Hello, everyone! Welcome to “Inconvenient
Truths by Jennifer Zeng”.
Recently, while faced with mounting pressure
from the international world, as well as all
sorts of internal crises, the Chinese Communist
Party, the CCP, launched a so-called “Zero-Out
Campaign” against Falun Gong throughout
China. What is the “Zero-Out Campaign”?
What is Falun Gong? Why does the CCP want
to “zero-out” Falun Gong? And why does
Falun Gong matter? Today I’d like to talk
about these issues.
First of all, what is Falun Gong? 
“Falun Gong” in Chinese actually has three
words: Fa (法）, Lun（輪）, and Gong（功）.
“Fa” means Law and principles in the Buddha
School. It can also mean the Way, the Dao
( Tao) in Daoist School.
“Lun” means the wheel. So Falun can be
roughly translated as “Wheel of Law '',  “The
Wheel of the Law '', or “Wheel of Dharma
'' if we adopt the translation of ancient
Indian language. 
Gong can mean an exercise, a practice, or
energy, the practice of energy. So “Falun
Gong” can be understood as a practice that
practices the Wheel of Law, or an exercise
that is based on the principles of the Wheel
of the Law.
Falun Gong sometimes is also referred to as
“Falun Dafa”. Da（大） in Chinese means
big, great. So “Dafa” can be understood
as “The Great Way”, or “The Great Dao”,
the “The Great Principles”. So “Falun
Dafa” can be understood as “The Great
Way of the Wheel of the Law”.
Okay, I hope my explanation hasn’t made
you more confused.
Anyway, Falun Gong is one of many qigong practices
that were spread in China during the 1990s.
It has 5 sets of gentle physical exercises
including sitting and standing meditation
that look very similar to Tai Chi and Yoga.
It has its own teachings, and the core principles
to follow are “Truth, Compassion, Tolerance”. 
Another question people often ask is: Is Falun
Gong a religion? 
My own answer is: Yes and No, depending on
how you define “religion”. Falun Gong
doesn’t have any religious formalities or
rituals to observe. There are no temples or
churches, no monks, nuns, or priests. Falun
Gong talks about “The Great Way is formless”,
and the most important thing is people’s
hearts. If one’s heart is not here, it is
useless to try to hold people with outward
formalities.
However, like other religions, Falun Gong
is also a belief system and talks about heaven,
paradise, the afterlife, higher beings, Buddhas,
gods, etc. It regards itself as one of the
practices of the Buddha school. In this regard,
you can regard Falun Gong as a religion.
Falun Gong was founded by Mr. Li Hongzhi in
China and was first introduced to the public
in 1992. About 200 people attended his first
class in Changchun City. He held altogether
56 classes in the next two years in 22 cities
in China; and about 70,000 people attended
his classes.
Because of Falun Gong’s obvious physical
and mental health benefits, many people eagerly
introduced it to their families and friends
after learning it. Many people voluntarily
taught it to others. Falun Gong never allows
its practitioners to charge fees when teaching
others. 
So, through word of mouth, and a large number
of volunteers, Falun Gong spread very fast
in China. Within 7 years, its practitioners
outnumbered the CCP members. According to
the CCP’s own investigation and estimation,
there were about 70-100 million Falun Gong
practitioners in China in 1999.
Then, problems occurred. You know, China is
a one-party country; and this one party needs
to control everything, every aspect of people’s
lives. The CCP never allows any independent
thinking or anything to become bigger than
itself.
That was the main reason why the CCP suddenly
decided to eliminate Falun Gong in 1999, after
allowing it to spread for 7 years. 
When the CCP decides to crack down on something,
especially on a group that has a large number
of people in it, the first thing it will do
is to launch a campaign of public opinion
to make people think that it is fully justified
for the party to crack down on this group.
