Panel at Capitol Spotlights CCP’s ‘Silent War’ Against US

WASHINGTON—Experts and advocates on June 6 spotlighted the Chinese regime’s invisible war to manipulate the West and suppress dissidents outside China’s borders.

The panel, hosted by The Epoch Times at the U.S. Capitol, focused on Beijing’s escalating suppression of dissent in the United States, particularly targeting faith group Falun Gong.

The goal, they said, is to disrupt Falun Gong’s influence in the international community and its calls to end the 26-year-long persecution in China.

Yuan Hongbing, a legal scholar who has high-level contacts in the Chinese state apparatus, first disclosed the Chinese regime’s campaign to The Epoch Times in December 2024.

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Speaking virtually at the panel, Yuan broke the regime’s efforts down to “one central focus and two directives.”

According to Yuan, the campaign is focused on character assassination of Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, in a bid to shake the foundation of the spiritual group. Then the party uses information and legal warfare by mobilizing Western mainstream media, deploying disinformation, and other tactics to diminish Falun Gong’s influence.

The regime will “strike on all fronts,” Yuan said.

The Epoch Times’ CEO Janice Trey described the campaign as a “silent war.”

By co-opting the Western legal system, regulatory agencies, and legacy media outlets in the West to reshape global opinion, she said, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is directly challenging the foundation of a democratic society.

“This tactic threatens free speech, religious liberty, and national security,” Trey said.

Varied Tactics

A fire alarm cut short the event just as panelist Mark Yang, advocacy officer for the nonprofit Falun Dafa Information Center, expounded on how the regime’s campaign on U.S. soil was playing out.  The U.S. Capitol Police later told The Epoch Times there was “an electrical issue that has been fixed.”

“This escalation that we are seeing right now is a result of a top-down decision,“ said Yang. “Unfortunately, we are really witnessing these tactics unfold right now.”

Such manipulation of legacy institutions in the West struck Eric Patterson, a panelist and president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“What was amazing is how many stories there were with this negative bent when against this one group, when there was no similar reporting, to my knowledge, against any other international performing group or any performing group in the United States,” Patterson told The Epoch Times.

“What that suggests is that a place like the New York Times and other U.S. media outlets have to be extremely careful, and perhaps they have just been gullible in being manipulated by the CCP.”

“The Chinese people are not our enemy, but the leadership of the Communist Party and its many, many organs and institutions, they are saying that they are our enemy.”

‘Consider the Implications’

Yang said that in the case of Shen Yun, the CCP has “demonstrated the ability to weaponize the American media, bait our government agencies, and take advantage of our judicial system.”

“Consider the implications,” he wrote in his prepared remarks that were cut short, “if the CCP can target one group effectively, what prevents it from targeting other individuals or institutions it doesn’t like?”

The Epoch Times’s commitment to exposing the communist regime’s abuses has made it one of Beijing’s key targets since the publication’s founding in the United States in 2000. Not long after, Chinese authorities arrested dozens of people in China who were involved in the publication, sentencing several to as long as 10 years in prison.

Be it Falun Gong or other groups that the regime has sought to stifle, “the reason that they are targeted first and foremost is because they stand for something that cannot be controlled by the CCP,” Patterson said.

“They stand for an authority structure, for beliefs, for values that are outside of the control of the communist party, and that is a threat.”

Sherry Dong contributed to this report.