Falun Gong a ‘Priority Target’ for Transnational Repression by Beijing, Says Former Spy Who Defected to Australia

A former Chinese spy who defected to Australia says the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to consider Falun Gong a priority target overseas and allocates substantial resources to monitoring and suppressing practitioners of the spiritual discipline.

The former agent, who was also in charge of monitoring a Falun Gong practitioner, defected to Australia in 2023 and goes by the pseudonym “Eric” for fear of reprisals from Beijing. He told The Epoch Times that the Chinese regime views Falun Gong as a threat to its power and spends a great deal of resources attempting to infiltrate and gather information on practitioners of the discipline.

“The CCP sees them as a major threat and devotes substantial effort to monitoring and suppressing them,” Eric told The Epoch Times in Chinese. “The CCP treats them as a priority target for infiltration and repression.”

Eric worked for China’s Ministry of Public Security for more than 10 years—from 2008 until 2022, when he was recalled to China. He says he was a pro-democracy activist and was forced to work for the Chinese regime after the CCP found out he had joined the China Social Democratic Party. Eric said he defected to Australia when the conditions allowed.

Li Guixin meditates in Lumphini Park in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 12, 2014. Courtesy of Li Guixin

During his time as an undercover agent, Eric monitored dissidents abroad whom the CCP deemed as threats. He noted that he targeted more than a dozen dissidents, including a Falun Gong practitioner from China named Li Guixin, who experienced at least five arbitrary arrests and time in detention over his faith in China before he fled to Thailand in 2014 with his wife and teenage daughter.

Eric said the CCP sent him to Thailand to “do reconnaissance” and confirm where Li was living.

Top Target

Chen Yonglin, another former Chinese spy, and Hao Fengjing, a former officer with China’s security apparatus, said in 2005 there are 1,000 Chinese espionage operatives in Canada, and that they are primarily engaged in harassing Falun Gong practitioners and stealing commercial secrets. Both Chen and Hao have defected to Australia.

Chen previously told The Epoch Times that anti-Falun Gong efforts consumed more than half of China’s work on monitoring and repressing dissidents in Canada. “Opposing Falun Gong is the top priority of the Chinese embassy and consulates,” Chen said in previous comments.

Senior Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin (C) asks for political asylum in Australia during a rally marking the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in Sydney, 04 June 2005. Torsten Blackwood/AFP via Getty Images

Chen testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. Congress in 2005 and said the “war against Falun Gong is one of the main tasks of the Chinese missions overseas” and the “priority” task of the Chinese consulate.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline that combines meditation exercises with moral teachings centred on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. It became China’s fastest-growing spiritual practice in the 1990s. Viewing its popularity, independence from state control, and guiding principles as incompatible with the CCP’s officially atheist ideology, the regime launched a violent campaign of persecution against Falun Gong in 1999.

Reports indicate practitioners of the spiritual practice still face brutal persecution today, including torture, forced labour, brainwashing, surveillance, killings, and forced live organ harvesting. Meanwhile, Falun Gong practitioners have responded to the persecution through peaceful protests and awareness-raising efforts both in China and abroad, according to the Washington-based Falun Dafa Infocenter, which reports on the persecution of the spiritual discipline in China.

The Falun Dafa Infocenter says practitioners within China distribute informational materials, document and relay accounts of abuses to contacts overseas, and pursue petitions and legal complaints despite the risks involved.

As previously reported by The Epoch Times, leaked documents revealed Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued a directive in 2022 ordering renewed attacks on Falun Gong overseas using disinformation and lawfare. According to the leaked information, Xi said previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong had failed, and he instructed officials to start “cultivating anti-Falun Gong forces afresh.”

Falun Gong practitioners gather in front of the Chinese Consulate in Toronto to commemorate the 27th anniversary of their fellow practitioners’ April 25, 1999, appeal in Beijing calling for freedom of belief. Evan Ning/The Epoch Times

Wide Reach

Eric said his monitoring of Falun Gong practitioner Li’s case deepened his understanding of the CCP’s efforts to persecute Falun Gong practitioners overseas. As an example, he noted that Li possessed sensitive materials, including photographs, that had been shared with very few people, if any, but CCP agents were somehow able to obtain them.

“That shows the CCP’s suppression of Falun Gong remains quite severe, and that its penetration into Falun Gong circles on platforms such as Twitter is quite deep—whether through technical means or by sending infiltrators to embed themselves,” Eric said, adding that the CCP’s ability to infiltrate the lives of dissidents like Falun Gong practitioners is “a serious situation.”

Eric said that while it’s hard to know exactly how many overseas dissidents, including Falun Gong practitioners, the CCP is monitoring through its global espionage network, their objective is to reach every dissident.

“They can’t possibly monitor everyone. But their objective—in their own words—is to make the Party’s ‘eyes’ reach every overseas Chinese individual,” he said, adding that there are “very few gaps” when it comes to monitoring those the CCP deems important or “worth monitoring.”