Press Release: Leaked CCP Documents Reveal Escalating Transnational Repression Campaign to Target Forced Organ Harvesting Victim Group

February 20th 2025: Leaked information from the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exposes a coordinated and escalating campaign abroad, to attack practitioners of the Chinese spiritual group, Falun Gong, who are victims of severe persecution and forced organ harvesting orchestrated by the CCP in China.

The information, which includes leaked documents and whistleblower statements, exposes numerous techniques the CCP is using to step up its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners in the West.

New information reveals a top-level CCP meeting of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission in 2022, at which Chinese President Xi Jinping was present. In the meeting, President Xi expressed his dissatisfaction at the failure to eradicate the overseas activities of practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual qigong practice in the Buddhist tradition persecuted by the CCP, and victims of China’s vast forced organ harvesting industry. President Xi said the methods used to suppress Falun Gong abroad were “too conservative, too traditional, lacked creativity, and lacked innovation.”

According to whistleblowers who attended the meeting, Xi instructed the attendees to “completely, and on an international scale, suppress Falun Gong’s momentum,” and reassess the current personnel designated to the task overseas, with the Ministry of National Security being appointed the main coordinating role. Xi gave instructions for the crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners to have “two basic directions” – influencing public opinion and utilising legal warfare.

The new leaked information revealing details from the meeting with President Xi in 2022 has been exposed by Professor Yuan Hongbing, a respected Chinese democracy dissident and legal scholar based in Australia who was director of teaching and research at the Law Department of Peking University and Founding Dean of the Guizhou Normal University Law School. Having also worked as the main lecturer for courses for senior judges and for the Headquarters of the Armed Police Forces of China, Professor Yuan stated that he “has many channels from within the CCP’s top circles to receive important information“ including a member of a “family of the second generation of the Chinese Communist Party” who opposes Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, and a “person of conscience within the Chinese Communist Party system.”

The directive from the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party coincides with widespread evidence of a systematic campaign to smear and intimidate Falun Gong practitioners residing overseas including those in the United States, the UK and Europe, with the Shen Yun Performing Arts group particularly targeted.

Information from the legal professor states that the directives by President Xi in the meeting included amplifying disinformation and anti-Falun Gong content across Western social media and traditional Western media, with the eventual aim of smearing the reputation of Falun Gong and turning the U.S. government and international community against Falun Gong.

Further evidence of the CCP’s effort to target Falun Gong practitioners overseas has been exposed today in an official classified document, from 2021, showing the appointment of a “Director of the North American Office for Combating Falun Gong”. The document states, “Based on the March Comprehensive Committee Party Meeting resolution, the North American Office for Combating Falun Gong has been adjusted from Deputy Director level to Deputy Bureau Level to strengthen efforts suppressing Falun Gong”.

A leaked provincial level CCP documentiv verifies the strategy revealed in the CCP meeting, stating the need to develop “non-governmental resources, cultivating non-governmental forces in fighting xie jiao(i) such as “Falun Gong,” and mobilizing China-friendly people such as experts, scholars, journalists, and overseas Chinese community leaders who have greater influence in the U.S. and Western countries to speak for us, and strive to make more foreign media to publish more reports favourable to us.”

The escalating CCP strategy to target Falun Gong practitioners abroad has manifested in the exponential increase in violent threats targeting Falun Gong practitioners and in other attacks on Shen Yun Performing Arts, a US-based non-profit classical Chinese dance troupe, and orchestra, whose performers practice Falun Gong.

Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun performers have faced unprecedented levels of threats since March 2024. Over the last year, at least 50 threats of violence – including warnings of bombings, shootings, and sexual violence – have been documented. The threats have targeted Falun Gong organisations like the Falun Dafa Information Center, film screenings in Taiwan on organ harvesting, and Shen Yun’s headquarters in New York.

Shen Yun tour buses tyres have been slashed and students at the Fei Tian College in New York, where young people train to become Shen Yun dancers, have been victims of an extortion attempt which threatened to send information on their home addresses to the CCP. Since 12 January 2025, 15 email threats have also targeted members of U.S. congress and other politicians in the United States and elsewhere who support Falun Gong, Law enforcement has been alerted and no violence has occurred to date, but the effort is a clear intimidation tactic.

Groundless lawsuits have also been filed against Shen Yun – in line with President Xi’s strategy to utilise legal warfare against Falun Gong practitioners abroad. One such example is an environmental lawsuit against Dragon Springs, a campus in Orange County, New York, that houses Shen Yun Performing Arts and the Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, where Shen Yun performers study and train. The lawsuits, which appear to be filed with the aim of generating negative press and wasting the resources of Shen Yun, were brought by an American who spent some 15 years in China and maintains business interests there. The latest lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice due to the lack of evidence, meaning another cannot be filed.

In its multi-front strategy against Falun Gong practitioners, there is also evidence of the CCP targeting Shen Yun’s financial footing, with two citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) sentenced to prison time in California for the attempted bribery of US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials in an effort to strip Shen Yun of its tax-exempt status. One of those sentenced, John Chen, told a cell mate he was being paid $50,000 per month by the CCP’s 610 Office.

Threats have also been directed against the first known survivor of forced organ harvesting in China, Cheng Peiming. Between July and October 2024, Cheng publicly recounted his experience of torture and partial organ harvesting at multiple public events across in the United States, garnering media and policymaker attention. Medical experts have examined Cheng, corroborating his testimony with findings that confirm parts of his liver and lung were indeed removed. Chinese security services and high level CCP leaders have reportedly taken notice of Cheng’s case and its impact on galvanizing greater attention on organ transplant abuses and the persecution of Falun Gong. As such, the regime is engaging in a concerted effort to discredit Cheng and, according to leaked information from an internal source, to “kill him directly and make it look like a suicide,” if needed. In recent months, Cheng has faced several suspicious threats to his physical safety, including a break-in of his home in New York on 2 November 2024.

In the UK Parliament, the Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently calling for evidence on how transnational repression affects the human rights of people living in the UK. The inquiry will examine the effectiveness of the UK’s current legal and policy frameworks in relation to transnational repression, and the assistance available to the victims of such attacks.

In the United States, momentum is also building to combat forced organ harvesting. In July 2024, the ‘Falun Gong Protection Act’ was introduced to the US Senate after passing in the US House, and in March 2023, the ‘Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act’ was passed unanimously by the US House and has now been introduced to the US Senate with bipartisan support.

Sir Geoffrey Nice KC, China Tribunal Chairman and world-leading human rights barrister said:

“Over four years ago, the unchallenged China Tribunal Judgment found beyond reasonable doubt that the PRC murdered Falun Gong practitioners to extract their organs for use in the country’s commercial organ transplant business. Killing Falun Gong practitioners also reduced a peace-loving group feared by PRC Communist Party leaders. Killing Falun Gong at home was not enough for the PRC, it seems. Xi Jinping wants them terrorised abroad. For years, many governments around the world turned blind eyes to the PRC’s ‘forced organ harvesting’ practices. They must not do the same now to victims persecuted abroad simply for their peaceful beliefs.”

Distinguished Professor Wendy Rogers and Chair of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China International Advisory Board said:

“Professor Yuan describes a detailed CCP strategy to suppress and destroy the international Falun Gong community using methods such as reputational damage, sabotaging media activities and ‘legal warfare’. The methods are different, but the CCP’s intention to destroy Falun Gong remains steadfast. Starting with the horrors of forced organ harvesting, imprisonment, torture and other human rights abuses, this peaceful practice has been targeted for persecution. Professor Yuan offers insights into the latest campaign in this long history, in which the CCP reaches far beyond China’s borders.”

FOOTNOTE