So that was exactly what the CCP did to Falun
Gong. When the crackdown officially started
on July 22, 1999, all the CCP’s propaganda
machines were in full swing to attack Falun
Gong. Whichever TV channel you turned on,
it was guaranteed that you would see the attacks
against Falun Gong. Even children’s channels
and entertainment channels were all used to
broadcast the lies and attacks. The public
was bombarded 24/7 by anti-Falun Gong propaganda. 
With such an absolutely overwhelming public
opinion campaign, the CCP was very confident
that it could eliminate Falun Gong in 3 months.
However, they didn’t expect that almost
every Chinese person who had experienced previous
political campaigns understood from what they
saw on TV that the CCP was determined to wipe
out Falun Gong completely in no time, Falun
Gong practitioners themselves were not terrified
as the CCP had expected. 
Instead, they started going to Beijing or
writing letters to the CCP leaders to appeal
for Falun Gong.  Because there were so many
of them, at some stage, according to the estimation
of police, there were as many as 1 million
Falun Gong practitioners hanging out in Beijing,
trying to figure out ways to petition for
Falun Gong. 
On some special days, such as the New Year’s
Eve, a thousand could show up in Tiananmen
Square.
Throughout the CCP’s history, something
like this had never happened. Whenever the
CCP decided to crack down on something, that
thing could hardly survive for more than 3
days. The CCP had been very confident in its
power, and its violent ways to handle things.
So the same kind of tactics was immediately
applied to Falun Gong. Initially, they arrested
Falun Gong practitioners, detained them for
15 to 30 days, believing that would be enough
to scare Falun Gong practitioners to death.
However, the CCP didn’t expect that these
people wouldn't surrender. They continued
to defend their rights to practice their beliefs.
So the CCP accelerated the persecution. They
threw Falun Gong practitioners into labor
camps, sentenced them to more than 10 years,
and invented many shocking torture methods
to torture Falun Gong practitioners. Thousands
have been tortured to death, millions have
been put into jails, labor camps, detention
centers, mental hospitals, and brainwashing
classes.
Apart from mental and physical torture, Falun
Gong practitioners were also forced to do
hard, slave labors, and most products were
exported to foreign countries to make dollars
for the CCP.
And more shockingly, Falun Gong practitioners
have been turned into body parts or organ
suppliers for the CCP. Whenever somebody needs
an organ and is willing to pay the money,
the CCP will kill one Falun Gong practitioner,
or other prisoners, harvest his/her organs,
and sell it to the patient to make huge amounts
of money.
In the past 21 years, according to an in-depth
investigation, as many as 2 million people
could have been killed for their organs.
From the scale, nature, and the extent of
the persecution, we have very good reason
to call it an unprecedented one that has never
been seen in human history.
However, Falun Gong’s story doesn’t stop
at the persecution. What hasn’t been exposed
enough is the unprecedented resilience that
Falun Gong practitioners have displayed through
all these years.
Apart from going to Tiananmen Square to appeal
for Falun Gong at the early stage of the persecution,
Falun Gong practitioners have been distributing
flyers, DVDs, making phone calls, sending
emails, faxes, and letters, putting up posters
at public places, talking to people face to
face to expose the persecution, as well as
the evil nature of the CCP, and ask people
to quit the CCP and its related organizations.
They even write up or print slogans on cash
notes that expose the CCP’s crimes, and
ask people to break away from the CCP’s
spiritual and mental control. Some people
joked that the reason why the CCP wanted to
issue digital currency was that they didn’t
want to see those Falun Gong related slogans
on their cash notes anymore.
This is, of course, probably just a joke.
But it does speak about one truth: The scale
and strength of Falun Gong practitioners’
resistance are not something the CCP expected.
That is why they had to launch this so-called
“Zero-Out Campaign” again, 21 years after
they vowed to “eliminate” Falun Gong in
3 months.
So what is the “Zero-Out Campaign”, and
how does it work?
The “Zero-Out Campaign” means that the
CCP wants to reduce the number of Falun Gong
practitioners to zero.
And how does it work? 
During all these years of persecution, the
CCP has virtually blacklisted every single
Falun Gong practitioner they know. When the
CCP started to issue the second generation
ID cards for Chinese citizens in 2004, they
put some kind of special code in the smart
IC chips of the ID cards of Falun Gong practitioners.
