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Uyghurs and Falun Gong: Is it all bullshit?

I'm not very informed on modern China and there's a ton of sources accusing China of killing and even harvesting organs from Uyghurs and Falun Gong believers.

Is there any truth to those claims or is it all pigpoop ?

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77 comments

  • China does not harvest organs from Falun Gong weirdos. I have been counselling Chairman Xi to change his mind on this to no avail.

    Read the UN report on Xinjiang. It's the closest thing you're ever going to get to an "unbaised" report. When Wahhabi paramilitaries began trying to expand in to Xinjiang and convert local Muslims to Wahhabi beliefs, with the violence and disruption Wahhabi beliefs entail, China responded with a bunch of different counter-terrorism programs. Some were overtly military, some were intelligence based, some were aimed at making Xinjiang more resilient in the face of subversion attempts. The programs that got spun in the west at genocide involved surveillance, some restrictions on movement, arbitrary arrest and detention of some Uighur Muslims for as much as 3-4 months, and related activities. These are certainly violations of human rights as conceived by the west, but are not genocide by any definition and frankly aren't much different from the day to day behavior of western security forces. Interviews in the un report describe being held in prison facilities for several months while undergoing questioning, some cultural and religious education programs intended to instill Uighur cultural identity and Chinese national identity, while also showing how Wahhabism contradicts many islamic principles and brings violence and instability. Also apparently a lot of being forced to sing patriotic songs, which, really?

    Was it nice? No, arbitrarily arresting people is not nice. However it needs to be positioned within the context of the global war on terror and the enormous amount of bloodshed the west and it's allies unleashed "fighting terrorism". At any rate, it seems to have worked - wahhabi violence in Xinjiang has dropped off and afaik the Chinese counter-terror program was wrapped up several years ago, and was already wrapping up when the UN investigation was being conducted.

    Seriously, read the UN report. It's very much critical of china and it's critique of what china was really doing shows how absurd and bad faith the accusations of genocide were.

    • You're missing one step in that: when those counter-terrorism programs were first rolled out the western media railed against them as being too soft compared to the preferred western strategy of random air strikes and entrapping alienated kids with fake terror plots. It was only years later, when the programs were being wound down as no longer necessary, that the western media started pushing the "genocide" conspiracy theory.

    • this is the report you're talking about, right?

      Death to America

    • Read the UN report on Xinjiang

      Or just read Adrian Zenz's original report making the accusation and look at his source when he cites one to see how it debunks his claim che-smile

    • Thanks for pointing me toward the UN report. It's fairly long (as it should be), but they helpfully provide a summary of their findings:

      The Summary

      1. Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies. The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.

      2. These human rights violations, as documented in this assessment, flow from a domestic “anti-terrorism law system” that is deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards. It contains vague, broad and open-ended concepts that leave wide discretion to officials to interpret and apply broad investigative, preventive and coercive powers, in a context of limited safeguards and scant independent oversight. This framework, which is vulnerable to discriminatory application, has in practice led to the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities in XUAR in so-called VETC and other facilities, at least between 2017 and 2019. Even if the VETC system has since been reduced in scope or wound up, as the Government has claimed, the laws and policies that underpin it remain in place. There appears to be a parallel trend of an increased number and length of imprisonments occurring through criminal justice processes, suggesting that the focus of deprivation of liberty has shifted towards imprisonment, on purported grounds of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism”.

      3. The treatment of persons held in the system of so-called VETC facilities is of equal concern. Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. While the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses, it is clear that the highly securitised and discriminatory nature of the VETC facilities, coupled with limited access to effective remedies or oversight by the authorities, provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale.

