I recently read Jerry Grey’s 8 March 2025 article and I was disappointed by the false and misleading statements made. I would like to participate in the exchange of ideas in a way that, I hope, will better inform your readers.

Readers and subscribers of Pearls and Irritations trust that contributors are experienced analysts, but I don’t get that feeling after reading this article.

Grey doesn’t understand why the United States Government would support Falun Gong because he believes the Chinese Communist Party’s lies about the spiritual practice. If he’s been living in China for nearly two decades, he probably doesn’t have access to uncensored information. He either doesn’t know, or he doesn’t want your readers to know, about forced organ harvesting and that doctors in dozens of hospitals throughout China have admitted in recorded phone conversations that they have organs available specifically from people who practice Falun Gong. That, and dozens more pieces of evidence can be found in Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs, by David Kilgour and David Matas.

He probably has not read, or doesn’t want your readers to read, Ethan Gutmann’s work. Gutmann is an investigative journalist who wrote The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, and who spent years interviewing people who belong to Falun Gong.

In late February and early March 2025, representatives from both the US Senate and the House of Representatives introduced the Falun Gong Protection Act which, if it becomes a law, would hold perpetrators of forced organ harvesting in China accountable.

Speaking up for victims of human rights abuse is a good thing, but for decades the CCP has labelled those who do as being “anti-China” forces. And that’s what Grey surmises, too, when he says, “It clearly pays to be anti-China.” He clearly misses, or he chooses to overlook, the fact that the CCP for the past 25 years has violently persecuted people who belong to Falun Gong. And it’s not a small group; there were over 70 million people before the persecution began.

Grey fails to mention the crime of forced organ harvesting perpetrated by the CCP against Falun Gong practitioners.

Falun Gong is banned in China, and Grey tries to justify it by repeating the same lies the CCP uses: Falun Gong prohibits people from receiving hospital treatment, it’s against mixed races, and doesn’t tolerate other religions. Each allegation is false.

Falun Gong doesn’t prevent people from receiving hospital treatment. I personally knew the man Grey called “Narnia” in his article (His actual name was John Nania.), and I know he sought hospital treatment. I know many people who practice Falun Gong who received medical treatment. Also, regarding mixed races, many people who practise Falun Gong are part of mixed race families. Why would they marry people of different races if they believed what the CCP alleges? Finally, how could Grey claim Falun Gong is against other religions when The Epoch Times just produced an inspiring film for a Christian audience called The Firing Squad?

While we’re on the topic of The Epoch Times, Grey attempts to discredit a substantial piece of news – that Chinese President Xi Jinping held a secret meeting in October 2022 during which he instructed officials to find “more creative ways” to suppress Falun Gong globally.

Grey claims The Epoch Times didn’t reveal its source for this leaked information, but that’s not true. Its source is a renowned Chinese dissident and legal scholar living in exile in Australia named Yuan Hongbing, who based the allegation on two sources – an individual who is part of a veteran CCP family that now opposes Xi, and a CCP insider who is concerned about human rights abuses.

Again, Grey is living in China, so it’s possible he doesn’t have access to uncensored information. Perhaps he doesn’t know about Yuan Hongbing because the CCP wishes nobody knew about such a dissident.

One of the most interesting phenomena in China is the “Quit the Chinese Communist Party and Its Affiliated Organisations” ( Tuidang) movement, which has been operating since 2005. It claims nearly 450 million Chinese have renounced their affiliation with the CCP, the Communist Youth League, or the Young Pioneers.

Grey tries to refute the Tuidang movement by citing the Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed thousands of people from 28 countries and found “satisfaction in governance is over 90%” in China.

If you read the Edelman Trust Barometer report, however, you’ll notice that countries with the highest rate of satisfaction with their government — China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and India — also rank among the worst in press freedoms based on Reporters Without Borders’ 2024 global ranking.

Finally, the primary strategy the CCP uses to justify its brutal treatment of people who practise Falun Gong is by labelling it a cult. Ian Johnson, a former journalist for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Falun Gong, and he also wrote a book called Wild Grass in which he explains that Falun Gong doesn’t fit the definition of a cult: “Its members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the world’s end is imminent and do not give significant amounts of money to the organisation. Most importantly, suicide is not accepted, nor is physical violence.”

If Grey is living in China, I’d imagine he doesn’t have access to much of the information cited above. If he travels to Australia or elsewhere and he can access uncensored news, I hope he can conduct more thorough research.