By Xiao Ran, Vision Times
As tensions between Washington and Beijing deepen, religion and human rights have once again come into the limelight. At the China Forum and on American Thought Leaders held in Washington, D.C., former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) systematic persecution of Falun Gong, its transnational campaign against Shen Yun Performing Arts, and the far-reaching impact of the Tuidang (“Quit the CCP”) movement.
“The CCP is fighting against faith — and it will lose,” said Brownback during the event. He warned that the regime’s genocide against Falun Gong practitioners and its cross-border suppression of Shen Yun reveal the Party’s deep fear of China’s traditional culture and the people’s spiritual resilience.
Brownback urged the U.S. to publicly support Falun Gong, promote Shen Yun, and back the Tuidang movement as part of a national strategy to advance global religious freedom and counter authoritarianism.
RELATED: Brownback Calls on White House to Meet Falun Gong Founder, Citing CCP’s ‘War on Faith’
What the CCP fears most
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Brownback described Falun Gong as the most brutally persecuted faith group in China — and said the campaign against it constitutes genocide. He revealed that Beijing has spent billions to crush religious communities, particularly Falun Gong practitioners, reflecting the regime’s fear of any belief system rooted in higher moral authority.
“Falun Gong is the most persecuted of all religious groups,” he said, adding, “They face open and radical attacks, including forced organ harvesting, which is simply shocking.”
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a peaceful meditation discipline rooted in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. By 1999, Falun Gong’s popularity — estimated at 70 to 100 million practitioners — had exceeded the number of CCP members, sparking fear among Party leadership and prompting then-leader Jiang Zemin to launch a brutal campaign to suppress and eradicate the practice from China. The persecution has continued unbated for over two decades.
Brownback emphasized that the CCP’s fear stems from its recognition that believers answer to a moral power greater than the state — a principle fundamentally at odds with totalitarian loyalty to the Party. He went on to detail China’s $9 billion organ-harvesting industry, describing it as “evil” and built largely on the organs of prisoners of conscience, especially Falun Gong practitioners.
“The only way you get an organ on demand,” he explained, “is by killing someone — and that person is likely a religious believer or a dissident.” He also noted that some senior CCP officials have been heard discussing organ transplants as a means of achieving “longevity” or “immortality.”
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Brownback cited the testimony of researcher Ethan Gutmann and activist Enver Tohti, noting how the Party’s elites — the so-called Red Card holders — have access to organs “on demand,” something more tempting than wealth itself. “What kind of leadership views its own people this way,” he asked, “except an evil one?”
He noted that the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong represents one of the “most extensive crimes against humanity” in modern history.
A beacon of light
Brownback also spoke about Shen Yun Performing Arts — a U.S.-based classical Chinese dance company founded by Falun Gong practitioners that has become a primary target of the CCP’s overseas repression. Founded in 2006 and based in upstate New York, Shen Yun Performing Arts aims to revive 5,000 years of traditional culture and values through immersive performances that showcase China’s heritage prior to the ravages of communism.
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The company currently has eight troupes that tour and perform across the globe simultaneously, debuting a brand new production every year. Having attended a Shen Yun performance at Washington’s Kennedy Center in 2023, Brownback praised it as “beautiful, elegant, and deeply moving.”
“It tells an incredibly touching story,” he said, “especially the scenes depicting the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in today’s China.” The performance, he said, moved him to tears. Brownback called Shen Yun a “great cultural experience” that distinguishes traditional Chinese civilization from communist ideology: “Shen Yun represents the China that existed before the Communist Party — it reveals how the CCP is an outsider to China’s own 5,000-year civilization.”
He added that the Party’s hostility toward Shen Yun stems from fear — fear of the moral and spiritual strength embedded in traditional Chinese culture. Brownback described how Beijing deploys legal, diplomatic, and covert means to obstruct Shen Yun’s global tours, from sending drones to harass training facilities to filing nuisance lawsuits in Western courts.
RELATED: Communist China Ramps Up Efforts to Intimidate Shen Yun With Sabotage, Unhinged Threats of Violence
“The CCP exploits the openness of Western legal systems to attack a troupe whose only goal is to share the beauty of traditional Chinese culture,” he said, adding that Shen Yun’s success is more than artistic; it’s spiritual resistance against authoritarian control. “Shen Yun reminds people that the Chinese value spiritual cultivation. That alone threatens a regime that demands loyalty only to itself,” he noted.
The Tuidang movement
Brownback also praised the Tuidang (Quit the CCP) movement, a grassroots campaign led largely by Falun Gong practitioners encouraging Chinese citizens to renounce their ties to the Communist Party, its Youth League, and the Young Pioneers.
RELATED: Outcry Over Yu Menglong’s Death Spurs Mass CCP Withdrawals
Since its launch in 2004 following the publication of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, more than 450 million Chinese people have reportedly withdrawn from the CCP and its affiliates. “I hope we can tell this story more often,” Brownback said, describing the movement as “a quiet revolution inside China.”
He commended Falun Gong practitioners who, despite immense danger, continue to speak face-to-face with people in China about the truth of the persecution. “Their courage and persistence are extraordinary,” he said.
Brownback called the movement proof that moral awakening within China is growing — and that truth remains the most powerful weapon against tyranny. He urged Washington to invest in technologies that help Chinese citizens break through the Great Firewall, ensuring access to uncensored information.
“Once truth spreads,” he said, “the awakening of the Chinese people will be unstoppable.”
Why America must act
“The CCP is fighting against faith — and it will lose,” Brownback declared at the China Forum. He said religious freedom should no longer be viewed merely as a human rights issue, but as a core national security priority.
“For China, religious freedom threatens the survival of the Communist Party,” he said. “For America, it’s the foundation of our national identity. Undermining it threatens our own survival.” He called on the U.S. government and citizens to take concrete steps, including:
- Meet with Falun Gong founder Mr. Li Hongzhi and publicly support the right of Falun Gong practitioners to believe freely.
- Promote Shen Yun by inviting the company to perform and by condemning the CCP’s transnational suppression.
- Support the Tuidang movement through technology and information freedom initiatives.
- Elevate religious freedom as a top-tier national security concern.
“Religious freedom is the most powerful tool we have,” he said. “It represents who we are.”
Brownback repeatedly invoked the example of President Ronald Reagan and his moral clarity during the Cold War. “Reagan spoke plainly to America and the free world about who we were up against,” Brownback said. He argued that the same moral clarity is needed today in confronting the CCP.
“You don’t negotiate with evil,” he said. “You drive it out.”
For Brownback, exposing Beijing’s crimes against Falun Gong and Shen Yun is not only a defense of human rights — it’s a defense of global freedom itself.
A glimmer of hope
Brownback pointed to a growing wave of U.S. congressional action as evidence that change is possible. Since 1999, Congress has passed multiple resolutions condemning the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong — from H.Con.Res.218 in 1999 to the 2025 Falun Gong Protection Act (H.R.1540 / S.817) now moving through the Senate.
These measures, evolving from symbolic resolutions to binding sanctions, demonstrate what Brownback called “the awakening of conscience in the free world.”
Brownback expressed optimism that change is possible, saying that the success of the Tuidang movement and Shen Yun’s global influence show that “hope remains alive.”