      4. The systems of arbitrary detention and related patterns of abuse in VETC and other detention facilities come against the backdrop of broader discrimination against members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim minorities based on perceived security threats emanating from individual members of these groups. This has included far-reaching, arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms, in violation of international norms and standards. These have included undue restrictions on religious identity and expression, as well as the rights to privacy and movement. There are serious indications of violations of reproductive rights through the coercive and discriminatory enforcement of family planning and birth control policies. Similarly, there are indications that labour and employment schemes for purported purposes of poverty alleviation and prevention of “extremism”, including those linked to the VETC system, may involve elements of coercion and discrimination on religious and ethnic grounds.

      5. The described policies and practices in XUAR have transcended borders, separating families and severing human contacts, while causing particular suffering to affected Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim minority families, exacerbated by patterns of intimidations and threats against members of the diaspora community speaking publicly about experiences in XUAR.

      6. The information currently available to OHCHR on implementation of the Government’s stated drive against terrorism and “extremism” in XUAR in the period 2017- 2019 and potentially thereafter, also raises concerns from the perspective of international criminal law. The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups, pursuant to law and policy, in context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights enjoyed individually and collectively, may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.

      7. The Government holds the primary duty to ensure that all laws and policies are brought into compliance with international human rights law and to promptly investigate any allegations of human rights violations, to ensure accountability for perpetrators and to provide redress to victims. Individuals who are arbitrarily deprived of their liberty should be immediately released. As the conditions remain in place for serious violations to continue and recur, these must also be addressed promptly and effectively. The human rights situation in XUAR also requires urgent attention by the Government, the United Nations intergovernmental bodies and human rights system, as well as the international community more broadly.

      8. OHCHR is grateful to the Government and other institutions for sharing with it information about aspects of the situation in XUAR. This assessment was also facilitated by the vast amount of research that has been completed by non-governmental organizations, researchers, journalists and academics over the last years (and independently assessed by OHCHR). OHCHR is deeply grateful to the victims and witnesses who were willing to share their experiences with OHCHR, despite the potential risks to themselves and their loved ones.

      It's... not great! Taken at face value, it's full of human rights violations! And also nothing resembling genocide.

      • I think that's part of what makes it hard to talk about. There were human rights violations, including some very strange ones. So when you throw it at the average lib and say "This isn't genocide!" they'll often shift the goal posts to arbitrary arrest and detentions without disclosure of where the detained person is being held, never pausing to consider that while that's bad, it's not at all what they asserted initially.

  • The Uyghur stuff is the lie of the decade.

    Like, consider what even is the claim they are making.

    The way it works is to take some tiny nugget of news and expand it beyond recognition into genocide.

    For example, the Chinese government made birth control free. A provision of sexual health care and the ability to conduct family planning. This became the claim that China was conducting “mass forced sterilizations.”

    Another example was China providing free meals to kids at school. Now, during Ramadan Muslims do not eat during the day but children are excluded from this and are allowed to eat. The age at which someone is expected to participate isn’t well defined and different Muslim communities adopt different standards for when someone is considered a child for the purposes of Ramadan. In Uyghur culture it is typically into the teens. So when China was providing free meals to kids at school… this was spun a campaign to assimilate Uyghurs and “cultural genocide.” Free meals to school kids is cultural genocide.

    There is a heavy handed security presence in Xinjiang related to Islamic terrorism since there has been a problem with Islamic fundamentalism intersecting with Uyghur separatism. I do have sympathy for the heavy police intervention and there has been at least some degree of racism in the way that was applied. So there are valid criticisms to be made about how China responded to the problem of Islamic extremism. But the heavy hand of the state seems to be receding as the threat of fundamentalism declines, so that is at least improving, and it needs to be contrasted with the western response to Islamic fundamentalism which was extremely violent.

    When you make that comparison then the Chinese response is exemplary, without denying the examples of racism and police violence in that response but also acknowledging those issues do not seem to have a systemic character.

    The truth of Xinjiang is that the USA and the west likes to exploit and promote ethnic conflict within adversary states. It’s called a “fifth column”. A way to weaken your enemy is to promote internal conflict.

