THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
Dem AG Letitia James Has the Unmitigated Gall to Accuse TRUMP of Scheme to ‘Enrich Himself and His Family’
As evidence mounts suggesting Pres. Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, made millions off influence-peddling with foreign actors during the elder Biden’s tenure as vice president, New York Attorney General Letitia James had the audacity Monday to accuse former President Donald Trump of a scheme to enrich his family.
James, a Democrat and long-time passionate Biden supporter, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute and persecute Trump, made the claim to the media following Trump’s testimony at a New York civil trial regarding real estate valuation:
“At the end of the day, the documentary evidence demonstrated that, in fact, he falsely inflated his assets to, basically, enrich himself and his family.”
Meanwhile, documentation continues to pile up showing the Biden family, especially Hunter, was enriched by then-Vice President Biden’s influence. In September, the House Oversight Committee posted “Evidence of Joe Biden’s Involvement in His Family’s Influence Peddling Schemes.”
The document quotes testimony, correspondence, and news reports to present 22 items as evidence of Biden enrichment schemes, including:
- “In July 2023, former Biden business associate Devon Archer described how Joe Biden was “The Brand” and was used to send “signals” of power, access, and influence to enrich the Biden family from foreign sources.”
- “In February 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with oligarchs from Russia and Kazakhstan who funneled millions of dollars to Hunter Biden and his business associates.”
- “In May 2017, James Gilliar, a Biden family associate, emailed Hunter Biden and other associates to formalize how they would divide the profit from their deal with CEFC, a Chinese Communist Party linked energy company. Gilliar indicated Joe Biden would receive 10 percent, which has been confirmed by former Biden family associate, Tony Bobulinski.”
- “On July 30, 2017, Hunter Biden demanded money from Chinese business associates and threatened that Joe Biden was sitting next to him: ‘if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you….I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direct.’”
- “The FBI’s June 30, 2020 FD-1023 form contains allegations that then-Vice President Joe Biden allegedly engaged in an extortion scheme where he was paid $5 million in exchange for certain actions.”
- “In 2019, Hunter Biden texted his daughter, claiming that, ‘unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.’”
Last week, on November 1, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer published a flow chart and video laying out how five million dollars from a company in China was funneled to members of the Biden family and “$40,000 in laundered China money landed in Joe Biden’s bank account, in the form of a personal check.”
“The numbers don’t lie,” Attorney General James said Monday, accusing Trump.
Indeed, though the numbers provided by the House Oversight Committee report contradict Pres. Biden’s claim he knew nothing of, and had no hand in, his son’s foreign business dealings:
- “Devon Archer alone was aware of at least 20 times in which then-Vice President Biden spoke on speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates.”
- “Vice President Biden brought Hunter Biden along to at least 15 countries where he sold ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family.”
- “Hunter Biden’s business associates reportedly visited the White House more than 80 times when Joe Biden was Vice President.”
Hunter Biden Asks Daddy's Judicial Appointee To Investigate Snitch Ex-Business Partner
Before the 2020 election, former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski revealed he met with Joe and Hunter Biden to discuss potential business deals in China, undermining the president’s claims he had never discussed business with his son. Now, Hunter Biden is calling on federal prosecutors to investigate his ex-business partner.
In a letter Friday, Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell called on Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., to investigate Bobulinski for allegedly lying to the FBI about his dealings with the Bidens, according to NBC News. Bobulinski told FBI agents in an October 2020 interview about his dealings with the Bidens, which included a May 2017 meeting with the Bidens regarding a joint venture with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy.
The letter is part of the younger Biden’s aggressive new legal strategy against his former associates and critics. Hunter Biden has sued several political operatives who released data from his laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware computer shop in 2019. He has also urged the Department of Justice to investigate the operatives, including former Donald Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Hunter Biden’s pressure campaign presents a slew of potential conflicts of interest. For one, he is facing federal investigations into his business dealings, and for an unrelated gun crime. And Graves, a Joe Biden appointee, is under scrutiny after two IRS whistleblowers alleged he refused to cooperate with Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss in his investigation of Hunter Biden.
