Epoch Times Special Edition about CCP Virus 2020.4

IAL EC P S

MARCH/APRIL 2020

TRUTH AND TRADITION GREG BAKER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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CCP Virus Special Report

How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World

How China’s Coverup Led to a Global Pandemic

China’s Attempt to Shift Blame for Virus to US

STORY ON 3

STORY ON 4 JANE BARLOW - WPA POOL/GETTY IMAGES

The Chinese Communist Party’s coverup led to a pandemic that now threatens the lives of people around the globe.

What really happened, and what lessons can we learn?

READ MORE INSIDE

The Mysterious Origins of the CCP Virus

Telling Chinese People the Truth About the CCP

STORY ON 6

STORY ON 9

MEHDI BOLOURIAN/FARS NEWS AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

NOEL CELIS/GETTY IMAGES

Where Ties With Communist China Are Close, the CCP Virus Follows

21 Million Fewer Cellphone Users in China May Suggest a High Death Toll

STORY ON 8

STORY ON 10

TRUTH and TRADITION

LIES KILL, TRUTH SAVES

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY HAS BEEN ENDANGERING THE WORLD. The coverup by the Chinese Communist Party led to a pandemic that now threatens the lives of people around the globe.

See through the deception, and keep yourself and your family truly informed.

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March/April 2020 | SPECIAL EDITION

Publisher’s Note

Stephen Gregory, Publisher Jasper Fakkert, Editor-in-Chief Annie Wu, China Editor Channaly Philipp, Life & Tradition, Travel Editor Chrisy Trudeau, Mind & Body Editor Crystal Shi, Food Editor Sharon Kilarski, Arts & Tradition Editor ABOUT US

The Epoch Times is a media organization dedicated to seeking the truth through insightful and independent journalism.

Standing outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, our starting point and our goal is to create a media for the public benefit, to be truly responsible to society.

We endeavor to educate readers about today’s most important topics, seeking to broaden and uplift minds. We believe that rational, balanced debate is key for fostering a healthy democracy and a compassionate society.

As an independent media outlet, we use our freedom to investigate issues overlooked—or avoided—by other media outlets.

We seek to highlight solutions and what’s good in society rather than what divides us.

We report respectfully, compassionately, and rigorously.

STEPHEN GREGORY

I

hope this finds you and your loved ones well.

We live in challenging times, and this special edition is meant to explain why we find ourselves facing difficulty.

Daily life in the United States and countries around the world has been upended, as governments seek to stop the spread of the CCP virus (see below, “Giving the Right Name to the Virus Causing a Worldwide Pandemic”). The virus is highly transmissible, and no one knows how deadly it may be here in the United States. The experience of China, which has experienced a death toll far higher than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has admitted, is highly concerning.

Businesses have been shuttered and large numbers thrown out of work with almost no notice. While the federal government is scrambling to provide aid, many households are suddenly facing economic uncertainty, if not hardship.

Some of the small businesses that have closed may not be able to reopen. With the stock market responding to the virus with a devastating crash, ordinary households have seen retirement savings threatened.

These are times that test us. In normal times, we may tend to focus on the day to day. In abnormal times such as these, we may find our thoughts turning to what is fundamental.

Ultimately, character counts; morality counts. If our encounter with

Stephen Gregory Publisher

We stand against the destruction wrought by communism, including the harm done to cultures around the world.

We are inspired in this by our own experience. The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 to bring honest and uncensored news to people oppressed by the lies and violence in communist China.

We still believe journalism is a noble vocation, but only when it genuinely seeks to serve its communities and help them to flourish. In all that we do, we will hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity. This is our promise to you.

CONTACT US Epoch Times Inc. 229 W. 28th St., Fl. 7 New York, NY 10001 212-239-2808 Advertising advertise@epochtimes.nyc Subscriptions subscribe@epochtimes.com General Inquiries inquiries@epochtimes.com Letters to the Editor lettertoeditor@epochtimes.com

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the CCP virus pushes us to look inside and ask how we can become better people, then perhaps we will have found a blessing in this chaos.

The immorality of the Chinese regime helps explain the fundamental reason we must deal with a pandemic.

If the CCP had shown compassion for the people it rules and if it had acted honestly and openly, much of China, and the world, could have been spared this calamity.

A study by the University of Southampton finds that if “non-pharmaceutical interventions—such as early detection, isolation of cases, travel restrictions and cordon sanitaire ... could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier, cases could have been reduced by 66 percent, 86 percent and 95 percent, respectively—significantly limiting the geographical spread of the disease.”

In fact, the CCP, out of concern for its power, censored knowledge of this new, highly transmissible, SARS-like illness for six weeks, allowing millions to travel out of the epicenter in Wuhan to the rest of China, and from there to the rest of the world.

Now, the CCP is waging a propaganda campaign to claim it is a model for fighting the disease, which, it now says, originated in the United States.

This special edition sets the record straight. If the world understands why the CCP virus has wreaked such havoc, then it will understand the need to reject the CCP and its contagion of lies and selfishness, and lust for power.

EDITORIAL

Giving the Right Name to the Virus Causing a Worldwide Pandemic CHUNG SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES

EDITORIAL BOARD

There has been controversy recently about what to call the virus that has unleashed a worldwide pandemic. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prefers “novel coronavirus.”

Others have referred to it as the “Wuhan virus,” after its place of origin, as is common in naming diseases.

The Epoch Times suggests a more accurate name is the “CCP virus,” and calls upon others to join us in adopting this name.

The name holds the CCP accountable for its wanton disregard of human life and consequent spawning of a pandemic that has put untold numbers in countries around the world at risk, while creating widespread fear and devastating the economies of nations trying to cope with this disease.

After all, CCP officials knew in early December that the virus had appeared in Wuhan, but they sat on the information for six weeks. They arrested those who tried to warn of the danger, accusing them of spreading “rumors,” and employed the regime’s rigorous censorship to prevent media coverage and to delete any mentions of it from social media.

What might have been contained was allowed silently to spread, showing up in all of China. Individuals who might have protected themselves became victims, in numbers far greater than the CCP has admitted. By late January, there

TRUTH and TRADITION

Medical staff move a patient infected with the CCP virus from an ambulance to a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, on March 9, 2020.

were reports that all of the crematoria in Wuhan were operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to deal with the crush of dead bodies.

Meanwhile, the measures taken to quarantine and treat the population of Wuhan were grotesquely inhumane. Apartment buildings were welded shut. Temporary “hospitals” were created that actually served as jails for those believed to be sick with the virus.

Locked into these places with no medical treatment and little food, the unfortunates were trapped there until death.

In lying about the danger facing China, the CCP was acting according to its usual script.

The CCP’s dominant narrative is that the Party is “great, glorious, and correct.” The presence of the deadly CCP virus in Wuhan, or, in 2003, of the SARS

virus, doesn’t fit the script. As with SARS, the first response was denial.

But in dealing with this virus, denial is not acceptable. The world needs to know its origin, and the CCP has refused to cooperate. Outside experts have not been allowed into Wuhan.

And there is understandable concern about the activities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s only P4 lab, one meant for working with easily transmitted pathogens that can cause fatal illness. As the official narratives offered for the source of the virus have been disproven, questions have been raised about whether the CCP virus leaked from the institute.

In any case, as questions about the origin of the virus have gone unanswered, the CCP has begun throwing out wild charges that the United

States is responsible. This will be met around the world with perplexity, if not ridicule. President Donald Trump has pushed back by referring to the “Chinese virus.”

But the CCP likely intends these charges of U.S. responsibility for its domestic audience. The CCP has victimized the Chinese people in its first denial of the virus and now seeks to victimize them again by shifting responsibility for its actions to others.

And this points out why the name “CCP virus” is needed, to distinguish the victims from the victimizer. The people of Wuhan and of China are the victims of the CCP’s arrogance and incompetence, expressed in this viral pandemic.

The name CCP virus also sounds a warning: Those nations and individuals close to the CCP are the ones suffering the worst effects from this virus, as is seen in the raging infections in the CCP’s close ally Iran and in Italy, the only G-7 nation to sign onto the Belt and Road Initiative. Taiwan and Hong Kong, which have rejected the CCP—Taiwan in a recent landslide national election and Hong Kong in months of massive demonstrations—have had relatively few infections.

Finally, the CCP virus reminds the people of the world that the source of the virus is itself evil. This is a communist virus, and with the name CCP virus, The Epoch Times reminds the world of the cure: ending the CCP.

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SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

An official in a protective suit checks on an elderly man who collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan on Jan. 30, 2020.

How China’s Coverup Led to a Global Pandemic NICOLE HAO

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he global pandemic now ravaging the world—disrupting everyday life, overwhelming hospital systems, and killing thousands—began as a small outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

When 27 people were hospitalized with a mysterious pneumonia in early December 2019, eight doctors tried to warn their colleagues on social media.

When the online posts went viral, they were deleted by censors. Then, local police summoned the doctors for a verbal warning, requiring that they sign a statement promising not to engage in any more “rumormongering.”

Thus began the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coverup of one of the most deadly outbreaks in recent history.

Revelations from recent medical studies, media investigations, and Chinese government officials themselves illustrate how the Chinese Communist Party’s deceit and mismanagement allowed the disease to spread, first across the country, then outside its borders to more than 185 countries and territories.

Authorities failed to disclose to Chinese citizens the severity of the outbreak, choosing to keep silent until it was too late to contain the virus.

A recent study published in Science magazine examined data from 375 Chinese cities, and estimated that 86 percent of all infections in Wuhan were left undocumented prior to travel restrictions and lockdown measures enacted by local authorities on Jan. 23. This contributed to the virus’s quick global spread, the scientists concluded.

Initial Response In its initial report confirming the presence of a new virus outbreak, the Wuhan health commission originally stated that the first patient exhibited symptoms on Dec. 12, 2019. The commission later revised the date to Dec. 8, without explanation. But a study based on data from Wuhan hospitals published in The Lancet medical journal revealed that the first patient presented symptoms on Dec. 1.

The Wuhan health commission didn’t reveal the outbreak to the public until Dec. 31.

Meanwhile, authorities downplayed the threat of the virus.

Wang Guangfa, one of China’s top respiratory specialists within China’s National Health Commission, assured the public that the disease could be contained, in a Jan. 10 interview with the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily.

Most Wuhan residents were unaware of the perils and went about their daily lives.

“I suspected the virus was very severe but the government said it wouldn’t be transmitted between people, so I enjoyed my normal life at the time,” Wuhan resident Wei told The Epoch Times. “I went to a bar on the evening of Jan. 18. Since then, I have had symptoms [of the virus].”

Lack of Precautions The Wuhan government did business

I suspected the virus was very severe but the government said it wouldn’t be transmitted between people, so I enjoyed my normal life at the time.

Ms. Wei, Wuhan resident

Since the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese regime underreported infection and death toll figures.

A banquet attended by more than 40,000 families to celebrate the Chinese New Year is held in the Baibuting community of Wuhan on Jan. 18, 2020.

as usual.

The city didn’t screen passengers and check body temperatures at airports, railway stations, intercity coach stations, and maritime passenger terminals until Jan. 14.

The city also allowed large-scale gatherings to go on. The Baibuting residential compound in Jiang’an district organized a large-scale dinner in advance of the Lunar New Year on Jan. 18, with more than 40,000 families participating.

From the photos shared by the local government and netizens who attended, nobody wore a protective mask at the event. People shared the dishes family-style, using their chopsticks to pick up food from the same plates.

Baibuting residents later told The Epoch Times that scores of people contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, after attending the banquet.

Resident Mr. Wu said that three of his family members were quarantined in a hotel after showing symptoms. He also had symptoms of the virus, but his health recovered.

“The outbreak [in my neighborhood] is very severe. Lots of people died,” Wu said.

In preparation for Lunar New Year festivities, many Chinese, unaware of the virus’s contagiousness, traveled across the country or abroad to spend time with their families.

The city mayor revealed that in the period before the Jan. 23 lockdown, 5 million residents had left Wuhan.

Laurie Garrett, an expert on epidemics and former Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist known for her coverage of the 1995 Ebola outbreak, believes Chinese authorities had the chance to contain the spread in the first week of January.

Had Chinese authorities been more transparent and taken swift action with no attempt to conceal the outbreak, it “could have been controlled fairly easily,” she told The Epoch Times in an interview in late January.

By the time the Chinese regime enacted lockdown measures in Wuhan, it was already too late, she said. “By the time it’s a few hundred cases, you lost—it’s over. You’re now dealing with an epidemic and your whole strategy of outbreak control has been defeated, and it’s defeated because of your own ... unwillingness to take seriously the first seemingly very small number of cases,” she explained in a February interview.

