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Written by: Daniel Xie

Content Warning: This article contains links to far-right outlets such as the official Falun Gong website, The Epoch Times and China Uncensored

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States in 2016, combined with his aggressive foreign policy directed towards China, has given a political opening to various fringe organizations operating in the United States seeking to destroy the Chinese government who see Trump as a potential ally in achieving this goal.

One of the organizations taking advantage of Trump’s anti-China stance is the reactionary cult known as Falun Gong. The practitioners of Falun Gong assert themselves as a new religious movement founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. While initially supported by Chinese officials, the late 1990s saw a government crackdown by Jiang Zemin directed towards the movement. In response to the crackdown, Li Hongzhi and his followers fled to the United States. Li and Falun Gong allege that the reason that they are being targeted is because their religious beliefs were a threat to the state atheism of the Communist Party.

The Communist Party of China on the other hand, reveals a far different picture of Falun Gong’s activities in China in their justification for turning against the movement. According to the Communist Party, Falun Gong’s teachings have caused self-harm and needless suffering for many of their practitioners adhering to Falun Gong beliefs, noting that 1,000 practitioners have died because they followed Li's anti-medical teachings. Consequently, the movement threatened public safety in China, and had to be cracked down upon.

The reactionary teachings of Falun Gong

While Falun Gong and it’s proponents style themselves as an enlightened religious movement being persecuted for their beliefs by the Jiang Zemin government, more skeptical voices paint their behavior as more akin to an authoritarian cult, citing various cult-like and pseudoscientific beliefs. These cult-like and pseudoscientific beliefs include:

The belief that the world has been destroyed eighty-one times in the past, with the current age of human existence being the time of the final apocalypse.
A cult of personality positioning Li Hongzi as a messiah who can stop the world from being destroyed yet again. Falun Gong teachings also posit that Li is the “highest buddha”.
Opposition to the use of medicine to treat diseases, claiming that diseases can simply be gotten rid of if one expels bad karma from their body. The deaths associated with this school of thought were the Chinese government’s reason for moving against Falun Gong
Positing Falun Dafa as the only acceptable religion, and the other religions as fermenting division among humanity

In addition to the cultivation of a cult of personality, Li has also used Falun Gong as a vehicle to spread and uphold reactionary worldviews within Chinese society. The various reactionary beliefs of Falun Gong include:

Opposition to homosexuality, which is seen by the cult as the product of “deviant” and “filthy” states of mind lacking rationality
Racist beliefs demonizing interracial relationships as the prelude to societal moral decay, with mixed-race children seen as intellectually and physically deformed compared to non mixed-race children
Li Hongzi has also claimed, in relation to the above, that the souls of children born from interracial marriages will not be able to enter the afterlife after death, as the afterlife is supposedly segregated between different racial groups, and consequently would supposedly be no place for mixed-race humans in the afterlife.
Belief that science and technology are anti-human concepts introduced by space aliens into human society in order to ferment war and chaos.

The behavior of Falun Gong as more a reactionary cult rather than an organized religious group has been attested to by various sources. Testimonials to NBC have revealed that the main headquarters of Falun Gong in the United States, Dragon Springs, is an environment where internet access is severely restricted, medicine is barely used (in accordance with Falun Gong beliefs), and relationships are often arranged by the leadership. Ex-Falun Gong practitioners have further testified that adherence to Falun Gong’s pseudoscientific teachings regarding medicine have indeed killed people suffering from diseases as a result of practitioners avoiding medical treatment.

Critics of Falun Gong outside of China have pointed out that the movement has an extreme demand for loyalty, even going as far to threaten practitioners for considering other religious beliefs. Some critics also believe that Falun Gong is deliberately hyping up the crackdown by the Chinese government against them for sympathy points in order to bait people into joining their cult.

The Growth of the Falun Gong’s media arm under Trump

Since their leadership has fled China, Falun Gong has established various media outlets used to spread propaganda against the Chinese government. These media outlets, established in the early 2000s, includ New Tang Dynasty Television and the Epoch Times. Both media outlets were tied to the Epoch Media Group, the media arm of Falun Gong. The dangers of a reactionary, pseudoscientific, cult creating media for the express purpose of demonizing China was ignored by the Western Media, with the Wall Street Journal claiming that NTD TV served as a platform for dissidents opposing Beijing’s “media empire”.

The last few decades have seen an exponential growth in Falun Gong related media. New Tang Dynasty expanded to Canada on September 30, 2008 starting with it’s broadcast debut on Rogers cable, this was followed by the creation of NTD Canada on March 28, 2012. New Tang Dynasty would also set up an online presence through the “China Uncensored” Youtube Channel in 2012, which publishes sensationalist reports claiming to expose China’s efforts to “take over the world”. Videos published on this youtube account include unsubstantiated and trumped-up Sinophobic allegations that:

The Chinese government is implanting self-destruct bombs in Chinese soldiers' helmets
China is supposedly engaging in aggressive posturing against the US and its allies in the region
China effectively rules the world through control of various transnational organizations.