    The USA has sought to promote ethnic conflict in China by funding Uyghur separatists, and Uyghur separatism is inextricably connected with Islamic fundamentalism.

    When you look at these “international committee to free east Turkmenistan” they are usually based in Virginia.

    The narrative of Uyghur genocide is to train a western audience to view China as another Nazi Germany because this provides a (false) moral basis for war and geostrategic conflict with china.

    Whenever you read these articles, look for the name “Adrian Zenz”. He’s a fundamentalist Christian based in Germany who doesn’t speak Chinese and hasn’t been to China or Xinjiang. He has previously claimed that God gave him a mission to destroy communist (atheist) China. As in, he described a voice talking to him and giving him this divine mission. He’s the source of about 80% of this bullshit and the BBC uncritically repeat his claims because the BBC is state-owned media.

  • Another whole angle of this I was thinking about the other day - you actually CANNOT just genocide a group of people without them responding in some way. People can tell when the atmosphere of the state they're living in is turning towards genocide against them (and a culture preparing for a genocide to the point of ordinary citizens accepting it generates a HUGE amount of propaganda, which there is obviously no evidence of in China). Before WW2 there were millions of Jewish refugees, and during it there were Jewish militias and partizans fighting back. Colonized countries rose up again and again to throw out the colonists who were exploiting and killing them. And now Israel is showing exactly what happens in the modern day if you try to annihilate an entire population: absolutely intractable guerilla warfare. Israel would love to just send in the army and gun down all 2 million people in Gaza, but they CAN'T because their army would be torn to shreds.

    So to suggest the people of Xinjiang - which shares hundreds of miles of desert-mountain borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan - would just meekly accept a million people (literally 1/20th of the population!) disappearing without fighting back using the enormous amount of weaponry and guerilla warfare expertise within a trivial distance of them, or even just trying to escape with their lives, is outright infantilizing. WW2 shows they would fight back, the history of decolonial movements shows they would fight back, Gaza shows they would fight back, and the total lack of such a violent conflict in Xinjiang shows that whatever is happening there is not a genocide.

  • Falun Gong is the Chinese equivalent of Scientology. Shen Yun, the dance show, and the Epoch Times are both arms of the church.

    It's absolutely in their interests to make up anything smearing a government that doesn't tolerate their shit.

  • You can dig into the details, but you don't need to. The holocaust has tons of physical evidence. It takes a lot of stuff to commit a genocide. For this genocide there isn't even a photo. Also, the politician most invested in the genocide accusations was Joe Biden. His only response was to cancel a diplomatic delegation going to the olympics in China. The delegation wasn't even real. These aren't the actions of someone who actually thought there was a genocide happening.

  • (not a historian)

    in pretty much every case, sources for the "uyghur genocide" trace back to zenz Adrian Zenz, a guy who can't read chinese who deliberately makes shit up to support his "holy crusade against china"

    the thing that actually happened is that China had to fight CIA-funded terrorism in Xinjiang; they did so with prison sentences and re-education instead of ultraviolence - it worked, so they stopped doing it (much to the dismay of china watchers)

    Falun Gong is banned because they are a death cult

  • I'm pretty convinced its all bullshit, but:

    Especially now more than ever: In my interactions with people on this subject I usually try to avoid framing it in the question of whether or not its true because IMO it doesn't ultimately matter.

    Even if you accept the Uyghur genocide itself as entirely true for the sake of discussion: the past few weeks should really clarify how much any and all moral outrage around it has been entirely cynical bullshit.

    -If you stand with Israel in this situation then full stop you don't actually give a shit about the lives of Muslims and you only scream about the Uyghurs because you want a cudgel to use against China.

    -If you stand with Palestine in this situation then you have what should be a clear and self evident obligation to address the genocide your own government is actively funding and facilitating before you get involved in whatever the hell a foreign government is involved in. We have absolutely no moral leg to stand on regarding the Uyghurs until then.