Human Transmission Chinese authorities initially denied that the disease could be transmitted between humans.

The World Health Organization (WHO), citing Chinese research, stated on Jan. 14 that there was “no clear evidence” of human-to-human transmission.

Genetic Sequencing Mapping out a virus’s genetic makeup is critical for researchers to understand the pathogen’s traits.

Chinese media Caixin published a Feb. 26 expose detailing how authorities hid information about the virus from the public. After interviewing researchers at three of China’s top gene-sequencing companies, Vision Medicals based in Guangzhou city, Beijing’s CapitalBio MedLab, and the Beijing Genomics Institute, Caixin reported that all three companies received samples of the virus and mapped out its genetic sequence in December.

The companies reported the results to China’s National Health Commission and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

It wasn’t until Jan. 9 that the Chinese regime announced that sequencing was complete.

It took another three days for the Chinese regime to share the genetic data with the WHO and make it public to researchers around the world.

Coverup Since the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese regime underreported infection and death toll figures.

In mid-January, Wuhan authorities reported just 41 cases as Thailand and Japan reported their first cases of infections—from people who had

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LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

Days later, on Jan. 20, the Chinese regime finally admitted that the virus was contagious.

But authorities knew of the virus’s potential to spread much earlier.

In December, a woman who had never visited the Wuhan food market—which authorities initially linked to the outbreak—was diagnosed with the disease after her husband, who worked at the market, contracted the virus.

The husband, who died on Jan. 9, was China’s first confirmed death related to the virus.

In early January, health authorities in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen also knew of a family who quickly infected each other.

Zhang Jing, a Shenzhen resident, visited Wuhan with her parents, husband, and two children at the end of December. On Jan. 3, the family returned to Shenzhen.

On Jan. 10, Zhang’s parents visited a local hospital after having a fever.

Soon after, they were diagnosed with COVID-19. Zhang, her husband, and her son were later diagnosed as well.

Zhang’s mother-in-law, who had never left Shenzhen, also started to exhibit symptoms on Jan. 14.

Garrett, the health policy analyst, said that such a “coverup has put the people of China at risk and put the whole world at risk.”

She added that the Chinese regime similarly covered up the 2002–2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak. As the initial infections coincided with the timing of the CCP’s leadership transition, the Party wanted to assure that “nothing shall rock the boat,” she said.

The Chinese regime did not share key information about SARS with the WHO until April, after Hu Jintao was appointed Party leader during a March meeting of the Party’s rubberstamp legislature.

CCPVirusTruth.com

traveled to Wuhan.

The number of infections in Wuhan, meanwhile, stayed unchanged between Jan. 12 and 16.

Researchers at the time analyzed that given the number of foreign cases at the time, Wuhan infections would be substantially higher than officially reported.

The Epoch Times also obtained internal documents from different local governments in China, revealing how they covered up data.

In Shandong Province, the local CDC kept an internal tally of the number of samples that tested positive for the virus during nucleic acid testing.

In February, the daily number of samples that tested positive was consistently lower than the officially reported number of cases published by China’s National Health Commission.

In Liaoning Province—in the country’s northeastern region, thousands of miles away from the virus epicenter—authorities instructed their city governments to destroy documents and data related to the outbreak.

Officials were also required to sign letters promising that they would delete relevant documents from their personal devices and pledge to not share the contents of the documents with any party.

The Epoch Times also interviewed staff at funeral homes in Wuhan, who revealed that their intake had skyrocketed since the outbreak began; some were working around the clock in order to cremate the bodies coming from local hospitals and private homes.

Most recently, The Epoch Times obtained internal data from the Wuhan health commission showing that on March 14, the city found 91 new samples that tested positive during nucleic acid testing. In Wuhan, samples are only taken from a throat swab. Thus, these 91 samples can be understood as 91 new patients.

That day, Chinese authorities reported just four new cases in Wuhan.

Some officials also publicly revealed how Party politics stymied their initial responses to the outbreak.

During a Jan. 28 press conference, the Party boss of Wuhan, Ma Guoqiang, said the central government didn’t allow the Hubei CDC to diagnose the disease until Jan. 16; previously, patients’ samples had to be sent to Beijing for testing. Even then, the Hubei CDC only had enough capacity to run about 300 tests per day, he said.

Similarly, Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang blamed his superiors for mismanaging the crisis.

During a news program that aired on state broadcaster CCTV on Jan. 27, Zhou said the central government made the decision to withhold information about the outbreak.

“Disclosures about the outbreak were not timely. ... As the leader of a local government, I could only publish information after I received permission from the authorities [central government],” Zhou said.

In a recent press briefing, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the Chinese regime for failing to share prompt information about the virus.

“The world is paying a very big price for what they did,” he said. “It could have been stopped right where it came from, China.”

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March/April 2020 | SPECIAL EDITION

Medical information is seen on a window in a ward treating CCP virus patients at a hospital in Wuhan, China, on March 19, 2020.

CCP Attempts to Shift Blame for Chinese communist regime launches global disinformation campaign BOWEN XIAO

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sprawling and aggressive disinformation campaign unleashed globally by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), sparked by a motley mix of internal failures, aims to upend the narrative over the pandemic—and it’s happening in real time.

The propaganda push, which has escalated in recent weeks, aims primarily to deflect blame over the Chinese regime’s botched handling of the CCP virus, sow discord internationally, and portray the image that the regime has contained the outbreak.

Former U.S. government officials, China experts, and national security consultants told The Epoch Times that the disinformation campaign points to a bigger issue—Beijing’s global aspirations.

The campaign has helped stir anger from Chinese citizens away from the regime and toward the United States, which has increasingly been a target of its propaganda.

And some in the United States are buying it.

“Deception, disinformation, manipulation, distortion of the facts, obscuring their true intentions, and the patient steady erosion of the will to resist on the part of others is something that very much feeds into the global ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party to dominate the world,” Frank Gaffney, former assistant secretary of defense for international security policy during the Reagan administration, told The Epoch Times.

“It’s just one manifestation of it, but it’s a particularly insidious one, and it’s one that we ought to be alive to now,” said Gaffney, who is the executive chairman of the Center for Security Policy.

“Because, in some ways, it’s the leading edge of the larger, longerterm, and even more dangerous effort they [China] are mounting.”

Internal government documents

KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

Another narrative gaining traction in U.S. media holds that using the term ‘Wuhan virus’ is racist, despite that the Chinese staterun media have used the term themselves.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

Two persons wearing protective masks and suits arrive at Beijing Railway Station on March 13, 2020.

obtained by The Epoch Times have highlighted how the regime purposefully underreported cases of the CCP virus and censored discussions of the outbreak, helping to fuel the spread of the disease, which is now confirmed to have infected more than 240,000 people internationally.

Chinese officials and state-run media have amplified conspiracy theories on social media platforms such as Twitter, most recently pushing claims that the origin of the virus isn’t clear, or came from the U.S. military, or that the CCP’s containment efforts bought time for the rest of the world to prepare.

State-run Chinese outlets, many of which have an English-language website, have pushed these theories almost daily, with some articles even threatening the United States directly, as seen in a March 17 editorial in Xinhua, which stated, “The U.S. side should immediately correct its wrongful behaviors ... before it is too late.”

CCPVirusTruth.com

Although Chinese citizens are blocked from using Twitter, bots have been swarming the platform to defend the communist regime, attack the United States, and parrot propaganda narratives. A Twitter spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether the company is aware of the bots and if it has any plans to remove them.

Another narrative gaining traction in U.S. media holds that calling the pathogen “the Wuhan virus” is racist, despite the fact that Chinese state-run media have used the term themselves, as seen in Xinhua, the Global Times, and elsewhere. Previous diseases such as Ebola, Zika, the West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and the Spanish flu are all named after the location where the virus emerged.

Joseph Bosco, a former China country desk officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (2005– 2006), told The Epoch Times the aim of the regime’s sprawling dis-

information campaign is to “shift blame and escape responsibility for its gross negligence and lack of cooperation with international health organizations.”

Bosco, a national security consultant and a fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies, said there’s an underlying reason why the United States was specifically targeted.

“Communist China sees the U.S. as the main obstacle to its aggressive global ambitions,” he said. “It seeks to enhance the CCP’s credibility and legitimacy, and to delegitimize the U.S. and the West.”

The United States can combat the disinformation push “by fighting CCP lies with the truth,” Bosco said.

He said the administration should “demand and impose reciprocity on all aspects of U.S.–China relations,” as President Donald Trump has mentioned before.

The disinformation campaign hasn’t gone unnoticed. In recent days, Trump administration of-

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SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020 STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

COMMENTARY

Time Has Come to Remove the Cancer of the CCP DIANA ZHANG

Internal documents reveal that the regime purposefully underreported cases of the CCP virus and censored discussions of the outbreak, helping to fuel the spread of the disease.

Virus to US ficials and U.S. politicians have spoken out against China’s recent propaganda push. At a March 17 briefing, Trump said: “China was putting out information which was false, that our military gave this [virus] to them. That was false, and rather than having an argument, I have to call it where it came from.

It did come from China.”

Bonnie Glaser, a former consultant for the departments of Defense and State, said Beijing seeks to protect the portrayal of its country internationally, as well as internally.

She noted that there already several legal cases that Americans are filing against China, including The Berman Law Group, which recently filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Chinese regime for causing the pandemic.

“It will harm China’s global image if Beijing is blamed for mismanaging the epidemic early on and allowing it to affect the rest of the world,” Glaser told The Epoch Times via email. Glaser is a senior adviser for Asia and director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“China seeks to be seen as a responsible global player that can contribute effectively to addressing global problems,” she said. “By demonstrating the effectiveness of China’s domestic governance system, Beijing can advance its goal of leading global governance reform and promote the Chinese model as an option for developing countries to copy.”

If the regime successfully portrays itself handing the crisis effectively, “the CCP can further undermine the appeal of democracy and capitalism around the world.”

Internally, China is actively pushing its propaganda about the virus on its own citizens. U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien, during a speech at Washington-based think tank Heritage Foundation on March 11, said the regime had initially attempted to censor doc-

tors who tried to speak about the outbreak, “so that word of this virus could not get out.”

“It probably cost the world community two months to respond,” O’Brien said.

In recent weeks, China has also pushed the narrative of a declining number of infections, and encouraged people to return to China. Li Lanjuan, a senior expert at China’s National Health Commission, told Chinese state media that if all goes well, China might be cleared of all new infections by March 20.

Gaffney said: “We should be ensuring that the people of China are ... exposed to the truth. There’s a lot of talk now about reciprocity, especially with respect to journalists.”

The CCP is set to expel U.S. journalists based in China who work for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post in retaliation for the Trump administration’s recent actions targeting Chinese state-run media outlets in the United States.

There are additional perceived benefits for the regime in focusing on America.

By targeting the United States, the CCP garners widespread attention and enables them to renege on some of their recent agreements with Washington on trade investment and intellectual property, according to Peter Huessy, president and founder of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense and national security company in Potomac, Maryland.

Huessy told The Epoch Times that China’s disinformation has dire effects and makes it more difficult to protect the health and welfare of people not only the United States, but globally.

“The entire Chinese strategy is one of mass disinformation and misdirection,” he said. “While China pretends to be a responsible member of the international community, in reality, they are doing much to undermine the rule of law and human rights.”

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

CCPVirusTruth.com

It’s always been a mystery to me as to why America dealt with the Soviet Union as an evil communist regime, but treated China as a mild one that could be bought with money and a good lifestyle.

We thought we were rich enough, powerful enough, and attractive enough to change China into a normal society such as one in the free world.

Instead, the business and investment from the United States have made the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stronger.

The CCP is like a cancer that sucks nutrition from a healthy organ to become a bigger threat to the whole body.

The spread of the CCP virus around the world shows us how dangerous the CCP is. It is contagious. It is invisible. It is deadly. It is a threat to everyone on this planet.

When The Epoch Times published the editorial series, “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” which lays bare the history of the CCP, readers wrote to us asking, “Where was The New York Times when this was happening?”

When the Great Leap Forward happened and millions were killed, we thought it was a China issue. When the Great Famine happened and 40 million people starved to death, it was a remote problem. When the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, we continued to do business with the CCP. When the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong happened, we tried to please the CCP by looking away.

In some ways, the CCP has changed. It actually has grown.

It has slicker packaging and understands the West better—so it can do a better job of taking advantage of the West. Its propaganda always uses the United States as a negative example, telling the Chinese people that the CCP is better.

In many ways, the CCP has never changed—its nature has never changed. During the Great Famine, CCP officials blockaded many villages, not allowing people to go out to beg for food. It was more important to the CCP to hide the truth.

