Insider Witnesses Persecution of Falun Gong; Expert: CCP Threatens the World

Falun Gong held a massive parade on Brooklyn’s 8th Avenue in New York on February 16, 2025. The photo shows the second procession calling to end the persecution of Falun Gong. (Dai Bing/The Dajiyuan)

(Renminbao News) Meng Yuanxin, senior researcher at ChinaAid and former Chinese prisoner of conscience, recently revealed in an interview—based on his personal experience—the CCP’s systematic persecution of faith groups and why it fears belief. He stated that the CCP’s nature “is not ordinary evil, but demonic.” Experts further point out that the CCP is carrying out transnational repression against religious groups and is threatening the world.

Why Does the CCP Persecute Religious Groups?

According to a report by Dajiyuan journalists Cheng Mulan and Luo Ya, the United States recently held a hearing on “The CCP’s War on Religious Faith,” revealing the CCP’s extensive efforts to suppress religious freedom—from inside China to transnational repression—and pointing out that it constitutes a threat to U.S. national security.

Why does the CCP wage war on religion? Meng Yuanxin emphasized that the CCP is fundamentally incompatible with any religious faith:
“The CCP has no spiritual belief. It promotes materialism and denies the existence of the spirit. What it worships is power, requiring people to worship its leaders, whether Mao Zedong or Xi Jinping. Any other spiritual belief is treated as a mortal enemy.”

The CCP’s hostility toward religion is not recent—it stems from its nature. He explained:
“From the very beginning, the Communist Party viewed belief as an enemy. Any genuine faith—including Christianity, Falun Gong, Buddhism, Taoism, Muslims, even Confucianism—is incompatible with the CCP’s ideology of treating people as tools and centering everything on power.”

Discussing the CCP’s history of thought control, Meng cited Mao-era slogans such as “The Party controls everything” and “Launch a revolution in the depths of the soul,” pointing out that the CCP uses long-term brainwashing to turn people into movable “bricks” and “tools.”

He continued:
“The goal is to make people obey—whatever the CCP says, people must listen. This is to safeguard the regime and the leader’s position.”

He believes people with faith are not easily brainwashed—this is the root cause of the CCP’s suppression of religious groups.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a high-level Buddhist practice transmitted by Master Li Hongzhi in Changchun on May 13, 1992. Based on the universe’s highest characteristics—Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance—it attracted over 100 million practitioners and has spread to over 110 countries and regions across six continents. However, on July 20, 1999, the CCP began persecuting Falun Gong. Countless Chinese practitioners have been detained, severely beaten, tortured, placed in psychiatric facilities, and even subjected to live organ harvesting.

Eyewitness Accounts of Falun Gong Practitioners Being Electroshocked and Physically Destroyed

Meng recalled that in 1999 he was sentenced to one and a half years of reeducation through labor for posting leaflets commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre, accused of “inciting to disrupt social order.” On the night of July 18, he was arrested; in the Beijing No. 1 Detention Center, he learned from state media that the CCP had labeled Falun Gong a “cult” and launched a full-scale persecution. At the end of August, he was sent to Tuanhe Labor Camp, where he personally witnessed Falun Gong practitioners being brutally tortured.

“That year, people going in and out of the labor camp were mostly Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP used electric batons to try to force them to submit. If they didn’t give in, they kept shocking them,” Meng said. Only after signing a “guarantee statement” could one be released, but “most went home, felt tormented by conscience, repented, and were arrested again,” forming a cycle of persecution.

Many were teachers or PhD students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and Peking University. “I often heard their screams—truly heart-wrenching.” Meng noted that in places like the Northeast, Changping, and Yanqing, many Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death.

He also mentioned his friend, lawyer Wang Xianzhang—the first to represent Falun Gong cases—and human rights lawyers Wang Quanzhang, Li Heping, and Jiang Tianyong, all of whom were persecuted. Particularly lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who disappeared more than nine years after being released from prison: “Alive, he cannot be seen; dead, there is no body.” This has become a classic case of religious persecution extending into China’s rights defense community.

Experts: The CCP Is Carrying Out Transnational Repression of Faith; It Threatens the World

The U.S. congressional hearing stated that the CCP suppresses and controls 500 million religious believers, including Falun Gong, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists, and Muslims. Senator Dan Sullivan, who presided over the hearing, said: “The CCP fears the power of belief.”

Regarding Falun Gong specifically, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback urged the U.S. to “designate the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong as genocide,” and advocated including religious freedom in national security strategy.

According to a Minghui.org report from October 2025, since the persecution began in 1999, at least 5,273 practitioners are confirmed to have been persecuted to death, including 2,902 women. Torture methods include severe beatings, electric shocks, shackling, sleep deprivation, freezing, sun exposure, forced standing, force-feeding, and injections of unknown drugs—occurring nationwide.

The report states these tortures are not isolated cases but a product of systemic oppression. From 2021–July 2025, 3,428 practitioners in Sichuan Province were harassed and arrested by the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, police, prosecutors, courts, and community personnel; 49 were persecuted to death or died under injustice. Detention sites included not only detention centers and prisons but also rural black jails and brainwashing centers.

The CCP’s persecution of religious groups has expanded to the U.S. and worldwide. Dr. Wang Zhiyuan, spokesperson for the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, told The Dajiyuan:
“The CCP not only persecutes religious groups but uses unrestricted warfare strategies inside the U.S.—public opinion warfare, legal warfare—to attack Falun Gong, The Dajiyuan, Shen Yun Performing Arts, and others.”

Wang emphasized that the CCP’s cross-border operations aim to prevent Falun Gong and other faith groups from exposing the persecution internationally and to avoid its crimes (including organ harvesting) from being designated as crimes against humanity.

He stated bluntly that the CCP’s ultimate goal is global expansion and confrontation with free societies.

Meng Yuanxin urged the U.S. and Western societies to “not just speak, but act,” calling for sanctions on officials in the CCP’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee and Religious Affairs Bureau. He added:
“The highlight of this hearing is that it elevated the CCP’s religious persecution to a national security level—this is an extremely important breakthrough.”

Awakening of the People Is the Hope for Ending the Persecution

Meng stressed that the CCP’s greatest weakness is not external pressure but the awakening of the people:
“Once people stop being brainwashed, the CCP has no reason to exist—the regime will collapse on its own.”

Li Youtan, professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, told The Dajiyuan that the CCP’s crackdown on religious faith stems from its fear of collective action. He said:

“Whether Christianity, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhism, or Islam—once a belief involves collective action, the CCP sees it as a threat because it weakens its monopoly on power.”

Li further noted that the CCP’s so-called “crime of subverting state power” actually proves that the CCP itself is guilty of the “crime of monopolizing state power.”

The professor also believes that freedom of belief represents autonomy of thought and spirit, and challenges the CCP’s thought control:
“Once people build spiritual reliance, they will no longer depend on power and lies. The CCP then loses its legitimacy.”

Meng also said the CCP’s “only belief is power,” but any rule lacking a spiritual foundation will ultimately collapse. △