    • Even if you accept the Uyghur genocide itself as entirely true for the sake of discussion: the past few weeks should really clarify how much any and all moral outrage around it has been entirely cynical bullshit.

      I don't think you can casually dismiss the presence/absence of a Chinese-sponsored genocide, precisely because of the language Israelis are using when perpetuating their own genocide in Gaza. Slapping a yellow star on your chest at the UN and claiming you're the Real Victims is the modius operandi of these neoliberal ghouls. And what we saw in Xinjiang - a western-backed series of radical islamist terror bombings - is an eerie reflection of what Israel denounces Palestinians for.

      At some point, this becomes an existential question of how you approach a radicalized population. The US/Israel model in Gaza is ethnic cleansing. But that's not just in Gaza. We saw ethnic cleansing in Iraq during the civil war that happened under US occupation. And we saw it during the break-up of Yugoslavia, as western states flooded the region with agitprop and then used their own civil war as an excuse to invade. We've seen it in Eastern Ukraine, as a pretext for Russian invasion. We've seen it Indonesia and the Philippines (and before that, China and Taiwan) as Catholicism becomes the stalking horse of the western foreign policy apparatus, to divide and conquer the proletariat. Same with South America, where Catholicism becomes the thin wedge that white settler families use to separate migrants and natives. We're seeing it in Modi's India, with Hindus waging war on their Muslim neighbors. And we're seeing it split populations throughout North and East Africa, too.

      The Jewish/Muslim split in Gaza is simply the most obvious and pronounced method of divide-and-conquer hegemonic theory. And we need an antidote to that kind of destabilizing policy.

      Its possible that Chinese policymakers have a solution, and that Xinjiang has become a major testing ground for Han-Uighur coexistence. Its also possible that China is engaging in more of the same, simply transposing western strategies onto their on soil.

      But I gotta know which one is true and which one is bullshit. I can't just concede "maybe Uighur genocide bad but Western genocide worse".

      One possibility points to a real path forward. The other leaves us all back at the drawing board.

      • Your error is in trying to find a comparison between overt ethnic cleansings and pogroms and the treatment of Uyghurs in China. The propaganda line of empire is woven into this kind of thinking. Equate the unequal so that the stain can be transferred. You don't need to have a motivation to do so in order to support that line, it's inherent to asking questions in a certain way, the way we are all taught to.

        I also see tacit support for the claim of genocide early-on and then nothing to challenge it.

      • Well to be clear: my argument isn't really "Uighur genocide bad but Westen genocide worse".

        My argument is: "Uighur genocide is bad if true...but if true ultimately I don't live in China and I'm not a Chinese citizen. I am an American citizen living in America...so I should probably prioritize discussion/action regarding the Genocide my own government is an active participant in."

  • Pretty much, the organ harvesting claim in particular originally was based in the falun gong belief that(Disclaimer: This is not a bit) their spiritual practices literally made their internal organs superior in quality and impervious to disease or physical ailments(This leads into their belief that modern medicine is unnecessary and a satanic communist tool) and therefore the Communist Party harvests those organs to make their party elite live longer.

    This was later transplanted basically wholesale into the idea of "halal organs", the claim that there are muslim elites who refuse to receive organs from anyone who has not adhered to halal requirements in their lifestyle, and therefore the Communist Party are systematically harvesting organs from the Uighur muslim population to sell on the black market, presumably to the muslim nations that stand with China.

    There has as far as I have read never been any evidence to support either claim that isnt either a claim of personal experience or a "whistleblower" statement that also is exclusively a personal claim of experience, unless China also is running a whole black market supply system of immunosuppressants and other post-transplant support medical care, you would see very obvious signs such as consumption of those medical supplies being obviously higher than recorded transplants.

    The only signs like that that has been pointed to is that China has a notably short waiting list for organ transplants from what I have heard, but thats basically where the supporting evidence begins and ends, no further investigation has borne fruit.