Sixty years later, when the coronavirus spread, some villages were sealed off, some homes were locked from the

outside. Some children starved to death.

The CCP says there have been 3,259 deaths from the virus, but this doesn’t match what we have seen happening in China.

We know cremation centers in Wuhan were operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Outside some villages, bodies were burned in open-air pits. Forty mobile furnaces were shipped to Wuhan. Each can burn five tons of “medical waste and dead animal bodies” (animal bodies or human bodies?) each day.

Insiders say the death toll from the CCP virus has surpassed 1 million. We have no way to prove or disprove that number.

Recent reports of the remaining number of cellphone users in China suggest the number of deaths may be far higher than previously suggested.

China has three cellphone carriers. China Mobile reported that it lost roughly 7.25 million users in February, while China Telecom lost 5.6 million users in February. The relatively small China Unicom hasn’t released its February report. But in January, it lost about 1.19 million users.

Supposing that China Unicom kept all its users in February, the entire Chinese market still lost about 12.85 million cellphone users that month. How many of those people died in the past month?

With the CCP concealing information about the virus, the world has been caught unprepared. Now, we have become victims, as the virus has crossed borders. Should we continue to deal with the CCP like we are dealing with a group of gentlemen? We have lost our manufacturing jobs; we have lost intellectual property. Now, are we are going to lose our family members, and maybe our own lives?

When a cancer continues to grow, what is the end result?

Fortunately, we are still strong as a country. However, when good cells fight off cancer, it’s a life-and-death struggle. If we don’t see this clearly, if we don’t take out the CCP as soon as possible, a more deadly virus might come. This CCP virus should be lesson enough for us.

Eliminating the CCP doesn’t require World War III. If we cut our ties to it, it will starve to death quickly, like a cancer separated from its host.

KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

A Chinese paramilitary police officer guards an underground tunnel in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2015.

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March/April 2020 | SPECIAL EDITION

The Mysterious Origins of PETR SVAB

F

our months into the worldwide outbreak of the novel coronavirus, its origin still remains unknown, fueling speculation and complicating efforts to counter it and prevent its recurrence.

In fact, it’s better understood as the CCP virus, since the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and lack of transparency regarding the outbreak have caused or exacerbated much of the grief and uncertainty in its wake.

The lack of evidence on the origin of the virus is especially troubling.

Several previously known animal viruses have been found to be genetically similar, but not similar enough. Virologists seem to agree that there’s still a missing link—the original source of the virus that may still be out and about, carrying with it another potential global upheaval.

Experts agree more data is needed, but the most crucial data—tests of animals from the epicenter of the outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan—isn’t forthcoming. To date, the CCP has shown no indication that it intends to provide the data, or even collect it.

Lab Versus Natural Origin When Chinese researchers examined the genome of the virus, they found similarities to two coronaviruses found in bats that were reported several years ago by Chinese military scientists—not in Wuhan, but in Zhoushan, almost 500 miles away.

The CCP virus was an 88 percent match for the two from Zhoushan.

In particular, two parts of the Wuhan virus—the nsp7 protein that aids its replication and the envelope (E) protein that helps it overcome the immune system—were a 100 percent match for one of the Zhoushan bat viruses.

This is unusual, because previous research has shown that each coronavirus strain seems to have its own version of E protein.

A 100 percent match would be unusual between two viruses that each affect a different species, Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army microbiologist, told The Epoch Times.

“It is a very small protein, but it involves viral particle assembly and interactions with host factors, so when a coronavirus jumps host species (zoonotic [transmission]), it won’t keep the same sequence,” he said via email.

Some experts have voiced skepticism of a lab origin.

A team from Columbia University, University of Edinburgh, University of Sydney, Tulane University, and Scripps Research Institute compared the CCP virus to a number of other coronaviruses, including a recently publicized bat virus (called RaTG13) as well as several coronaviruses found in pangolin lizards. The RaTG13 was a 96 percent match for the CCP virus, while the pangolin viruses were about a 90 percent match.

“It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus,” the team concluded in the March 17 paper published in the journal Nature Medicine.

The original story pushed by the CCP was that the virus originated at Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, but there’s no indication that any of the animals from the market were tested or have been taken for testing.

While the pangolin viruses aren’t as close a match for the CCP virus, their spike proteins are nearly the same, including amino acids at all six of the most crucial positions in the gene sequence, the paper stated.

The authors argued that because this kind of spike protein developed naturally in pangolins, this is evidence the CCP virus also developed naturally. Furthermore, the paper noted, the spikes on the CCP virus don’t bind to human cells as effectively as those of the SARS virus. If the CCP virus was made artificially, why would it use a spike protein that works worse than another, already known one?

This question is actually not that hard to answer.

Creating artificial viruses with new or enhanced capabilities—“gain-offunction” research—has been done for a variety of purposes and not necessarily to create the most efficient virus. It can be used to probe what new viruses can potentially emerge and what would be their pandemic potential.

“It really depends on how the experiment was designed. What’s their objective in this kind of gain-offunction study?” Lin said in a phone call.

Moreover, despite making the opposite conclusion, “this [Nature] paper’s arguments actually suggested a potential path of lab-engineering,” Lin told The Epoch Times via email.

In the lab scenario, a spike protein that has a potential to work on humans would be taken from a pangolin or a bat virus and grafted onto a different animal coronavirus. The virus would then be allowed to infect cells in lab setting “to select more infectious clones” and then injected in lab animals and allowed to further mutate “to select strains that are of higher transmissibility,” Lin said.

The Nature paper describes a process for how this could theoretically be done, but adds that these particular experiments haven’t been publicized before. Moreover, the CCP virus’s body, or “backbone,” doesn’t exactly match “any previously used virus backbone”—more evidence to support a natural origin, the authors said.

This view, however, rests on assumptions of transparency, something sorely lacking on Beijing’s part, Lin noted.

No Animal Testing None of the animal viruses so far reported are close enough to be a direct progenitor of the CCP virus, according to Nature magazine.

“The genetic similarity should be higher than reported in these studies before the host can be identified,” the magazine reported, referring to comments by Arinjay Banerjee, coronavirus researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. “He notes that the SARS virus shared 99.8% of its genome with a civet coronavirus, which is why civets were considered the source. If pangolins are the origin of the current outbreak, says Banerjee, it is not the pangolins in these studies.”

The original story pushed by the CCP was that the virus originated at Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan.

At the end of December, the market was closed, but there’s no indica-

Key Facts

tion that any of the animals from the market were tested. There’s also no indication that any animals from the Wuhan area have been taken for testing.

The genetic comparison papers released so far have matched the CCP virus against coronaviruses discovered in the past.

Scientists have repeatedly stressed the importance of animal testing to better understand the origin of the virus. The authors of the Nature paper also acknowledged as much.

“More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another,” they said.

“Obtaining related viral sequences from animal sources would be the most definitive way of revealing viral origins.”

It could hardly be a lack of resources stopping China from robust animal testing. In fact, one laboratory

Unknown Origin

The CCP virus is a coronavirus, meaning it likely spreads from animals to humans and is transmitted generally by human-tohuman contact through respiratory droplets.

As of March 21, 2020

Pangolin Spikes As the Nature paper noted, much of the CCP virus genome matches the RaTG13 virus, but one crucial part doesn’t—the “spike protein.”

This protein makes up the “little mushrooms” attached to the surface of the virus, making it the most important tool for the virus to invade human cells. The cells of human lungs and other organs are covered with membranes called ACE2. The spike protein has the ability to interlock with the membranes, allow the shell of the virus to fuse with the cell’s surface, and let the body of the virus to invade the cell and destroy it.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

A medical staff member inside an isolation ward at Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on March 10, 2020.

Place of origin Wuhan, Hubei Provience, China

First cluster of patients Early December 2019

CHINA Wuhan

Hubei Provience

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7

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

the CCP Virus STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

you who believe rumors or so-called scientific analysis by unqualified researchers, I advise you to shut your [expletive] mouths!”

But in a country accustomed to seeing forced confessions on television, the denial failed to quell the questions.

“For such a huge calamity that may take countless lives, give us facts and evidence, not pretentious statements such as pledging with your life,” one netizen commented.

No Bats, No Pangolins One reason why many Chinese have been skeptical of the official explanation—that the infection transferred to humans from bats at the Huanan market—is the apparent lack of bats on site. Not only were no bats found at the market, but any bats living in the area would have been in hibernation at that time of year.

No pangolins were found at the market either. The scaly lizards are a protected species, so it’s possible that sellers disposed of them before authorities closed the market; so far, there’s no indication of pangolins being found anywhere in Wuhan.

Moreover, the viruses with the matching spike protein were found in pangolins smuggled from Malaysia to Guangdong Province, 500 miles south of Wuhan. The RaTG13 bat virus was found in Yunnan Province, 900 miles from Wuhan.

that has experimented with bats in the past is only about 400 feet from the Wuhan market. Another laboratory, at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), is a two-hour drive away.

In addition, Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli, who is based at WIV, is one of the world’s preeminent authorities on bat coronaviruses and reported the 96 percent match with the RaTG13 bat virus.

The WIV is also the only lab in China certified to handle the most dangerous viruses, such as Ebola or SARS. The CCP is usually eager to boost its image by portraying government workers as heroes in a crisis. This time, however, WIV has remained unusually quiet throughout the epidemic. An internal directive leaked online stated that WIV workers were forbidden to talk about the CCP virus, even to Chinese state-run media.

Estimated incubation period for the virus (most common is five days).

WIV Accusations In the absence of solid evidence, Chinese netizens have come up with their own explanations for the virus’s origins, which are often unflattering to the regime.

Some claimed that a female graduate working at WIV, Huang Yanling, was patient zero and had died. WIV denied it, saying she’s lived and worked in other provinces since her 2015 graduation. But Huang’s photo, bio, and thesis were all removed from the Institute’s website, leaving only her name. She also never emerged to dispute the rumors.

An online profile using the name and photos of WIV researcher Chen Quanjiao accused the director-general of the institute, Wang Yanyi, of

March 11, 2020 WHO declares the outbreak a pandemic.

80

“frequently” reselling lab animals at the Huanan market and thus possibly leaking the virus from the lab.

The mishandling of lab animals is nothing new in China. In January, biologist Li Ning of China Engineering Academy was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental pigs, cows, and milk from his lab to local markets.

Wang denied that such a thing happened at WIV, and Chen put out a statement saying her identity has been stolen and denying responsibility for the online posts.

Shi denied any connection of the CCP virus to the lab in a statement to Chinese media.

“I pledge with my life that the 2019 novel coronavirus has nothing to do with our lab,” she said. “This virus is a punishment imposed on mankind from nature, to condemn mankind’s uncivilized way of living. Those of

1 in 6

become seriously ill and have difficulty breathing. Older people and those with underlying medical problems have a higher chance of falling ill.

Dry Fever Tiredness cough

Percent

of people recover from the virus without special treatment.Still others become infected and might be contagious but don’t develop any symptoms.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

CCPVirusTruth.com

are the most common symptoms. Other symptoms such as aches and pains, congestion, sore throat, and diarrhea can occur as well, mildly at first.

For such a huge calamity that may take countless lives, give us facts and evidence, not pretentious statements such as pledging with your life.

Chinese netizen

ALL IMAGES BY SHUTTERSTOCK; INFOGRAPHIC BY THE EPOCH TIMES

11-14 Days

It’s possible that China is conducting the animal tests, but if it is, it’s keeping the results secret, Lin said.

Dangerous Experiments Shi has a history of experimenting with mutated coronaviruses, including combining multiple viruses to change the resulting virus’s capability to infect a different species.

In a 2010 paper, she explored manipulating a bat’s ACE2s to make the animal susceptible to SARS. In a 2015 paper, she and other researchers used a bat virus spike protein that didn’t work on humans, grafted it onto SARS, and found that it was then capable of infecting humans while also being resistant to treatment.

Shi is not the only one doing such experiments. But it’s a dangerous business.

“If the new virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” said Simon Wain-Hobson of the Pasteur Institute in France, commenting on Shi’s 2015 paper.

In 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama paused funding for gain-offunction research, wary of its danger to biosafety.

The controversy provided an incentive to Shi or other researchers following in her footsteps to keep any further gain-of-function research under the radar. In that case, a likely client for such research would have been the Chinese military, according to Lin. A post on Chinese social media Douban said that Chen Wei, the People’s Liberation Army’s “top biochemical weapon expert,” recently took over the WIV lab. The report remains unconfirmed.

Shi and WIV didn’t respond to emailed questions from The Epoch Times.

However, the lab has had a military connection since its inception.