In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, Bobulinski said Hunter Biden is "trying to weaponize" the Justice Department against him.
"All of the allegations contained in Mr Lowell's 10 page letter to U.S. Attorney Graves are patently false, and I look forward to exposing these lies and laying out the facts in a public forum in short order," Bobulinski said in a statement through his attorney. "If Hunter Biden and the Biden family are so determined to ensure that the full truth is put before the American People, Hunter, Jim, Joe and I should all appear together before Congress, publicly and under oath. They can name the date, time and place and I would certainly be willing to do that for the American people."
Bobulinski’s revelations about the Bidens severely undercut the president’s claims about his son’s activities. For one, Bobulinski released information in October 2020 that corroborated many of the documents found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Bobulinski verified the authenticity of an email found on Hunter Biden’s laptop that referred to a business arrangement involving "the big guy." Bobulinski has said publicly that the email was a reference to Joe Biden, and that the president was slated to receive a 10 percent stake in their deal with China.
Perhaps more significantly, Bobulinski released text messages that showed he met with Hunter and Joe Biden in Los Angeles to discuss CEFC China Energy.
"I have heard Joe Biden say he has never discussed his dealings with Hunter. That is false. I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden," Bobulinski said at a press conference on Oct. 21, 2020.
Additional evidence has since emerged that showed Joe Biden had far more involvement in his son’s activities than he let on. Longtime Biden family friend Rob Walker told the FBI in December 2020 that Joe Biden stopped by a meeting with CEFC China Energy executives.
Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden eventually inked a deal with CEFC China Energy in August 2017, though they cut Bobulinski and several other partners out of the joint venture. CEFC China Energy wired Hunter and his uncle Jim Biden a total of $6 million in 2017 and 2018. Hunter Biden also invoked his father as a threat against CEFC China Energy, according to his text messages. In a July 31, 2017, message, Biden berated a CEFC China Energy executive over a payment dispute.
Update 5:19 p.m.: This piece has been updated with comment from Tony Bobulinski.
Published under: CEFC China Energy , Corruption , Hunter Biden , Joe Biden , Laptop
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
The paid agent behind the Oval Office desk
Via John Hinderaker of Power Line, Andy McCarthy at National Review has a stunning piece outlining the depths of Joe Biden's involvement as China's little agent, tying together details which will make you wanting to take a shower afterward.
He writes:
Thanks to the extensive excavation of Biden financial records by Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), followed by the dogged reporting of the New York Post once Hunter’s abandoned laptop was exposed, the outlines of the story were publicly available before Election Day 2020. The Biden/China scheme may not have been sufficiently known, but it was eminently knowable — so much so that I presented it in detail in “A Collusion Tale: China and the Bidens,” which we published on October 31, 2020 — the weekend before the election.The story has gotten more damning with the additional evidence unearthed by the Oversight Committee under the direction of Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.). But it hasn’t changed.CEFC, the Shanghai-based energy conglomerate with which Joe Biden and his family joined forces, was China. To describe it as a “thinly veiled” arm of Xi Jinping’s monstrous regime would exaggerate the camouflage. It was run by Ye Jianming, whom the Bidens deemed a protégé of Xi — as the president’s brother, Jim Biden, conceded to federal investigators.How could it be otherwise? As I recounted in October 2020, CEFC’s position as a privileged “private” company was established by the regime in 2006 (when Xi was the rising star of the CCP).
This, of course, is why the Biden connection was so valuable — why CEFC was willing to pay millions of dollars for it. Doors were opened by the association with Joe Biden, one of America’s most prominent, influential politicians. If CEFC could brandish cordial relations and a business partnership with the Biden family, then other targets of China’s OBOR blandishments would be more willing to transact.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
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. PAM KEY
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Court Doc: Hunter Lived in California When Chinese Partners Wired Money to Joe Biden’s Delaware Address
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
27 Sep 20230
4:03
Hunter Biden did not reside with President Joe Biden in Delaware when his Chinese business partners wired money to Joe Biden’s address in 2019, court documents show.
Joe Biden’s address received two wires from BHR Partners associates linked to the CCP in July and August totaling $260,000, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) revealed Tuesday.