  • Falun Gong: yes.

    Uyghur genocide: yes

    There's no need to bend over backwards to try to justify the government treatment of Uyghurs as being a genocide. It just isn't and there's no evidence that it is. The claims are paper-thin and always trace back to these things:

    • Adrian Zenz
    • Close collaborators of Adrian Zenz working in think tanks that are clearly NatSec cutouts.
    • Radio Free Asia and similar.
    • "Government in exile" NGOs funded by the NED that say the wildest shit and are clearly just a propaganda tool.
    • Literally the US NatSec ghouls

    I remember watching hexbears tie themselves in knots trying to justify this or that academic spewing absolute bullshit, like they are just itching to believe a China Bad line. Believing statements next to satellite images analyzed by a teenager and going, "yeah that checks out" or citing one Zenz-collaborating academic ghoul that has literally never been to China nor speaks any Chinese languages but appropriated the language of the left so I guess it must be legit.

    I'd also like to remind everyone that the claim of genocide magically appeared as a result of think tank ghouls that cited no new evidence and did not make any kind of case that stands up to the lightest criticism. It just got put out there in the classic style of manufacturing consent during a series of anti-China pushes. Prior to this, it had been getting called a cultural genocide, a term intended to play on the gravity of genocide while being fuzzy enough that libs who know nothing can argue about any level of ethnic discrimination fitting the bill. The claim of cultural genocide was supported by people duped into believing that salafist politics is traditional Uyghur culture (because they didn't deign to actually learn anything about Uyghurs before believing the paper-thin propaganda of empire) and that any form of ethnic oppression, any form, is cultural genocide. If you find that you or anyone else on the left is trying this hard to make excuses for the imperialist line, take a pause and ask yourself why you're doing it and whether you're asking the right questions. You are not immune to propaganda and finding a way - any way - for the imperialists to be right is its basic function in these scenarios.

    The claim of Uyghur genocide is a series of rhetorical escalations that do not match conditions on the ground and is coming from sources that any competent leftist should learn how to scrutinize and reject.

    • I started reading this comment right after reading OP's "Is there any truth to those claims or is it all" question; with you starting with two "yes", I've been frustratingly reading this comment waiting for the bad take until I realized you were answering OP's title and there was no bad take.

      To add to your answer, my go-to is often this open letter to the UN (PDF) from 51 states having freely inspected the deradicalization efforts in Xinjiang. I quote:

      We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.

      We appreciate China’s commitment to openness and transparency. China has invited a number of diplomats, international organizations officials and journalist to Xinjiang to witness the progress of the human rights cause and the outcomes of counter-terrorism and deradicalization there. What they saw and heard in Xinjiang completely contradicted what was reported in the media. We call on relevant countries to refrain from employing unfounded charges against China based on unconfirmed information before they visit Xinjiang.

      ... in the end they either realize it's bullshit or their new position becomes "China made them say that" which basically means they're arguing China can control over 50 countries including among others Algeria, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela; you know, clownery. At this point mocking them is an acceptable strategy; they won't take it well but it'll rattle them and increases the chances they'll feel embarrassed and end up trying to look it up by themselves soon after.

  • Just to tack on to what others have said, organs are incredibly delicate. They don't last long outside the body. If at all possible they move one of the patients to the same hospital as the other to make the transfer. You couldn't just have a warehouse full of organs for future use. When someone sells a kidney or something they get tested first and they sell it to a specific recipient

  • It's bullshit. Fun fact though: one of the two ghouls conducting the "investigation"that started the organ nonsense, David Matas, is usually characterized as a human rights lawyer, which shows how desperate the West is to make any of this seem more legitimate.