The lab was developed with the help of the French government after the 2003 SARS outbreak. Originally, a French architect was supposed to design it, but Chinese authorities switched the work to a local Wuhan architect. French intelligence found the Chinese architect company, IPPR Engineering International, had close ties to a Chinese military subsidiary that used to be on the CIA’s blacklist, according to Challenges, a French business magazine. The lab became operational in 2017.

Whatever the origin of the virus, there still isn’t enough evidence to say for sure, according to Lin. What is clear, however, is that the lack of evidence can be largely blamed on the CCP, while the whole world bears the consequences.

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8

March/April 2020 | SPECIAL EDITION ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A woman wearing a protective mask walks past the closed Colosseum monument in Rome on March 10, 2020.

EDITORIAL

Where Ties With Communist China Are Close, the CCP Virus Follows Severe COVID-19 outbreaks highlight different countries’ entanglements with Beijing EDITORIAL BOARD

I

n the final weeks of 2019, a novel coronavirus outbreak occurred in the city of Wuhan, in central China.

As the world welcomed a new decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opted to suppress information about the emerging crisis until it could no longer remain hidden.

Nearly two months after mainland Chinese authorities acknowledged the outbreak and the existence of the contagious virus, the crisis had spread around the globe, assuming epidemic proportions in multiple regions. The number of infected beyond China’s borders is now in the hundreds of thousands, with thousands having succumbed to the virus. The stock market has plunged as experts warn of a possible economic recession.

A variety of factors have facilitated the rapid spread of the virus, officially termed SARS-CoV-2, and the disease that it causes, COVID-19.

In light of the CCP’s role in allowing the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic, The Epoch Times refers to the pathogen as the CCP virus.

Globalization has brought the peoples of the world into closer contact, making it easier for contagious diseases to spread. Yet the heaviesthit regions outside China all share a common thread: close or lucrative relations with the communist regime in Beijing.

CHUNG SUNG-JUN/GETTY IMAGES

Medical staff move a patient infected with the CCP virus in Seoul, South Korea, on March 9, 2020.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

Medical Crisis Under political or economic influence from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), many foreign entities and politicians, including international organizations, have been swayed to the extent that they take the side of the CCP, accommodating the pernicious communist system and turning a blind eye to unspeakable crimes committed by the mainland Chinese authorities.

Recent decades have seen the PRC greatly expand its power in economic and geopolitical affairs.

Deceiving the world with a narrative of “China’s peaceful rise,” the communist regime has lured foreign governments and international firms to invest in China’s rapidly developing markets.

But the CCP has never abandoned its ideological tenets of class struggle and totalitarian control. In the 30 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and from the start in 1999 of the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong to today’s systematic persecution of all faiths and independent thought, the state of human rights in the PRC has only worsened.

The true nature of the CCP and communism has long been known to readers of The Epoch Times.

Fifteen years ago, The Epoch Times published the editorial series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” igniting a grassroots movement in China to reject communism. Since 2004, more than 350 million people have renounced their ties to the Party and its affiliated youth organizations.

Seen in conjunction with the CCP-hijacked geopolitical environment of today, the geographical distribution of what the World Health Organization (WHO) now calls a coronavirus pandemic highlights the ultimate peril facing those who align themselves with the specter of communism.

Outside China, the spread of COVID-19 was most severe in Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan.

Later, Japan and South Korea were surpassed by Germany and France, respectively. Not all of these countries are located near China, but all have extensive interests in the PRC. Italy, the most heavily affected country outside China as of March

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20, was the first (and only) G-7 nation to sign onto the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road). In an attempt to prop up its weakening economy, Italy has also sought to capture the Chinese market for selling its luxury goods.

With the outbreak forcing Rome to put the country under lockdown, such prospects have been put on hold.

Italy also has signed scores of sister-city agreements with China, with the cities of Milan, Venice, and Bergamo included among them.

These are the areas hardest-hit by the virus.

In the Middle East, Iran has seen a surge in the number of infections, particularly among government officials.

The Iranian regime has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016, and its ties with Beijing began years before that. In violation of international sanctions, Iran has imported embargoed materials from China, while continuing to sell oil to the PRC. The Islamic Republic allowed flights in and out of four major Chinese cities until the end of February.

On-the-ground footage taken by Iranian citizens is reminiscent of the tragedy playing out in Wuhan, with overworked medical staff, despondent patients, and body bags lining hospital floors.

And while official figures released by the Iranian authorities show deaths and confirmed cases trailing

behind Italy’s numbers, it is likely that the real scale of the outbreak remains grossly underreported.

Reviewing available data, an epidemiologist cited by The Washington Post on March 5 estimated that the actual number of people infected in Iran could have been up to 28,000, nearly five times what the regime had reported at the time. The official count for Iran as of March 20 stood at nearly 20,000.

In South Korea, the public has grown increasingly critical of President Moon Jae-in for refusing to ban Chinese tourists at large and instead only barring entry for those who recently traveled to Hubei Province, the epicenter of the epidemic in China.

More than 1.4 million people have signed a petition to the Presidential Blue House calling for Moon to be impeached. The petition text reads, “Seeing Moon Jaein’s response to the new epidemic, we feel that he is more of a President for China than Korea.”

Political Peril Taiwan, despite its proximity to and extensive business with mainland China, has seen a relatively small number of infections.

On Jan. 26, Johns Hopkins University identified Taiwan as having the second-highest risk of epidemic spread outside China. However, robust prevention measures there have proven effective.

Taiwan officials began to board planes and assess passengers on SCREENSHOT

A screenshot from footage of bodies at Behesht-e Masoumeh morgue in Qom, Iran, posted on social media.

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9

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

Dec. 31, 2019, after Wuhan authorities first confirmed the outbreak.

In early February, Taiwan banned entry to foreign nationals who have traveled to the PRC. As of March 20, there were just 135 confirmed cases in Taiwan. The self-ruled island has been held as a model for epidemic control, despite being repeatedly denied participation in the CCPfriendly WHO. As China affairs commentator Heng He put it, Taiwan has a clear understanding of the communist regime and may be the only state that learned the lessons of the 2003 SARS outbreak, which also began in China.

In Hong Kong, which has seen millions of residents stand up to Beijing’s encroachment on the city’s freedoms and rule of law since last year, the outbreak has been similarly subdued.

By contrast, Japan, albeit not geostrategically aligned with the PRC, placed profit over prudence. With millions of Chinese traveling to Japan for shopping and sightseeing annually, the country was slow to close its borders to mainland arrivals. Japan was among one of the first countries to report cases outside of China, and the number of infected is now in the thousands.

More than 256 Japanese cities and 190 in South Korea have twinning agreements with cities in mainland China.

With the CCP virus’s surge in Italy, more than a hundred thousand have been sickened in the rest of Europe. As with Italy, many of these countries have unwisely—and against admonishment by U.S. officials over the past few years— persisted in their flirtations with the PRC. France and Germany serve as typical examples, having not taken seriously the risks of inviting the PRC-controlled Huawei to take part in the construction of their 5G infrastructure.

The Root of the Epidemic Is the CCP In the United States, one of the earliest- and worst-hit places was the Seattle area in Washington state.

By March 20, the state had seen 74 deaths from the virus, around a third of the national total.

In the late 1970s, in the early days of the CCP’s deceptive economic reforms, it was the port of Seattle that welcomed the first Chinese cargo ships. In the years since, with increasing enthusiasm from local politicians and businesses, Seattle has hosted all four of the PRC’s heads of state, from Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping.

The decades since saw the CCP wage a secret Cold War against the United States, funneling America’s technology and jobs to mainland China in an onslaught abetted by opportunistic profit-seekers, who compromised America’s conscience.

Recently, the CCP has attempted to portray its draconian handling of the epidemic as a triumph for the Party’s authoritarian system, going so far as to pin the blame for a disaster of its own making on the United States. Misled by the CCP’s propaganda machine and a left-leaning domestic media environment fixated on the failures—whether real or imagined— of the U.S. system, many Chinese residing overseas have made the decision to return home.

But the Chinese historical record is more sobering. Throughout the centuries, plagues and other calamities signaled the downfall of imperial dynasties. And at present—with growing numbers of whistleblowers standing up to contradict official figures that downplay the mainland epidemic—the CCP’s claim that it has curbed the virus rings as false as the lies it deployed last year to cover up the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Taking history as a mirror, as ancient Chinese scholars did, it is apparent that the pandemic is a calamity linked with the CCP and its 70 years of brutal rule. And today, the world is an interconnected community. Any country, community, or organization that keeps too close to the CCP and falls for its deception will taste the bitter fruits of that involvement.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

Jianglan Xiao has made calls to China from California for nearly 20 years, letting Chinese people know the truth about the Chinese Communist Party and news the regime won’t let them hear.

COURTESY OF JIANGLAN XIAO

Xiaofang Guo informs Chinese nationals in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens about the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party, in New York.

She has been persecuted by the Chinese regime for practicing Falun Gong.

CHUNG I HO/THE EPOCH TIMES

Telling Chinese People the Truth About the CCP CATHERINE YANG

I

t’s not just Americans who are only now realizing the extent of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence and its deceptions—many Chinese living in mainland China are in the same boat.

For nearly 20 years, Jianglan Xiao has taken sharing the truth with the Chinese people as her mission.

Working from California, she’s trying to warn people in China about the CCP’s lies. With the rise of the CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, they are starting to really listen.

The CCP is capable of vile, outright evil, and it carries out these acts in broad daylight, said Xiao, who grew up in China. “I know, because I know the CCP,” she said.

Xiao’s father was a school president, which meant that during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, he was sent to labor camps—but not before being publicly denounced and humiliated. This was the norm for all scholars and intellectuals. As a child, she didn’t understand what was happening; she only thought that if everyone was saying her father was bad, he must have been bad.

For years, she felt ashamed of him and didn’t even want to call him her father.

That’s the level of brainwashing the CCP is capable of meting out, Xiao said. It isn’t something many in the West can understand, having never experienced it firsthand.

Turning Points But, in 1998, Xiao’s world changed.

She was gifted a book by a kind dentist she met who had made an impression on her. When she read it, she realized it was a guide to being a better person.

“Zhuan Falun,” the main text of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, teaches truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Xiao realized it was completely at odds with the culture she lived in, but that was who she now wanted to be. She took up the practice and did the five meditative exercises every day.

A year later, Xiao got married and moved to the United States. Only a few months after her move, she heard some very upsetting news. Her sister told her that in China, Falun

Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) had been officially banned by the Chinese Communist Party and that those who refused to renounce the practice were being detained and sent to “re-education camps”—in other words, brainwashing centers.

At the time, in 1999, the number of Falun Gong practitioners in China had risen to an estimated 70 million to 100 million—many more than the number of CCP members.

While Xiao was shocked, she knew what the CCP was capable of and could see why the Party wouldn’t want something so antithetical to its culture to thrive.

“Falun Dafa teaches us to be good people,” she said. “The CCP does not want us to be good people.”

For Xiao, the CCP’s actions also cemented the fact that the Party stood for evil; how else could one be opposed to truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance? Far worse, the CCP began a vicious propaganda campaign that deceived Chinese citizens into believing that the persecution of the peaceful practice was justified.

Calling China In 2001, from her home in California, Xiao and an elderly neighbor began calling people inside China to try to share the truth with them.

“This was back before we had cellphones,” she said. “Some people would scold and curse us, and sometimes I just had to put the receiver down until they were out of steam.

And then some of them would listen, and some would believe.”

All media in China are state-run and publish the same Party propaganda. With nowhere else to turn to for information, everyone with whom Xiao spoke believed the CCP’s lies. “But we had to let them know [the truth],” she said.

Xiao made many calls in those first years, in her spare time. Over the past 10 years, Xiao said, she has dedicated one morning per week to making the calls. And since the spread of the CCP virus, she has been trying to do more whenever she can.

Xiao, and others like her, try to call police stations and centers that are involved in the persecution of Falun Gong. Often, they speak to people directly involved in the oppression— those who say they have orders to go to practitioners’ homes, confiscate SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

their books and belongings, and make arrests.

The listeners are almost always terrified, Xiao added, but she and other callers appeal to their humanity, and sometimes that approach works.

Some listeners realize that the CCP is wrong but are scared to challenge the Party. Others will stay on the line for only a few seconds before hanging up, but will stay on longer during a subsequent call, listening for minutes at a time.

‘Tuidang’ In 2004, amid this brutal persecution of Falun Gong, The Epoch Times published “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.” The editorial series detailed the history of the CCP and laid bare its crimes against humanity. The truth shocked Chinese people living in China and abroad, and sparked a global movement to quit the CCP, also known as “tuidang” (“quit the party”).

The series has since been made available in 33 languages and has inspired more than 350 million people to quit the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliated organizations, to date.