The rise of Trump, and his considerably harsher stance on China, culminating in a trade war starting in 2018, has allowed the Epoch Media Group to expand its operations and tap into a larger audience more receptive to Sinophobia. media outlets associated with the Epoch Media Group started to focus on American politics, with the Epoch Times publishing article after article promoting alt-right ideology and warning of Chinese influence in American politics. Such articles include:

Articles demonizing “Woke” social justice and racial justice activists as Neo-Leninists
Articles alleging the storming of the capitol by Trump supporters were in fact false flag attacks carried out by Black Lives Matter
Articles and videos alleging that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump
Articles alleging that China controls the Black Lives Matter movement
Articles pushing various conspiracy theories spread by QAnon
Articles framing Trump’s actions against China in a positive light
Articles branding COVID-19 as the “CCP virus” and claiming that the Coronavirus was a bioweapon that escaped a Chinese lab
Publishing conspiracy theories surrounding “Spygate”, which revolved around baseless claims that Obama administration officials illegally spied on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Promoting ultranationalist parties in Europe such as the far-right Alternate Fur Deutschland party in Germany

Part of the reason for the Epoch Times’ success in spreading their influence is tied to their adaptation of alt-right tactics of manipulation of the algorithm on social media and video sites to expand their audience. The Epoch Times utilizes this strategy by creating many Facebook pages, filling these pages with videos and viral clickbait, and using them to sell subscriptions and drive traffic back to the Epoch Times website.

Epoch Times has not only grown their audience through their tactics of social media manipulation, but also cultivated ties with the outgoing Trump administration. On December 29, 2020, it was reported by Alternet that Trump has retweeted footage featuring conspiracies surrounding the 2020 US elections originating from Epoch Times creative director Seth Holehouse, who has demonized in his videos the Chinese Communist party as a “virus” seeking to undermine the US government from within.

The success of Epoch-affiliated media in the US has also had reverberations in Canada, with the Epoch Times being delivered to the mailboxes of many Canadian households. As reported by The Signal on January 15th, 2020, Epoch Times newspapers were dropped into the mailboxes of a large number of households across the Maritimes. After hearing complaints regarding the content of the Epoch Times, Cumberland-Colchester MP Lenore Zann has raised concerns to Canada Post regarding the delivery of Epoch Times newspapers to households.

Both Kurt Phillips, founder of Anti-Racist Canada and a current member of the board of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, as well as Drew Garvie, the Ontario leader of the Communist Party of Canada have condemned the Epoch Times as violating hate speech laws. Garvie stated that the spread of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 by sources such as the Epoch times has resulted in an increase in violence against Chinese-Canadians, and that the government should not ignore this any longer.

The Canadian and American connection to the funding of the Epoch Times

What is even more ominous about the growth of the Epoch Times is the fact that it has been funded by various pro-Trump figures. As reported by The Daily Beast and Responsible Statecraft, pro-Trump donors have played an important role in the funding of the Epoch Times. According to Eli Clifton, the Epoch Media Group received $900,000 from pro-Trump donor Robert Mercer, as revealed in a tax document, and was previously led by Huayi Zhang of Renasissance Technologies, one of Mercer’s longtime employees. Huayi Zhang and his wife, Siuling Zhang, contributed $909,500 to New Tang Dynasty between 2012 and 2016, with Zhang serving as the chair of NTD’s board in 2004, 2005 and 2007 to 2010.

The Canadian government has also played a key role in allowing Falun Gong influence to take root in Canada. In the past, Falun Gong was allowed to influence the foreign policy of the US and Canada in an anti-China direction through the work of former MP David Kilgour, as well as B’nai Brith Canada senior legal counsel David Matas. Both Matas and Kilgour spread rumors coming from Falun Gong alleging that the Chinese government carried out “organ harvesting” against their members. More recently, the Canadian government has downplayed the threat of anti-Chinese violence being spread through the Epoch Times, with the Federal government rejecting a request last May from a Toronto postal workers’ union to cease circulation of the Epoch Times via Canada Post; the federal government’s justification being that the Epoch Times’ content does not constitute hate speech, presumably because the Epoch Times serves the purpose of turning public opinion against the Chinese government in the midst of a new Cold War.

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The worsening relations between China and the Western world under Trump have increased the influence of fringe organizations such as Falun Gong and it’s media empire, who view the Trump administration as useful to its goals of overthrowing the Chinese government. These fringe organizations have since increased in power and influence, their far right message spreading with the help of both the Trump administration and the Canadian government, the latter having provided them funding through CEWS to spread their Sinophobic viewpoints as Canadian-Chinese relations continue to deteriorate in this new Cold War.

While Falun Gong and the Epoch Times paint Biden as China’s puppet in the White House, Biden’s foreign policy direction has not indicated any change in course towards a more diplomatic position regarding China. As such, it is conceivable that the Epoch Times, despite its extreme right bias, will continue to be supported by the American and Canadian governments in the future.

Canadians concerned about rising Sinophobia within Canadian society must push for their government to reconsider their claims regarding the content of the Epoch Times, and stop the drive towards a Second Cold War with China at the behest of the United States.

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