    Even according to NATOpedia his only ""accomplishments"" have been to try to block a UN Human Rights Council report on Israel's actions in Gaza and to prevent the extradition of a businessman responsible for a massive corrupt smuggling ring to China. Literally all he has ever done was be a Zionist stooge who does anti-Chinese propaganda as a side hustle. Well, sometimes he also does both at once lol:

    In his book "Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism", Matas accused critics of Israel's post-1967 war policies regarding the West Bank of having double standards in not also criticizing China's occupation of Tibet.

  • It’s literally just zenz, some rando dry cracker who still pushes this shit. And people still gobble it up because orientalism doesn’t need no source besides “I said so”.

  • Uyghurs and the places they live are heavily surveilled, and rather than their schools being a more organic entity the state has a pretty heavy hand in running them. Anything beyond that is just a distortion mirror.

    Practicioners of Falun Dafa are in prison or in exile or in secret, where they belong.

  • Falun Gong is a destructive cult that does gay/trans conversion therapy because they're homophobic reactionaries. The leadership should be arrested. They're young earth creationists too, they spread misinformation about vaccines. Their adherents are discouraged from seeing doctors, instead they're encouraged to do taichi instead.

    Their victims should be informed of what they're part of. The elderly people who just wanna do taichi in the park should keep doing that but without a cult involved. Falun Gong shouldn't exist.

  • It's all pigpoop but 99% of the people living in the international-community-1 international-community-2 will accept it as undisputed gospel and call you a genocide denier/CCP (or Putin) propagandist, or "you're too much into politics, sweaty". And their source is always some bullshit like Worldnews, Reuters, BBC, laowhy, Serpent, "source: i made it up", or "sinophobe but im scared to admit it you might hit me"

  • Related anecdote when i went to china as a tourist our tour guide was a Han Boomer who was really mad about affirmative action for Uyghurs

  • Yes it’s all bullshit

  • Besides everything already posted, tell me ONE religious far-right movement the US hasn't funded/supported at some point

  • The organ harvesting thing is because the Falun Gong thinks their meditations make their organs extra pure or whatever. Literally religious delusion.

  • Check out BayArea415s old stuff

    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsCaI-gsA29xVYzFI-kYWLcx2QhowNBCL&si=PsYhMmF-VytJrtY0

  • FLG is a dangerous cult similar to fundie cults in the US. Some extreme members believe they have a “law wheel” (that’s what Falun means) in their stomach and they’ve like cut each other open trying to find it. It’s banned bc cults are bad. Also I’m fairly certain they are CIA funded or something because they swan around western major cities putting on grotesque propaganda shows disguised as Chinese history spectacles

    (I don’t have sources just what I was told by Chinese relatives)

  • xi-square-up - we do not harvest organs from falun gong adherents

    brace-watching -

  • I didn't see this mentioned again but apart from all the stuff here you should know the leader got financial ties to the US since the late 90s, here is the WSJ article from 1999. I highlight the useful stuff to reduce the length so maybe read it entirely as well if you want. This is actualy a somewhat funny/wild story believe me.

    Chinese Spiritual Leader Finds American Dream in New Jersey

    Falun Dafa founder Li Hongzhi's wife got her piece of the American dream in a New Jersey suburb earlier this year, though Mr. Li says it was paid for by a follower as a gift that was later returned. The imposing 4,600-square-foot manse near Princeton University was purchased in the name of Mr. Li's wife, Li Rui, in May, just three weeks after more than 10,000 of Mr. Li's followers surrounded China's leadership compound to petition for official recognition.

    Mr. Li, who lives in the U.S., said through an intermediary that the New Jersey home was purchased for him without his knowledge by one of his most ardent followers, a lampshade manufacturer named John Sun. And Mr. Sun confirmed that he paid $580,000 for the house out of gratitude "for the great health benefit that I have obtained through practicing Falun Gong." He said the purchase was made while Mr. Li was traveling and that he had Mrs. Li sign the paperwork without telling her what it was for.