Since the publication of the series, and the start of the movement, Xiao and other callers have asked listeners to withdraw from the CCP. CCP Virus Coverup Things took another turn with the rise of the CCP virus.

“Last December, we already knew about the CCP virus, that it started in Wuhan, but they didn’t want to listen,” Xiao said. At the time, the CCP was still covering up all news of the virus as if it wasn’t spreading in China.

By January, the dam had broken, and people appeared to be starved for the truth.

“Since January, they listened very well,” Xiao said. But it was shortlived.

Only a week or two later, telephone calls began to be preceded by an automated message from the state reminding citizens to not “spread rumors.” The reminder that the surveillance state was watching spooked listeners. Xiao noticed that more people were suddenly hanging up on the calls.

Outreach in New York In New York, Xiaofang Guo tries to share information with the large population of Chinese nationals she sees on Main Street in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens. She has been persecuted herself by the CCP, detained in a labor camp for more than a year between 2011 and 2013, for practicing Falun Gong.

Most people don’t want to listen, Guo said. Even so, she’s been trying to reach out regularly, since 2015.

Guo describes what sounds like a thankless job. Sometimes, people call her a liar, say the CCP is good because it pays them, and tell her the persecution is long over or even that it’s perfectly normal for that sort of persecution to take place in China.

She’s had people shout at her, curse at her, and violently grab materials out of her hands and throw them on the ground.

“They’ve listened to all of the lies for 20 years,” Guo said. Even outside of China, many of the people she speaks to get their news from China-run media sources.

The CCP’s reach is long enough that even those who understand the lies are too scared to speak out, or even be seen listening to the truth.

“They’ll say they still have to go back to China—they’re really scared,” Guo said.

Then there are some who will listen to her, then ask specific questions. They want to know if Guo can refute the CCP’s talking points. After listening to facts and reason, they might even tell Guo they are thankful for her mission and now support Falun Gong.

“I want to save Chinese people from the lies,” Guo said. “I really think I have a mission to do this.”

Women at a stand of the Global Service Center for Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., on June 25, 2014.

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10

March/April 2020 | SPECIAL EDITION NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A security guard is reading his cellphone, while securing the entrance of a nearly empty shopping mall, in Beijing on Feb. 27, 2020.

21 Million Fewer Cellphone Users in China May Suggest a High CCP Virus Death Toll NICOLE HAO

T

he number of Chinese cellphone users dropped by 21 million in the past three months, Beijing authorities announced on March 19. Deaths due to the CCP virus may have contributed to the high number of account closings.

Cellphones are an indispensable part of life in China.

“The digitization level is very high in China. People can’t survive without a cellphone,” Tang Jingyuan, a U.S.-based China affairs commentator, told The Epoch Times on March 21. “Dealing with the government for pensions and social security, buying train tickets, shopping ... no matter what people want to do, they are required to use cellphones.

“The Chinese regime requires all Chinese to use their cellphones to generate a health code. Only with a green health code are Chinese allowed to move in China now. It’s impossible for a person to cancel his cellphone.”

China introduced mandatory facial scans on Dec. 1, 2019, to confirm the identity of the person who registered the phone. As early as Sept. 1, 2010, China required all cellphone users to register phones with their real identification, by which the state can control people’s speech via its large-scale monitoring system.

Furthermore, Chinese people’s bank accounts and social security accounts are bundled with their cellphone plans; apps on Chinese phones check SIM cards against the state’s database to make sure the number belongs to the user.

Beijing first launched cellphonebased health codes on March 10.

All people in China must install a cellphone app and register their personal health information. Then the app can generate a QR code, which appears in three colors, to classify the user’s health level. Red means the person has an infectious disease, yellow means the person might have one, and green means the person doesn’t.

Beijing claimed that the health codes are intended to prevent the spread of the CCP virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

The Chinese regime requires all Chinese to use their cellphones to generate a health code.

Only with a green health code are Chinese allowed to move in China now. It’s impossible for a person to cancel his cellphone.

Tang Jingyuan, China affairs commentator

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

21 Million Cellphone Users China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on March 19 the number of phone users in each province in February. Compared with the previous announcement, which was released on Dec. 18, 2019, for November 2019 data, both cellphone and landline users dropped dramatically. In the same period the year before, the number of users increased.

The number of cellphone users decreased from 1.600957 billion to 1.579927 billion, a drop of 21.03 million. The number of landline users decreased from 190.83 million to 189.99 million, a drop of 840,000.

In the previous February, the number increased. According to MIIT, the number of cellphone users increased in February 2019 from 1.5591 billion to 1.5835 billion, which is 24.37 million more. The number of landline users increased from 183.477 million to 190.118 million, which is 6.641 million more.

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s population at the end of 2019 was 4.67 million larger than in 2018, reaching 1.40005 billion.

The 2020 decrease in landline users may be due to the nationwide quarantine in February, during which small businesses were shut down. But the decrease in cellphone users can’t be explained in this way.

According to the operation data of all three Chinese cellphone carriers, cellphone accounts increased in December 2019 but dropped steeply in 2020.

China Mobile is the largest carrier, holding about 60 percent of the Chinese cellphone market. It reported that it gained 3.732 million more accounts in December 2019, but lost 0.862 million in January 2020 and 7.254 million in February 2020.

China Mobile’s performance in the same months in 2019 was markedly different; it gained 2.411 million more accounts in January 2019 and 1.091 million more in February 2019.

China Telecom is the second-largest carrier, holding about 21 percent of the market. It gained 1.18 million users in December 2019, but lost 0.43 million users in January 2020 and 5.6 million users in February 2020.

CCPVirusTruth.com

In 2019, it gained 4.26 million in January and 2.96 million in February.

China Unicom, which hasn’t yet published the data for February, shares the same experience as the other two telecoms in January 2020 and in early 2019. The company lost 1.186 million users in January 2020, but gained 1.962 million users in February 2019 and 2.763 million users in January 2019.

China allows each adult to apply for at most five cellphone numbers.

Since Feb. 10, the majority of Chinese students have taken online classes with a cellphone number due to their schools being ordered to stay closed.

These students’ accounts are under their parents’ names, which means some parents needed to open a new cellphone account in February.

Analyzing the Numbers The big question is whether the dramatic drop in cellphone accounts reflects the account closings of those who have died due to the CCP virus.

“It’s possible that some migrant workers had two cellphone numbers before. One is from their hometown, and the other is from the city they work in. In February, they might close the number in the city they work in because they couldn’t go there,” Tang said. Typically, migrant workers would have gone to their home city for the Chinese New Year in January, and then travel restrictions would have prevented them from returning to the city where they held a job.

However, because there is a basic monthly fee to hold a cellphone account in China, the majority of migrant workers—the lowest income group—are likely to only have one cellphone account.

China had 288.36 million migrant workers as of April 2019, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics.

On March 17, Meng Wei, spokesman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said at a monthly press conference in Beijing that except for Hubei, all provinces reported that more than 90 percent of their businesses resumed operations. In Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangxi, and

Chongqing, almost all businesses resumed production.

If both the number of migrant workers and the level of employment are accurate, more than 90 percent of migrant workers have gone back to work.

The economic dislocation caused by shutdowns in China may have also led some people who have an extra cellphone to cancel it. With business poor or stopped, they may not want to carry the extra expense.

“At present, we don’t know the details of the data. If only 10 percent of the cellphone accounts were closed because the users died because of the CCP virus, the death toll would be 2 million,” Tang said.

The reported death toll in China doesn’t line up with what can otherwise be determined about the situation there.

A comparison with the situation in Italy also suggests the Chinese death toll is significantly underreported.

Italy adopted similar measures to those used by the Chinese regime.

The CCP virus death toll in Italy of 4,825 translates to a death rate of 9 percent. In China, where a much larger population was exposed to the virus, the reported death toll of 3,265 translated to a death rate of only 4 percent, less than half that reported in Italy.

Activities in the outbreak epicenter of Hubei Province seem to contradict the reported death toll in China.

The seven funeral homes in the city of Wuhan were reported to be burning bodies 24 hours a day, seven days a week in late January. Hubei Province has used 40 mobile cremators, each capable of burning five tons of medical waste and bodies a day, since Feb. 16.

Lacking data, the real death toll in China is a mystery. The cancellation of 21 million cellphones provides a data point that suggests the real number may be far higher than the official number.

The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.

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11

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

Severe Supply Disruptions Could Speed Demise of Globalization CHUNG I HO/THE EPOCH TIMES

EMEL AKAN

W

ASHINGTON—Governments and businesses are learning hard lessons from the rapid spread of the CCP virus that is causing supply disruptions across the globe.

Closings related to the virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, have been bringing the U.S. and global economies to a grinding halt.

American companies dependent on global sourcing are facing an unprecedented type of disruption amid the pandemic. And the ones that heavily or solely rely on factories in China for parts and materials are the hardest hit.

The Chinese state required factory shutdowns across most of its provinces in February, and U.S. companies have felt the effects.

The CCP virus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75 percent of U.S. companies, according to an Institute for Supply Management survey conducted in late February and early March.

In addition, there is a shortage of air and ocean freight options to bring products to the United States, compounding the delivery delays.

The crisis prompted President Donald Trump on March 20 to invoke the Defense Production Act, which will speed up and expand the supply of products from America’s industrial base, if needed. The Korean War-era statute will force certain U.S. companies to produce goods that are in short supply, such as medical masks, ventilators, gloves, testing swabs, and other essential equipment.

“The coronavirus pandemic is going to have serious implications for how we think about globalization broadly and China specifically,” said Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a U.S. think tank.

“I think the days when everybody just assumed that there’s just one integrated global market that we can all trust—those days are gone.

And there’ll be some repercussions from it, and I think China will end up paying the price.”

ITIF has long been critical of Beijing for embarking on “innovation mercantilist” policies, which include massive government subsidies, industrial espionage, cyber theft, forced joint ventures in exchange for market access, and acquisition of foreign companies to attain sensitive technologies.

Empty shelves that normally hold toilet paper, at a Target store in New York on March 13, 2020.

I don’t think it’s right for our companies to do business with someone who is potentially an enemy to our country and who does not have our country’s best interests at heart.

Ray Zinn, founder and former CEO, Micrel Semiconductors

These policies spurred innovation in China, but that came at the expense of innovation in Western economies, Atkinson said.

Globalization, the most powerful economic force to have shaped the world over the past two decades, is now giving way to a new world order. Souring sentiment against globalization in the past few years, particularly in developed countries, led to a global revival of nationalism and protectionism. That marked a fundamental shift in the global trade order.

Atkinson said the trade war and the CCP virus outbreak have made U.S. companies even more concerned about supply chain vulnerabilities and dependency on China.

They are now pushed to create more resilient and diverse supply chains.

“Certainly, the Trump tariffs and the trade war have also sent that message to many companies and so they were already moving in that direction,” he said. “The coronavirus will, I believe, accelerate that movement and encourage more companies to take it more seriously.”

Exodus From China In an effort to diversify its supply chain, Apple last year asked its top suppliers to consider moving 15 to 30 percent of their production to Southeast Asia from China.

It also started the process of moving the manufacturing of AirPods, its popular wireless earbuds, to Vietnam from China. Atkinson believes roughly half of AirPod production is now done in Vietnam.

The trade war between the United States and China has turned into a boon for countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia. Large corporations have been able to quickly switch to producers in these countries for electronic products and furniture that were affected by U.S. tariffs.

At least 50 multinational compa-

nies, including American, Japanese, and Taiwanese, last year announced plans to move manufacturing out of China to avoid punitive tariffs, according to research by Nikkei Asian Review.

U.S. personal-computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, footwear company Skechers, athletic footwear and apparel manufacturer Brooks Running, and small video camera producer GoPro were among those companies.

If Apple decides to exit China, that will have a big impact on a lot of companies, said Ray Zinn, founder and former CEO of Micrel Semiconductors.

Apple is the world’s largest consumer of electronics, buying chips, glass, aluminum casings, cables, circuit boards, and many other products from suppliers that are mainly concentrated in China.

According to Zinn, iPhone assemblers such as Foxconn can easily pull out of China but moving component manufacturing is more challenging.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government could easily put pressure on companies such as Apple to shift their supply chains by imposing tariffs, he told The Epoch Times.

China Lost Trust Zinn was at the forefront of the semiconductor industry, serving as CEO and president of Micrel from its inception in 1978 until his retirement in 2015. He claims to have been the longest-serving CEO of a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley.

For decades, he watched many U.S. firms moving their manufacturing operations to low-cost countries.

“My company never did go to China,” he said.

“Back in 2000, when we had the Y2K and the dot-com explosion, my company’s executives wanted to move to China, because everybody else was moving. I said, ‘No, STR/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Workers check laptop parts in Lu’an City, China, on Nov. 19, 2018.

