firm that allegedly sold computers with spyware chips to the U.S. military. The military has never been able to calculate how much sensitive data these computers allowed China to steal.
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
Kevin McCarthy Pledges Subpoenas for 51 Intel Agents in Wake of Hunter Biden ‘Twitter Files’
11 Dec 20220
2:26
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said Saturday on FNC’s “One Nation” that he will bring the 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was Russia collusion to testify at a congressional hearing.
Host Brian Kilmeade asked, “We saw the revelations coming out of Twitter as Elon Musk is unmasking the corruption that existed there and the denials that they testified about. So for you personally you have another move you want to make. Not only do we want to hear from the former executives of Twitter and the other entities, but you have something else you want to say.”
McCarthy said, Yeah, I do. This is egregious what we are finding. They should not have section 230 to start out with, but we also have to go further. What did Facebook and Google do as well because they became an arm of the Democratic Party and an arm of government.”
He continued, “Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong — was Russia collusion — many of them have a security clearance. We are going to bring them before committee. I’m going to have them have a hearing. Why did they sign it? Why did they lie to the American public? A Clapper, a Brennan? Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you more information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?”
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism. Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’ investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, "Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today." Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: "The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong." With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record. At the same time, Chinese and foreign media continue to suggest that the victim is the abuser: the false idea that Falun Gong is a cult with dangerous potential.
For anyone who has studied the history of or practiced Falun Gong, the enormity of this continuing abuse and misinformation is obvious. Falun gong is a benign practice of meditation, exercise, and moral instruction with no political ties of any sort, but it is often represented, even by well-meaning Western journalists, as a "cult" or as a right-wing anti-CCP organization, as in a recent article in the Guardian, relying heavily on statements by Media Matters. According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
If those journalists would do their homework, beginning with studying Falun Gong websites and the book Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi, instead of relying on the well funded Chinese "zero out" campaign, they would realize that Falun Gong is an uplifting instruction based on traditional, conservative Chinese practices.
The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror. A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples. Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.
In reality, Falun Gong is a complex spiritual practice involving qijong-like exercises, positive thinking, and moral belief based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As a practitioner myself, I know how Falun Gong can transform an individual from illness to health, confusion to knowledge, and intolerance to open-mindedness. It is obvious to me how a totalitarian regime would view Falun Gong as a threat, as indeed it would be to any form of deceit, corruption, or intolerance. As Falun Gong spread in China during the 1990s, at one point with 60 to 100 million followers in China alone, the practice became a threat to a government that had once encouraged it as a healthy "money-saving" vehicle and a social safety valve for a dissatisfied citizenry. Yet within months, beginning in July 1999, perhaps 100,000 followers were arrested and 30,000 executed. Even now, nearly 4,000 practitioners were arrested in 2021 (latest figures).
It is critical to consider the magnitude of this repression, with between two and four million Falun Gong followers "detained" in forced labor camps between 2000 and 2008 alone. Chinese policy toward Falun Gong is similar to the more widely publicized repression of Uyghurs, 1.5 million of whom have reportedly been detained in China, with hundreds of thousands of others subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and religious suppression, and with the razing or damaging of 16,000 mosques. Like totalitarian regimes of the past, the CCP appears willing to employ the most ruthless tactics in order to secure its hold on the country.
Though Falun Gong is not a political movement, the exponential growth of Falun Gong during the 1990s might well have pressured authorities to change, and as soon as China's leaders recognized this threat, they suppressed Falun Gong with a heavy hand. One could hardly be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing and lend one's support to a communist regime governed by a few thousand members of the political elite intent on benefiting from their rule at the expense of the general population. Falun Gong teaches a form of gentleness and goodness that threatens the lies and violence of any totalitarian government.
One must ask: if the Chinese communists are willing to imprison millions of ethnic and religious minorities and to murder tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, what are they capable of in the future? How many lives are they willing to expend in a takeover of Taiwan? And once Taiwan is taken, how many Taiwanese will they imprison and execute? In the event of a war with Japan or with the United States, how many are they willing to see die, on both sides? And if Chinese communism were ever to achieve world domination, what kind of future could we expect? As Christians, probably something not unlike what the Uyghurs and Falun Gong have already experienced.
At the same time, the specter of Chinese repression should open our eyes to the remarkable value of our own system of democratic capitalism. The CCP has diminished Falun Gong in China, but, like all religious and spiritual practices, Falun Gong has found a safe home in America, at least in principle, though the Biden administration continues to restrict religious practice, to challenge religious rights in the courts and in agency practices, and to unleash the power of agencies like the Justice Department and IRS against the open practice of religion. Many of the same tactics adopted in communist China are accepted by progressives in our own country, including the encouragement of birth control and abortion, even late-term abortion and infanticide after birth.
For the present, there is still a difference between totalitarianism and democracy as practiced in the USA. Now is a time when American citizens, media, government, and corporations need to see clearly that communist China is a totalitarian government and to recognize what it is capable of. China's record toward Falun Gong, a violent repression that continues today, is one element in a string of crackdowns and arrests. We do not need to send a balloon over China to understand the nature of their regime, but we do need to recognize the enormity of its abuses and take appropriate actions to defend ourselves.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
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