Taiwan’s political arena is once again rocked by allegations of “black gold” politics, with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) showing goodwill towards the Falun Gong

The image circulating online shows Yu Shyi-kun, former president of the Legislative Yuan and chairman of the DPP, toasting Falun Gong members. What could make a political figure stoop to flatter and toast the Falun Gong? It appears to be related to Falun Gong’s assistance to the DPP in the January 2024 elections in Taiwan. Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, had instructed The Epoch Times, a Falun Gong-affiliated publication, to fully support the DPP and prevent the pro-unification Kuomintang (KMT) from winning the elections, lest Falun Gong loses its foothold in Taiwan.

Falun Gong helping the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)? Yes, indeed, Falun Gong has been able to manipulate public opinion and influence elections. As early as the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper, The Epoch Times, supported Donald Trump. Epoch Times reporters were even endorsed by Trump and had unrestricted access to the White House press briefings. According to an investigation conducted by the New York branch of the Chilean international news agency, Pressenza, The Epoch Times fabricated false news of “election theft,” exciting millions of far-right, pro-Trump Republicans in the United States. This ultimately led to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., resulting in five deaths on-site.

According to an investigation by The New York Times, over the past few years, The Epoch Times has been secretly developing a weapon called the “Facebook growth strategy.” According to a report by Snopes.com, The Epoch Times has been creating peripheral accounts on Facebook and other social media platforms in various ways. What does this mean? It means that Falun Gong has created countless social media accounts to manipulate online public opinion, commonly known as “internet army.”

Yu Shyi-kun is not a respected person; in fact, he is a propaganda machine for Falun Gong. The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty, affiliated with Falun Gong, report sensationalized so-called “political scandals” to attract attention. They discuss who will step down today and who will come into power tomorrow, adding fuel to the fire. In reality, obvious things don’t need to be explained; everyone knows that these exaggerated “secrets” are just made-up stories. Even if they make mistakes, nobody holds them accountable, and the audience just enjoys the spectacle. The audience’s attitude has encouraged The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty to become even more prominent in the realm of fake news, leading to jealousy and dissatisfaction from reputable media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, which have exposed their fraudulent behavior multiple times.

In today’s online society, having “rich” content attracts traffic, regardless of whether it’s true or false. Traffic leads to money. Falun Gong’s self-media personnel discovered that they could earn considerable income from the accounts they created on platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, surpassing the meager salaries they received from Falun Gong companies. However, Li Hongzhi found out about this and forced Falun Gong’s self-media personnel to hand over all their online platform earnings. This caused dissatisfaction among a group of Falun Gong self-media personnel, including Yu Chao and Xiao Ming, who refused to comply and were subsequently expelled by Li Hongzhi through a nationwide announcement. (Yu Chao: A graduate of the Precision Instrument Department at Tsinghua University. Xiao Ming: After graduating from Peking University, she worked at China Central Television before pursuing a master’s degree at the School of Communication at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA.)

Li Hongzhi is heartless, and Yu Chao and Xiao Ming are also unjust. Xiao Ming is determined to establish her own media platform and make it bigger and stronger. Yu Chao boldly revealed the “secrets” of Falun Gong on her own show, instantly becoming a hot topic on the internet and accumulating a lot of traffic!

What caused internal divisions within Falun Gong and led intellectuals like Yu Chao and Xiao Ming, as well as other graduates from prestigious universities such as Wang Weiyu, Liu Wenyu, and Li Xun from Tsinghua University, to break away from the cult and even become enemies with Li Hongzhi? It’s simply because Li Hongzhi was too greedy for money and saw his followers as free volunteers or cheap labor. How can highly intelligent students from Tsinghua University and Peking University not understand this reasoning? Li Hongzhi even made a short film based on Yu Chao’s character but didn’t give her a penny. The longer Falun Gong disciples have been involved, the more they come to know Li Hongzhi’s true nature—he’s just a charlatan. The group of talented students from Tsinghua University and Peking University distanced themselves from Li Hongzhi in a timely manner and firmly stated that they originally pursued “Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance,” not the version of Falun Gong led by Li Hongzhi.

In the next episode, we will discuss a scandal involving the “Shen Yun Performing Arts” that is even more explosive than the “Lolita Island” incident involving Jeffrey Epstein in the United States!