The time frame detailed in Hunter Biden’s collapsed plea deal in July with now-special counsel David Weiss says Hunter Biden’s residence was in California when the Chinese partners sent money to Joe Biden’s address. Hunter Biden “remained in California and spent much of the Summer 2019 painting and developing plans for his memoir,” the plea deal states on page 9. In Hunter Biden’s memoir, “Beautiful Things,” the president’s son also noted that he lived in California at the time his Chinese partners wired the money to Delaware.
According to Hunter Biden’s text messages and emails, he shared a bank account with Joe Biden and paid some of his father’s expenses. Hunter Biden also listed Joe Biden’s Delaware house as the billing address for his personal credit card and Apple account in 2018 and 2019. In addition, Hunter Biden’s driver’s license issued in 2018 lists Joe Biden’s residence.
“This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, told CNN. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”
The wired money from Beijing, China, to Joe Biden’s address contradicts the president’s false claim that Hunter Biden never made money from China. Joe Biden also falsely claimed he never spoke to his son about business. Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s best friend in business, told the Oversight Committee that Joe Biden spoke with a BHR Partners associate, Jonathan Li, on speakerphone to sell the “Biden brand.”
BHR Partners, the fund Hunter Biden co-founded via a joint venture with Archer and Li, maintains investments worth billions of dollars around the globe. Hunter Biden conveyed his stake to his current lawyer, Kevin Morris, Breitbart News exclusively reported in April. Archer conveyed his stake in BHR Partners to his wife in 2017.
“President Biden has lied to Americans again,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Tuesday evening. “We now have found today that when President Biden was running for the presidency, when he told the American people that, ‘My family has never received money from China,’ was wrong.”
White House spokesman Ian Sams pushed back on McCarthy’s comment by telling CNN that money wired to Joe Biden’s address is a part of a conspiracy theory, CNN reported:
Extreme House Republicans are pushing out half-baked innuendo and conspiracy theories that yet again show no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden, just more discredited personal attacks on him and his family, in a sad effort to distract from their chaotic inability to govern that is leading us to the brink of a dangerous government shutdown.
Despite the White House’s repeated disinformation, Tuesday’s revelation emerged from the committee’s recent subpoena of financial records related to a specific bank account that received two wires from China linked to BHR Partners associates. “Joe Biden’s abuse of public office for his family’s financial gain threatens our national security. What did the Bidens do with this money from Beijing?” Comer asked.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Biden Whistleblower Emails: Chinese Energy Company Gave $5 Million Non-Secured, Forgivable Loan to Biden ‘Family’
A 2017 email from a top official with a Chinese energy firm, provided by a whistleblower to U.S. Senate investigators, demonstrates the terms of an agreement included officials with the firm giving a $5 million non-secured, forgivable loan to the Biden “family.”
The email, sent to SinoHawk Holdings CEO Tony Bobulinski, shows how a top official with CEFC Energy — a now bankrupt and defunct energy company based in China — offered to wire $10 million into an account to begin operations, $5 million worth of which would be a non-secured forgivable loan to the “BD Family,” which means the Biden family.
Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer spent four and a half hours with Bobulinski before he went public, and discussed these communications in particular regarding this loan during that meeting. According to Schweizer, the Chinese energy company officials were going to put $10 million into an account, $5 million of which was designated as a non-secured forgivable loan to the Biden family. Schweizer said this would constitute significant leverage the Chinese energy company officials would have over the Biden family.
“In a way, this would give CEFC greater leverage over the Biden family than simply giving them a gift or bribe because if they were dissatisfied with what the Bidens were doing they could ask for their money back,” Schweizer told Breitbart News when asked about the arrangement upon the public release of Bobulinski’s emails.
The email also says that $5 million loan is “interest free” and asks how that $5 million would be used, and if used up, whether CEFC should lend more money to the Biden family.