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

CCPVirusTruth.com

we are not going to go to China.’”

He admits such moves brought cost benefits and competitive advantage to those companies in the short term.

“But in the long term, I think they’re going to pay a price for that.

I didn’t want our technology stolen,” he said.

An incident 15 years ago made Zinn lose trust in China. He said FBI agents in 2005 swarmed his factory in San Jose, California, after they had found parts produced by Micrel in explosive devices that were being used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We found that it was a distributor in China that was buying our parts, through Korea and Japan, and then selling them to Iraq. So, once I found that out, I didn’t trust China. Because that was killing our soldiers,” he said.

Zinn urges other U.S. companies to have a conscience and do what’s best for the country.

“I don’t think it’s right for our companies to do business with someone who is potentially an enemy to our country and who does not have our country’s best interests at heart,” he said.

China has lost global trust and goodwill over its handling of the CCP virus outbreak as well, media reports say.

Experts believe the U.S. government can encourage more companies to relocate manufacturing to the United States from China by offering a tax holiday or tax incentives.

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters on March 16 that the Trump administration is considering a plan to offer incentives to the U.S. firms to bring production back onshore.

The White House also is preparing an executive order to help relocate medical supply chains from China to the United States amid the pandemic crisis.

Medical Supply Chain The United States is heavily dependent on China for health care products, which makes the country vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. And the outbreak has been a huge wake-up call for policymakers as the regime in Beijing has exacerbated this vulnerability problem.

China is the dominant supplier of crucial medicines, active ingredients, and personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks, respirators, surgical gowns, and gloves.

Rising global demand and slowing production in China due to the outbreak have created a severe shortage of protective equipment in hospitals across the United States.

“There’s a logistics nightmare right now on top of everything,” said Michael Einhorn, president of Dealmed Medical Supplies, a New York-based medical supply distributor.

While factories in China are reopened and running at 90 percent of capacity, his company can’t bring the products into the United States fast enough, because of high demand and shipping backlogs, he told The Epoch Times.

“We’re trying to get things out of China, but it’s becoming very, very difficult,” he said.

Dealmed distributes more than 25,000 products in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. And more than 50 percent of those products are sourced from China, he said.

Due to the trade war, Einhorn had to move 35 percent of his business to Malaysia, the United States, and Mexico last year from China. However, he said, China is still a crucial supplier of PPE products, such as protective masks and isolation gowns.

The pandemic is a very serious lesson for this country, he said. “We need to move medical manufacturing back into the United States.”

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TRUTH and TRADITION

EXPOSING THE DEADLY COMMUNIST THREAT FOR 20 YEARS Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology still persists. The Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged. We believe that investigating and exposing the truth is the only way that we can remain safe.

SACRIFICE FOR THE TRUTH

A few months after our founding, 10 Epoch Times staff members in China were jailed and sentenced to long prison terms—ranging from three to 10 years—for exposing communist repression and human rights abuses.

Most were tortured.

2000

IGNITING A MOVEMENT

2003

Our editorial series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” ignited a grassroots movement in China to reject communism. Since its publication, over 352 million people (and counting) have withdrawn from China’s three major communist organizations.

2004

BREAKING SARS

Three weeks before the CCP admitted that anything was happening, The Epoch Times was among the first to expose the seriousness and scale of the SARS epidemic.

SUBVERSION OF AMERICA

Our series “How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World,” systematically exposed the evil nature of communism, and the harm it has brought and continues to inflict on America and the world.

2006 EVIL BEYOND IMAGINATION

We were the first to report on the statesponsored forced organ harvesting in China—one of the most underreported atrocities of our time. Prisoners of conscience in China are ravaged, killed, and their organs sold for profit on an industrial scale.

2018

2020 FRIDAY, JAN. 24, 2020

VOL. XVII | NO.2,626

NEW YORK | DC EDITION

THEEPOCHTIMES.COM

TRUTH AND TRADITION

$1.00 ANTHONY KWAN/GETTY IMAGES

VIRGINIA

In the QUOTES News

Virginia Senate Passes ‘Red Flag’ Law

“I think the power’s in the people, all the people who are represented by the entire constitution.”

BOWEN XIAO

Gwen Wells, liberalidentifying rallygoer, on Second Amendment advocates protesting gun control proposals in Virginia NATION | A1

“I think the Iranian regime understands now that they cannot attack America and get away with it.”

Brian Hook, U.S. special representative for Iran, on warning the new commander of Iran’s Quds Force that he will face the same fate as Gen. Qassem Soleimani should he direct attacks that kill Americans

A patient is transferred by ambulance to the Infectious Disease Centre at Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong on Jan. 22, 2020.

Continued on A2

VIRAL PNEUMONIA

SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

Residents in Wuhan, the city at the epicenter of the outbreak, report hospitals at capacity and food prices surging

A statement by the White House on plans to deny tourist visas to pregnant women if officials believe they are seeking to secure American citizenship for their child by giving birth on U.S. soil NATION | A1

“We cannot permit the passage of time to diminish our resolve never to allow such horrors to happen again.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, during a gathering of world leaders in Jerusalem to commemorate the Holocaust and combat modern-day anti-Semitism

I congratulate you and The Epoch Times for the work you are doing, especially with regard to keeping the menace of the communist threat in front of us.

WORLD | A1

INSIDE

Nation....................................A2 World....................................A8 China......................................A10 Opinion..................................A13 Puzzles...................................A18 FEATURES ...................................................

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Published in New York, Washington, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

— DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA

I love how this paper is referring to the coronavirus as the CCP virus. Put the blame squarely where it belongs.

— GARY MASNER

Second Amendment advocates watch a hearing of Virginia’s Senate Judiciary Committee at the state Capitol in Richmond on Jan. 13, 2020.

ISRAEL

EVA FU, ISABEL VAN BRUGEN, & NICOLE HAO

What People Are Saying

Months ahead of other media in covering the CCP virus, commonly referred to as the novel coronavirus.

Total of 8 Chinese Cities Quarantined as Virus Spreads

NATION | A2

“This rule change is necessary to enhance public safety, national security, and the integrity of our immigration system.”

Virginia’s state Senate passed a “red flag” bill days after a massive gun rights rally opposing the legislation drew at least 22,000 Second Amendment advocates from across the country. Gun rights groups decried the move.

The legislation, SB 240, passed on Jan. 22 by a thin 21–19 margin and will head to the state’s House of Delegates where it’s also expected to pass.

The bill will have to be approved by the House and signed by Gov. Ralph Northam to become law.

The bill, once signed into law, allows authorities to apply to certain courts for “an emergency substantial risk order to prohibit a person who poses a substantial risk of injury to himself or others from purchasing, possessing, or transporting a firearm.”

CCP VIRUS

E

ight Chinese city governments announced on Jan. 23 that they have initiated a quarantine to curb the outbreak of a new type of viral pneumonia, as panicked citizens stockpile food and supplies.

Major sightseeing locations also were shut down by local authorities to avoid mass gatherings of people as the illness, caused by a new strain of coronavirus, continues to spread.

Meanwhile, five more provinces announced their first diagnosed cases—meaning the only regions that remain free of the disease are Qinghai and Tibet.

“We are now seeing second- and third-generation spread,” Dr. David Heymann, assistant director-general for Health Security and Environment at the World Health Organization (WHO), told CNN on Jan. 23.

Patients infected after handling

animals at the fresh food market in Wuhan that is linked to the outbreak belong to the first generation, while patients who were infected through contact with an initial patient belong to the second generation, Heymann said.

He said that the virus can be spread through contact with an infected person who is sneezing or coughing.

Quarantined Cities The central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started in December, has 11 million residents. Beginning at 10 a.m. local time on Jan. 23, the city was under lockdown, with all public transportation, including subways, ferries, and intercity buses suspending operations. The city’s airports and train stations also were closed.

A few hours later, governments Continued on A10

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Passengers from Wuhan walk through a health screening at Japan’s Narita airport.

No one will object to Wuhan being sealed, but you need to let Wuhan’s residents be able to eat and live.

Chinese social media user

World Leaders Rally in Jerusalem Against AntiSemitism JERUSALEM—Dozens of world leaders descended upon Jerusalem on Jan. 23 for the largest-ever gathering focused on commemorating the Holocaust and combating modern-day anti-Semitism—a politically charged event that has been clouded by rival national interpretations of the genocide.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Prince Charles, Vice President Mike Pence, and the presidents of Germany, Italy, and Austria were Continued on A8

IMMIGRATION

TAIWAN

Trump Administration Announces Visa Restrictions for Pregnant Women

Retiree Sues TSA, DEA Former Pentagon Official: Taiwan for Confiscating Life Election Sends Savings Message to the Region

ZACHARY STIEBER

The U.S. government said that women traveling to the United States primarily to give birth for the purpose of getting their child U.S. citizenship is no longer permissible.

The new rule “establishes that travel to the United States with the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the United States is an

IMPEACHMENT TRIAL

impermissible basis for the issuance of a B nonimmigrant visa,” or a tourism or business visa, the State Department announced.

“The Department does not believe that visiting the United States for the primary purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for a child, by giving birth in the United States—an Continued on A6 The Transportation Security Administration security area at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb.

MATTHEW VADUM

News Analysis WASHINGTON—The former top Pentagon policy official for Asia says the recent Taiwan presidential election allowed the “young democracy” to send “important messages” to the region.

Randall Schriver, who was the U.S.

Supreme Court in 2018.

However, it appears House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler’s (DN.Y.) speech during the trial struck a nerve when he accused Republican senators of “voting for a cover-up, voting to deny witnesses, an absolutely indefensible vote, obviously a treacherous vote.”

In another interview, Murkowski told CNN on Jan. 23 she had con-

A father and daughter have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration, claiming that authorities seized the father’s life savings at Pittsburgh International Airport without any legal justification.

The lawsuit was filed by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, on behalf of Terry Rolin, 79, a retired railroad engineer from Pittsburgh. The firm has sued in two other similar cases in Houston and Cleveland. In both cases, the U.S. government eventually gave the money back.

Civil libertarians have long complained that asset forfeitures arising from criminal convictions and cases in which a person is merely suspected of a crime can be arbitrary and excessive.

For years, Rolin followed his parents’ eccentric Depression-era habit of hiding money in the basement of

Continued on A2

Continued on A3

This is the only voice in America that correctly identifies the problem: Communist subversion. All other problems are secondary.

It is a breath of fresh air in an environment of fake, politicized news.

— RONALD LARSON Continued on A3

Key GOP Senator Takes Offense to House Manager’s ‘Coverup’ Accusation JACK PHILLIPS

A key swing-vote Republican senator told reporters she was offended by a claim levied by one of the House impeachment managers that Republicans are engaging in a “cover-up” during the trial against President Donald Trump, and questioned why Democrats didn’t go to the courts to obtain more evidence.

“I took it as very offensive,” Sen.

Accuracy & Integrity

LITIGATION

BONNIE EVANS

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told local media on Jan. 22. “As one who is listening attentively and working hard to get to a fair process, I was offended.”

Along with Sens. Mitt Romney (RUtah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), Murkowski has widely been seen as a potential swing-vote in the Senate trial after she bucked the Republican party line to vote against confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the

The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 as an independent newspaper with a goal to restore accuracy and integrity in media. We have received numerous awards for our reporting, including from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society for News Design, and the New York Press Association.

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13

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

Past Pandemics and Epidemics Whether ancient or modern, the death toll was often staggering CATHERINE YANG

P

lagues have been recorded since ancient times and were once thought to be a manifestation of the wrath of gods, often following soldiers around the world or merchants involved in trade. Here are a few notable pandemics from history:

Black Plague Perhaps the most famous of pandemics is the Black Plague, which swept across Europe in the middle of the 14th century, killing an estimated half of Europe’s population over four years (between 75 million and 200 million people). The disease moved from Central Asia to Mediterranean ports to the bulk of Europe.

The plague devastated some cities so much that some required mass restructuring. Such was the case in Florence, Italy, which, after losing the majority of its population, turned fervently to religion, paving the way for the Renaissance.

The Black Death is now known as the bubonic plague and is treatable. But in the past, the plague had recurrent outbreaks every decade or so for two centuries, up to the Great Plague of London in 1665, which killed a quarter of the London population in 18 months.

That event marked the last major European outbreak.

Russian Flu The 1889 outbreak was first recorded in St. Petersburg, Russia. With the increased travel infrastructure of the time, it took only four months for the disease to spread from Eastern Russia to cover the entire Northern Hemisphere. It was one of the first epidemics covered by the daily press.

The flu had several recurrences around the world until 1895 and

HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

killed about 1 million people in total.