    Nonetheless, the real-estate transaction occurred when Mr. Li was battling an unprecedented national campaign by China to discredit him. While the leader of any group as large as Mr. Li's -- he claims 100 million followers world-wide while China says his following there numbers little more than two million -- would be expected to live well, Mr. Li's claim that he aims to save humanity rather than enrich himself cuts to the core of his belief system, which depends on unquestioning faith in his strange pronouncements. He teaches followers, for example, that practicing Falun Dafa will transform their bodies into "high-energy matter" at the submolecular level and allow some of them to fly, bodily, to heaven. Asians will fly to one heaven, Caucasians to another.

    Both Mr. Li and Mr. Sun said Mr. Li's wife doesn't read or speak English, and she couldn't be reached for comment. The men said Mr. Li refused the gift and has never lived in the house. Mr. Sun said the title was transferred to his name in mid-July, though county records listed Mrs. Li as the owner of the house in August. Mr. Sun said he plans to live in the house, though his wife, reached at the Suns' home in New York City's Staten Island, said she doesn't know of any New Jersey house owned by her husband.

    "Mystery Family"

    There have been extensive renovations made to the New Jersey house since May. ... In August, one of Mr. Li's closest associates was also seen at the home. Neighbors say they know nothing of the people living there. "They're the mystery family in this neighborhood," says a housewife who lives nearby.

    A Poster for Good Luck

    He moved initially to an apartment in New York City's Flushing, Queens, rented for him by a group of followers there. And in June 1998 his wife bought a residence in a quiet Queens neighborhood for $293,500, according to Queens County records. A red Chinese poster signifying good luck is pasted on the door of the blond-brick townhouse. Mr. Li acknowledges that the home is his.

    Both Mr. Li and his wife come from poor beginnings -- until Mr. Li left to begin his spiritual teaching in 1992, he and his wife each earned less than $500 a year at a state-owned grain company in northeastern China's Jilin province. By the late 1990s, though, he was drawing huge crowds to his lectures in northern China. Beijing charges that his income rocketed from there; among the documents the government has presented in its efforts to discredit the spiritual leader are handwritten accounts of one 1994 lecture series that list profits of more than $10,000.

    Mr. Li and his closest associates say those documents are fabrications and that there was hardly any profit from his China lectures after splitting revenue with the government agency that sponsored them and then paying expenses. And though Beijing alleges that Mr. Li profited even more handsomely off the sale of his books, which followers regard as their bible, he claims most of the books sold in China are pirated editions for which he received no money.

    TL;DR some wealth "benefactor/fan/follower" bought him a 500k USD mansion, but get this it wasn't in his name, it was supposed to be for the wife, but she reportedly doesn't even speak English. They can't get their story straight about it and even basic journalism shows the neighbors were well aware it was a ghost/flip property.

    But as the article explains he came from the usual poor Chinese background and in one hand repeatedly claims to make little/no money from his cult while also buying US property for 6-figures. When the CPC originally persecuted him it was in large part because of his obviously clearly amateurish and illegal financial activities.

    It is IMO quite obvious and clear the Fed/CIA connections to this story yeah? No foreigner buys 6-figure mansions in the US without the government knowing and this wasn't just any random person either, it literally happened when he was being chased by the CPC.

  • The thing about Ughyurs is that there might be cultural repression that goes on in the area. There might even be instances of abuse and violence, one of the issues with even the best theoritical bureaucracies is that you still have to delegate tasks out and have some trust it won't be misused. There might be examples of low level officials who harassed a Ughyur family unfairly or put someone in remediation who wasn't an issue. It's more about the systems and overarching structure of the program that matters more.

    This is the same logic we should be using with any nation realistically. And from what we see of Xianjang, there doesn't seem to be much actual strong evidence of systemic abuse. We don't see systemic evidence provided by the west, we don't see it in reactions by nearby nations, we don't see it by the actions of these supposed victims. So where is it beyond a bunch of claims?

  • "a ton of sources" yes, but is there actually any evidence? no. there you go.

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