This email further fleshes out details surrounding the controversial arrangement first uncovered by U.S. Senate investigators in a recent Homeland Security Committee report, and later further uncovered by a bombshell New York Post story on emails retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Bobulinski’s new emails add to the story by including terms of the financial arrangement behind the wire transfer that CEFC officials made into a firm aligned with the Bidens that then made significant payments to Hunter Biden’s own firm, a wire transfer and financial payments that were first exposed by Senate investigators. The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop emails added more information to this questionable arrangement by revealing emails that showed how Biden associates intended to divvy up the cash from the Chinese investors.
These new emails from Bobulinski add more to the picture by showing that the agreement was that this payment would serve as a non-secured forgivable loan, and that the CEFC side of the arrangement understood that the then-forthcoming payment — which Senate investigators confirmed was made just two weeks after these discussions —would serve as a loan to the Biden “family,” not just to Hunter Biden.
An e-mail to Hunter Biden's partner from a top Chinese official on July 26, 2017 shows the Chinese energy company CEFC proposed a $5 million "interest-free" loan to the Biden family "based on their trust on [Biden] family[.]"
"Should CEFC keep lending more to the family?" pic.twitter.com/MGFizPqOdm
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 22, 2020
This email is part of a broader trove of documents that Bobulinski provided to U.S. Senate investigators with the Homeland Security and Finance Committees, and also to media outlets including Breitbart News. Other media outlets are reporting on the emails as well.
According to the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s recent report, $5 million was wired directly into the account in question two weeks later — and then Hunter Biden’s firm spent the next year wiring $4.8 million from there into his own firm’s account:
Less than two weeks later, on August 8, 2017, $5 million was wired from a CEFC-affiliated investment vehicle to a Delaware LLC, which spent the next year transfering nearly $4.8 million directly to Hunter Biden's firm, according to Senate investigators. https://t.co/Byyo3FNp3T pic.twitter.com/8XHHVTuFml
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 22, 2020
CEFC was a controversial energy company, as Breitbart News has reported. “The owner of CEFC, Ye Jianming, was among the most ambitious of Chinese tycoons before his business empire collapsed and he vanished into the Communist nation’s shadowy prison system,” Breitbart News’ John Hayward wrote earlier this week. “Ye was once portrayed as one of China’s greatest rags-to-riches stories, a humble park ranger who began making successful oil investments in his twenties and became a billionaire before he hit 40. He was marketed as an affable businessman foreigners could feel safe making deals with, well-connected but not an obvious tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
CEFC is at the center of the burgeoning Biden scandal. When Bobulinski went public on Wednesday night, he was the first source on one of the emails that the New York Post published from Hunter Biden’s laptop retrieved from a computer repair store in Delaware. One such story that the Post published was about Hunter Biden and the Biden family seeking a deal with CEFC, and in those original emails James Gilliar of J2cR emails Bobulinski about “remunerations packages” related to the CEFC deal.
“I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine,” Bobulinski said in his statement issued publicly.
Bobulinski had been, sources familiar with the matter told Breitbart News, cooperating with the Wall Street Journal for an investigation it is working on. But since the Journal has not published its story several days later after its staff had indicated it would, Bobulinski decided to go public on his own on Wednesday night — and made clear he is cooperating with Senate investigators.
In the original email, published by the New York Post, from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Gilliar references a breakdown of how money acquired would be distributed throughout the firm of which Bobulinski was CEO. The email says at one point that “10 held by H for the big guy.”
In his nearly 700-word statement, Bobulinski confirmed the authenticity of that email and further explained its meeting including that “the big guy” was a reference to former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democrat presidential nominee, himself.
“What I am outlining is fact. I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family,” Bobulinski said. “I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to ‘the big guy’ in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other ‘JB’ referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother. Hunter Biden called his dad ‘the Big Guy’ or ‘my Chairman,’ and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.”
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
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
Biden 'Loan Repayments' and the Fourth Bank Records Memo | WSJ Opinion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj-TMAPKdRc
Joe Biden: "Something TERRIBLE Is Happening To Me Right NOW!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce95dLE3r4s
New Evidence Biden Personally Received 'Laundered China Money'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4t59XWUMZs
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.
VIDEO
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINK
Watters: I guarantee you Satan went to law school
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6Ln2aXLqWw
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.
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. PAM KEY
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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