So, when Falun Gong practitioners want to
use their ID card to do something, say, to
apply for a passport, as long as the ID card
is swiped, an alert will immediately pop up,
warning that this person is a Falun Gong practitioner. 
Sometimes the police officers will carry some
kind of device with them. This device can
detect a Falun Gong practitioner’s ID card
if this card is within 30 meters of this device. 
And because of this, virtually all aspects
of a Falun Gong practitioner’s life is be
affected. They will have problems applying
for a passport, finding a new job, buying
a ticket to Beijing, enrolling their children
in school, etc.
There are also some people who once practiced
Falun Gong, but have given it up due to the
persecution. But their names are still on
the blacklist.
So, during this recent “Zero-Out Campaign”,
the CCP’s local officials will go to re-register
Falun Gong practitioners on their list one
by one. If Falun Gong practitioners promise
in writing that they have given up Falun Gong,
or will give up Falun Gong, the CCP officials
will promise to have their names removed from
the blacklist, or have their status “reset”,
so that they can enjoy the same kind of treatment
like non-Falun Gong practitioners.
Maybe for people who live in a free society,
they can hardly imagine how difficult life
can be in CCP’s China if one is listed as
an enemy of the party. But the CCP knows.
So it figured, to be removed from the blacklist
must be very attractive for Falun Gong practitioners.
So the CCP hopes that many people can choose
to leave the ranks of Falun Gong practitioners
in this “Zero-Out Campaign”.
There are also many reports on Falun Gong’s
website that those who refused to give up
Falun Gong have been repeatedly harassed,
arrested, or forced into exile again.
In my previous show “The CCP, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, & US: Romance of 4 Kingdoms”, I
said that the reason why the CCP can never
get Hong Kong right is that it just doesn’t
understand that there are people in the world
who don’t live for money, and who cannot
be conquered by fear. They don’t understand
how people with a soul and a heart will look
at the world and react to the suppression.
That is also the reason why the CCP can never
get Falun Gong right, and stupidly started
the persecution of Falun Gong.
In order to maintain the persecution, and
stop people, and other countries from condemning
the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP has
not only spent an astronomical amount of money,
but also purposely corrupted the moral values
of the society, so that people can stay silent,
run after money, and do evil together with
the CCP when practitioners of “Truth, Compassion,
and Tolerance” are being groundlessly and
ruthlessly persecuted.
And also, because the world has done very
little to stop the persecution of Falun Gong,
the CCP gained more confidence about its way
of governance, and expanded the same kind
of persecution, methods of persecution, to
Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and perhaps to Taiwan
soon.
Another thing people failed to realize is
the relationship between the persecution of
Falun Gong and the power struggles within
the CCP.
As early as 2001, two years after the persecution
started, overseas Falun Gong practitioners
started to launch lawsuits against the CCP
leaders who are responsible for the persecution
in many countries and vowed to hold the persecutors
accountable for the lives lost in the persecution. 
Sometimes when the CCP leaders, including
Jiang Zemin who started the persecution, visited
foreign countries, they even dared not to
enter their hotels from the front door to
avoid being protested against by overseas
Falun Gong practitioners or served legal documents.
Those who have blood on their hands during
this persecution were given a nickname: “Gang
of Bloody Debts”.  So when the CCP leaders
who belong to this “Gang of Bloody Debts”
retired or stepped down, they wanted to make
sure that their successors must also belong
to the “Gang of Bloody Debts” so that
the new leaders wouldn’t want to redress
the Falun Gong issue, would carry on their
previous policies so that they wouldn’t
be held responsible for their crimes. That
was an important reason for all the fierce
power struggles within the CCP in the last
2 decades.
I believe in the future, when CCP is gone,
when more facts are revealed, people will
understand more about why Falun Gong matters.
That’s all for today. Thank you for watching.
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check out my other videos.
Thank you. See you next time!