The medical response to the virus wasn’t coordinated globally. Interestingly, in 1889, there also were earthquakes reported monthly from a wide variety of places around the world.

There were many theories as to what was causing the flu, and some even linked the disease to these seismic events, as well as volcanic eruptions.

Spanish Influenza The Spanish flu of 1918 is sometimes called the “forgotten pandemic,” because although it infected a third of the world’s population and killed more than 50 million people, its timing at the end of World War I meant that reporting on the disease was obscured by the war.

By 1918, the United States had joined the war, and the sudden mobilization of millions across the world contributed to the virus’s rapid spread. It affected both sides of the conflict, downing thousands on either side.

In the United States, the virus spread across the country after a military outbreak at Camp Funston, but died away with summer. By fall, a mutated strain among soldiers came back. In total, an estimated 675,000 Americans died from the H1N1 virus, which forced quarantines all over the nation. At the time, children would skip rope to a song that went, “I had a little bird/Its name was Enza/I opened the window/And in-flu-enza.”

SARS Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is coronavirus, which first began in southern China in 2002 before spreading to 29 countries in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

When the virus first began spreading in China, state-run media were ordered by the Chinese regime not to report on the epidemic, but whis-

tleblower Dr. Jiang Yanyong leaked statistics to Western media.

According to the World Health Organization, there were more than 8,000 recorded infections and 774

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

deaths in 2003, and since then there have been small numbers of cases.

It didn’t spread widely in the United States, with 156 recorded cases in 2003.

An 1866 Bible illustration of the 10th plague—the killing of all firstborn sons in Egypt—by Gustave Doré (1832–1883).

Faith, Not Fear CATHERINE YANG COPYRIGHT STEPHANIE HULTHEN

Volunteers at the Grace Food Pantry hand out food, as over a thousand people line up during the CCP virus crisis, in Everett, Mass., on March 20, 2020.

Bagged meals to be distributed to children are prepared by volunteers and members of the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office at a high school in Alexandria, Va., on March 16, 2020.

Generosity in a Time of Crisis CATHERINE YANG

COURTESY OF JEFF HOLLER

which we have been blessed by God. As such, Jeff Holler, a financial we should strive to manage our personal financplanner and president es from the perspective of wealth management that we don’t own it, God firm The Capital Chart does. We are simply careRoom, says he “understands the angst that takers over all of which people are experiencing.” he has given us domain.”

“Many in the world are So amid the losses, in a panic right now beHoller and his wife have cause their security is in Jeff Holler is the kept their spirits up, betheir financial and mate- founder of a wealth cause they are thankful rial wealth,” he said. He’s management firm, for their blessings. seen personal losses in an author, and “We still have our a speaker. this market correction home, and income, our himself, but isn’t experiencing the health, and the health of our chilangst or anxiety of uncertainty as dren and grandchildren, in addition the crisis drags on, because of his to a lot of other blessings,” Holler views on wealth. wrote in an email. “We have much Holler often advises younger cli- for which to be immensely grateful, ents about creating a plan for finan- and we are thanking God often!” cial freedom, and before anything “Overall, one thing people can do else, he starts with the idea that we while social distancing is to take are simply caretakers. some time to contemplate, reas“The first advice I give,” Holler sess, and pray about how they are wrote, “is to treat our financial re- doing as a good and faithful stewsources as we do all the personal ard,” he said. He refers to stories, too, gifts, talents, and resources with as there are many that show a stark

LET’S END COMMUNISM TOGETHER

CCPVirusTruth.com

contrast between those who “accept and give all of God’s blessings with open hands” and those who “grasp and hoard.”

He has seen these stories play out in his community as well. Holler and his wife are taking the opportunity to give more monetary gifts to ministries and charities during this time, because there will be cutbacks.

“Maids, busboys and busgirls, waiters and waitresses, ticket takers, concession workers—all of those who are the first to be let go when their employer is cutting back—are the ones who will suffer the most from this economic setback,” he wrote. He urged them not to hesitate to reach out to their local ministries to help.

“In our community, we have food pantries, night shelters, and the Salvation Army—all of which do a fabulous job helping those in need. Our church also has an emergency fund to help those in crisis. Our daughter and son-in-law have a Tough Tots Fund that helps families with children in medical crisis and the health care workers that serve them.”

Life, according to Ron Archer, is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you choose to respond.

Archer, a pastor and inspirational speaker, said: “I’m in the belief that when things happen that we call significant emotional events [SEEs] or STORMs [significant trauma overwhelming reasonable minds], it can have two effects. It can make us bet- Pastor and inspirater or bitter, winners or whiners, tional speaker praisers or warriors, climbers Ron Archer. or quitters, victims or victors.”

“We have the power to choose, to be people of faith or people of fear,” Archer said. “And even fear has its place. It can bring people to their knees, to pray, to repent.” Or it can help us to self-actualize and achieve clarity of thought—the understanding that some things are out of our control and in the hands of a higher power.

In times of strife or storm, one can either have faith or have fear, and even fear sometimes turns to faith. Archer referred to the story of David, who ran toward Goliath even when others—including King Saul—were afraid.

Archer recalled an experience that taught him more about the lessons in David’s story. During a trip to Israel, he once met some shepherds who carried staffs covered in interesting markings and dates. When he commented that the staffs were beautiful, the shepherds quickly corrected him.

“They said, ‘No, what this is, is every time we faced a crisis, dealing with a mountain lion or some sort of adversity, and God brought us through it, we would mark it on our staff,’” he said. “You remember this day and carve it into our shepherd’s staff, and remember that the same God who rescued us from the hand of the bear or the hand of the lion is the same God who will take us through this virus, or take us through this adversity.

“David said, ‘Your staff and your rod, they comfort me,’ and I never understood that until I met these shepherds in Israel.”

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15

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020

Silenced: Stories of Citizens Suppressed

for Speaking the Truth About the CCP Virus Citizen Reporters SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE

■ Fang Bin Fang Bin, a Wuhan clothes salesman, began filming his trips to hospitals around the lockeddown city and posting the videos online in late January. The scenes showed long lines outside hospitals, patients clinging to life, and distraught family members.

In one video that went viral, Fang counts eight body bags in a van parked outside a hospital. “So many dead,” he says with a sigh.

“This is too many.” Fang then walks into a room in the hospital, where doctors are seen working around a patient who had apparently just died.

“Who is he?” Fang asks the man.

“My father,” the man cries.

“He’s gone,” Fang says, after speaking to the doctors.

That evening, around half a dozen masked men in hazmat suits knocked on his door, demanding to take his temperature. Fang, who recorded the incident, said his temperature was normal and asked them to come back with an inspection warrant.

The men forced their way into his house, confiscated his electronic devices, and took him to a police station. There, police questioned him about his videos, Fang later recounted.

Less than two weeks later, Fang went missing. His friends told The Epoch Times that Fang had been detained.

“What sort of a journalist are you if you don’t dare rush to the frontlines?” he said in his first video in Wuhan, filmed with a selfie stick, from the railway station where he had just disembarked.

In just over two weeks, he published more than 100 posts on his YouTube and Twitter accounts— both platforms are banned in China—that drew millions of views. He filmed interviews with locals who had lost loved ones, patients lying on temporary beds lining hospital hallways, and, according to Chen, a body left under a blanket outside an emergency ward.

In one hospital, a woman in a protective mask holds up the body of a relative in a wheelchair, whose head is seen drooping downward.

“What’s wrong with him?” Chen asked the woman.

“He has already passed,” she said.

The work took a toll on Chen.

“I’m scared. In front of me is the virus. Behind me is China’s legal and administrative power,” he said in an emotional video, recorded in his hotel room on Jan. 30.

Authorities have harassed his parents, who live in eastern China, probing for his location, Chen said.

Then, he said through tears, while pointing at the camera: “I’m not afraid of dying. Why should I be afraid of you, Communist Party?”

On Feb. 7, his mother, in a video shared on his Twitter account, said Chen had gone missing the day before.

Chen’s friend Xu Xiaodong, a prominent mixed martial arts fighter, later said in a YouTube video that Chen had been forcibly quarantined, but didn’t show signs of symptoms.

detained him.

Li arrived alone in Wuhan by train on Feb. 12, tracing the steps of Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin, who had been arrested by local police.

It was “not by coincidence”—he said in his first YouTube video— that the first hotel he checked in was right next to where Chen had stayed.

Over the two weeks, before the police got him, he visited the Baibuting residential compound, where many became infected after attending a large-scale banquet, interviewed a funeral home worker, and went to a local train station where migrant workers were said to be stranded.

On his way back from visiting a local virology lab, however, he realized he was being chased.

“I’m driving really fast. ... Please help me,” he said breathlessly from under a mask.

Hours later, plainclothes police knocked on his hotel door.

He at first refused to let them in. He turned his camera on, and began alluding to the student-led Tiananmen pro-democracy protests in 1989, which came to a bloody end after Beijing deployed tanks and guns. Li lamented the ignorance of Chinese youth to recent history, the protests being a heavily censored topic in China.

“I feel that it’s unlikely that I will not be taken away and quarantined. But I want to make this clear: I am not ashamed to face myself, nor my parents, the Communication University of China where I graduated from ... and this country,” he said shortly before he opened the door and let the police in. The police confiscated his phone and laptop, and cut off the signal.

outbreak and the censorship of internet information.

“This outbreak of the Wuhan pneumonia has verified the reality: when all media ‘take on the surname of the Party,’ the people are abandoned,” he wrote.

“Without media to represent people’s interests and report on the truth, people are left to the harms of both the virus and a seriously diseased system.”

Ren criticized the Chinese Communist Party for praising its achievements during a February teleconference with top leaders.

“The truth as seen from the outbreak is that the Party is defending its own interests,” he said.

“There was no investigation into the causes of the outbreak, no one reflecting and taking on the responsibility. Instead, they attempt to cover up the truth with all kinds of grand accomplishments.”

On March 12, Ren became incommunicado.

He’s not the only one recently punished for criticizing the authorities’ outbreak response. Xu Zhangrun, a legal scholar at the prestigious Tsinghua University, was placed under house arrest after he published an article, titled “Angry People Are No Longer Afraid,” in early February, denouncing the regime’s hypocrisy.

“It is true that the present level of popular fury due to the handling of the epidemic is volcanic; people thus enraged may, in the end, also cast aside their fears,” he wrote.

Whistleblowers

Businessman

SCREENSHOT VIA WECHAT

COURTESY OF LI WENLIANG

■ Li Wenliang

SCREENSHOT VIA LI ZEHUA/YOUTUBE

■ Li Zehua ■ Chen Qiushi Chen Qiushi, a 34-year-old lawyer-turned-citizen-journalist from eastern China, arrived in Wuhan on Jan. 24, a day after the city was placed under lockdown.

Armed with a smartphone, he said he wanted to document stories about the city’s residents.

Li Zehua, a former anchor for Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, was the third video blogger arrested in the outbreak epicenter of Wuhan.

“I don’t want to shut my eyes and ears. ... I’m doing this so that more young people like me can stand up,” Li, 25, said in a passionate speech live-streamed on YouTube, before police entered the hotel and presumably

CHINA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

■ Ren Zhiqiang Dubbed by Chinese media as “the cannon” for his fierce, unreserved criticism, 69-year-old Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, went missing days after he took aim at the Beijing regime.

In a scathing article published online in early March, he criticized authorities for their handling of the

Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist at the Wuhan Central Hospital, was among the first people to publicize information about the outbreak in Wuhan.

“Seven ‘SARS-like’ cases from the Huanan seafood market have been confirmed,” he wrote on Chinese social media app WeChat, in a chat group with hundreds of his former medical school classmates. He attached a screenshot of a diagnosis report.

That was Dec. 30, 2019, a day

CATHY HE & EVA FU

before Wuhan health officials acknowledged that there was a mysterious viral pneumonia outbreak.

Despite Li’s reminder to not “spread it externally,” screenshots of the conversation showing his full name quickly proliferated on the internet. On Jan. 3, police reprimanded him along with seven other medical professionals for spreading “rumors” online.

The police statement said he had violated the law.

“The public security department hopes you can proactively cooperate with our work, listen to the urging of the police, and stop illegal activities from now. Can you achieve that?” He wrote “yes.”

“Don’t go against the authorities, don’t wear masks, don’t make careless remarks,” hospital colleague Zhao Chen recalled a department director as saying, after Li was summoned by police.

Zhao told state media in a sincedeleted interview that the hospital originally planned to fire Li. Days later, Li contracted the virus while operating on an asymptomatic patient for glaucoma. He died on Feb. 7, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a young son.

Shaken by his death, Chinese netizens held vigils in mourning and began a wider call for free speech.

At least 200 health workers at Li’s hospital have contracted the virus. Three of Li’s colleagues have died.

On March 19, Wuhan police withdrew the statement about Li and issued an apology, saying they will “carefully draw a lesson” from the incident.

■ Ai Fen Ai Fen, an emergency surgeon at the hospital, later revealed that she was the “whistle provider” who gave the diagnosis report to Li. Realizing that the virus could be contagious, she required everyone in the emergency department to wear masks.

Police didn’t go after Ai, but she received an “unprecedented, very harsh admonition” from her superiors.

“Many, many times, I thought how nice it would be if we could turn back the clock,” she told Chinese magazine Portrait, adding that she regretted not telling more doctors about the danger.

“If I knew what it would be like today, no matter if I got criticized or not, I would have spread it all around,” she said.

“Someone has to stand up and tell the truth. ... There has to be different voices in this world, right?”

NOEL CELIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Policemen, wearing protective facemasks, patrol around Beijing Railway Station on Jan. 30, 2020.

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17

SPECIAL EDITION | March/April 2020 OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY D. MYLES CULLEN

Vice President Mike Pence prays with the White House Coronavirus Task Force in his West Wing office on Feb. 26, 2020.

Trump’s National Day of Prayer During CCP Virus Crisis Nettled Critics, but America Still a Praying Nation MARK TAPSCOTT

WASHINGTON—Secular media critics were outraged when the White House made public earlier this month a photo of Vice President Mike Pence leading members of the Coronavirus Task Force in prayer for the nation and for their work.

The internet promptly exploded.

Typical was this tweet from Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer for New York and Harper’s magazines: “Mike Pence and his coronavirus emergency team praying for a solution. We are so [expletive].”

Similarly, Gizmodo editor Matt Novak wrote on Twitter: “Mike Pence can pray whenever he likes, but I do find it odd to see him leading a prayer during a meeting of the coronavirus task force with people like the head of the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and Dr. [Anthony] Fauci.”

But Pence had his robust defenders as well.

Samaritan’s Purse founder Franklin Graham wrote on Twitter: “A touching & powerful photo of [Vice President Mike Pence] & the President’s Coronavirus Taskforce

praying when they met last week in his office. Thank you VP Pence and each one who is serving. Let’s join them in asking God for His wisdom, direction, & help in the response to this virus.”

We are a Country that, throughout our history, has looked to God for protection and strength in times like these.

President Donald Trump, in a tweet

And Jonathan Merritt, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, responding specifically to Williams, observed: “Criticize Mike Pence all you want for being inept in his strategy to dealing with this. But mocking him for praying—like 79 percent of Americans have done in the past 3 months—is why so many regular Americans despise wine-and-cheese liberals.”

A few days after the Pence prayer photo became public, President Donald Trump declared March 15 a National Day of Prayer.

Millions of Americans participated through

online church services, in family prayer sessions, and in quiet individual appeals to the Almighty.

“We are a Country that, throughout our history, has looked to God for protection and strength in times like these,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “No matter where you may be, I encourage you to turn towards prayer in an act of faith. Together, we will easily PREVAIL!” Trump isn’t the first president to declare such a day. Franklin D. Roosevelt took to the radio personally to lead the nation in prayer a few hours after the D-Day invasion of Europe began, while Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation during the Civil War was an invitation to prayer.

The first “national” day of prayer was declared for July 20, 1775, by the Continental Congress. And the official annual National Day of Prayer is held on the first Thursday of May, by an act of Congress signed by the president.

To this day, members of the Senate and House of Representatives are led by their respective chaplains each day in an opening prayer. In short, America has been officially praying since before the nation’s founding.

Americans have long been and remain a praying people. Merritt’s reference to 79 percent of Americans having prayed at least once in the past three months comes from a 2017 survey of 1,015 adults by the Barna Group, which also found: “American adults who pray with regularity do so with varying motivations, the most common being to offer ‘gratitude and thanksgiving’ (62 percent). Generationally, this is lowest among millennials (53 percent) and highest among baby boomers (71 percent).” Barna also found that 61 percent pray for the needs of their families and communities.

Barna editor Roxanne Stone said the study demonstrates that “prayer is by far the most common spiritual practice among Americans.”

“The vast majority of Americans—no matter their religious affiliation or non-affiliation—participate in some kind of prayer activity. Barna has found this to be true consistently over the last several decades,” she said.

Contact Mark Tapscott at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc

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Investigative Reporting

March 23, 2018 THE NEW SPACE RACE INVESTIGATION

ALL PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

BY SHUTTERSTOCK

The New

The United States will return to the Moon and travel to Mars, and may create a military space force

SPACE RACE

The Epoch Times proudly follows in the tradition of investigative journalism while simultaneously blazing a new trail.

We’ve developed a new form of investigative journalism in which highly complex topics are explained through easy-to-follow visual maps.

Here are some of the topics we’ve covered:

A

new space race is beginning, and with it, the United States is aiming to push forward its development of new technologies that may soon find their way into government systems, defense programs, and consumer products.

President Donald Trump told U.S. troops in California on March 13 that the United States will be returning to the Moon and traveling to Mars, and that the U.S. military needs a new branch focused on outer space.

“My new national strategy for space recognizes that

space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” Trump said. “We may even have a Space Force.”

According to Rick Fisher, senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, “President Trump understands the new strategic importance of space. The Obama administration refused to acknowledge its strategic importance, and as a consequence, our adversaries gained eight years to develop their strategic projection into space.”

The main challenger to this push is the Chinese Com-

TECHNOLOGICAL WARFARE

EARTH

CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY

GETTY IMAGES

President Donald Trump could secure the United States as a leader in innovation with his new space policy, as researchers develop new technologies for an outerspace economy and space military operations, as well as a mission to Mars. This is part of technological warfare, which is a push by nations to achieve dominance in technological development, especially in military technology. The goal of the top nation is to stay decades ahead of its adversaries in terms of military capability. As military technology advances, the older technologies can then be released to the consumer and economic markets.

The push to develop new technologies will likely have a trickle-down effect that will create new consumer technologies and products, as was seen in the “silicon revolution” of the 1950s and ‘60s.

STRATEGIC SATELLITES Strategic satellites are crucial for both military operations and national security, used for military GPS or communications.

President Donald Trump announced on March 13 that the United States will go to Mars and possibly will create a military space force.

ORBIT MILITARY SPACE OPERATIONS The U.S. military will need to develop technologies and methods for fighting wars in harsh interplanetary environments.

SPACE SOLAR PANELS

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Solar energy will be crucial to any orbital or planet-based structure.

The increased focus on solar could bring technological advancement both in space and on Earth.

Nuclear weapons could be placed in space so that attacks would be difficult to intercept or counter.

LASERS

• • •

munist Party, which runs its space programs under its military, the People’s Liberation Army, and is developing new forms of space-based weapons designed to disable or destroy key technologies essential to U.S. defense.

The new competition to develop economic opportunities within the Earth–Moon system, and eventually to reach Mars, could lead to innovations in farming, sustainable energy, and other sectors that the world has not yet known.

This could again solidify the United States as a leader in innovation and in the global economy.

These multiuse weapons can be used to blind or disable satellites.

The New Space Race Unlawful FISA Spying China’s Secret War Against America

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE

SPACE FORCE

SPACE WEAPONS

Facing growing security threats, the United States may soon have a dedicated military branch to defend U.S. interests in outer space.

New vehicle weapons, emplacements, and small arms for use in space will need to be developed—as well as those with the capability to function on Mars, and beyond.

Detonating nuclear weapons in high orbit could generate an electromagnetic pulse to destroy electronics in a targeted country.

CIVILIAN SATELLITES

COUNTERMEASURES Space-based sensors and interceptors capable of tracking and destroying missiles will be important for defense.

Civilian satellites are used for civilian products such as communications services and television broadcasts.

MARS

FUSION ENERGY Many countries are looking to fusion as a clean and more advanced alternative energy source. Helium-3, which is scarce on Earth, could be mined on the Moon to fuel fusion power plants, creating a major industry.

CHINA’S MILITARY The space programs of the Chinese Communist Party are operated under its military, the People’s Liberation Army. China is currently developing space weapons and anti-satellite weapons, and is planning to mine the Moon.

Operations to mine the Moon or asteroids would require the development of new technologies that could revolutionize mining industries on Earth.

he Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using a series of unconventional warfare tactics designed to achieve the goals of war, without engaging in troop-on-troop combat. Many of these tactics were detailed in the 1999 Chinese military book “Unrestricted Warfare” but pull from older deception tactics and from programs that were set in motion by the Soviet Union. The key goals

seize control of a country by destroying religion, morals, traditions, and everything that makes the country function. The end goal is to bring the country into a state of chaos, so that the public will support outside intervention to install a new form of government.

Casey Fleming, CEO of BlackOps Partners Corp., a global intelligence strategy and cyber advisory company, described the CCP’s strategies as a system of “asymmetrical hybrid warfare” using a combination of

are to win a war without fighting openly, to seize control of a society gradually, to steal an economy, and to use methods to intentionally keep the public distracted and unaware.

Among the overarching strategies is the process of subversion. The Soviet Union used subversion to spread its “communist revolution,” and the CCP has adopted many of the same strategies to export its “China model.” Subversion is a process to

unconventional and conventional tactics to achieve any number of goals.

“The ultimate goal is complete takeover, both economically and militarily, until permanent capitulation is achieved,” Fleming said, and described it as a form of warfare “based on deception, and devoid of any rules.”

At the heart of all these strategies is a central tool of communist regimes that is used to manufacture issues to push for

revolution, known as “dialectical materialism.” The concept works on the three stages to “identify” an issue, “contradict” it by finding its opposite, and then “eliminate the middle” to push people to its two extremes.

After the society is divided, the two sides can be driven into conflict, which allows the perpetrator to step in and stabilize or “normalize” the situation.

Dialectical materialism can include the promotion of values that contradict a coun-

STEP 1 DEMORALIZE

STEP 2 DESTABILIZE

STEP 3 OPEN CONFLICT

STEP 4 INTERVENTION

Destroy a population’s hope, morals, and values by attacking its religion, culture, and traditions.

Destabilize a country by infiltrating, undermining, or destroying the institutions that make it function.

Bring the targeted country to civil war or foreign war by inflating conflicts and turning groups against each other.

Invade the country directly or with proxies, then subjugate it under the guise of “stabilizing” the situation.

STEP 1

STEP 2

INFILTRATE AND SEIZE CONTROL OF INSTITUTIONS SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES

ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

CULTURE WARFARE Attacks on the values, religion, language, perceptions of history, and ways of life in a targeted country in order to destroy the moral fabric, destabilize, and allow for other forms of subversion.

MIKE CLARKE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

FRONT OPERATIONS

try’s traditional values and the creation of labels to attack people who still believe in traditions. Examples include the CCP labeling religious belief as “superstition” and its use of this label to attack or imprison religious believers. When used abroad, dialectical materialism works as a tool to invert the values of a target country, to form social issues and movements around the inversions, and to use the inversions to drive forward a subversive agenda.

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

MARK WILSON/GETTY IMAGES

DISINFORMATION

SANDY HUFFAKER/GETTY IMAGES

The use of false-flag incidents or the creation of false reports, which are then used as footnotes in what appear to be credible reports.

BENJAMIN CHASTEEN/THE EPOCH TIMES

GETTY IMAGES

DIPLOMATIC WARFARE

HOW HWEE YOUNG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

POLITICAL INFILTRATION

CHINA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

SMUGGLING WARFARE

JOE RAEDLE/NEWSMAKERS

The use of organized crime networks or humanitarian fronts to develop smuggling channels into a country, which can be used for additional subversive operations.

MISINFORMATION

EDUCATION WARFARE

The spread of outright false information intended to confuse and muddle debate and analysis.

STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

HONEYTRAPS AND BLACKMAIL

Methods to steal or undermine industries, agriculture, and services that affect a country’s gross domestic product.

The manipulation of legal systems, both international and local, to block or stall a foreign action; or to legalize otherwise illegal activities—and vice versa.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

REGULATORY WARFARE

SANCTION WARFARE

KEIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

SCREENSHOT YOUTUBE

PROXY WARFARE

POISONING WARFARE The use of poisons to kill or weaken targeted populations.

Examples include Soviet-era directives to poison water supplies in the event of a war with America.

The manipulation and supply of foreign fighters to fight wars without open engagement.

STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

GUERRILLA WARFARE

The use of sanctions as a deterrent against actions that would affect a country’s own interests or as a weapon to attack a key industry in another country.

The use of small, specialized fighting groups to disrupt an adversary. Operations include attacks on supply lines, destruction of resources, and assassinations.

The use of chemical weapons and biological agents to create disease and chaos, or to wipe out population centers.

RESOURCE WARFARE

CYBERWARFARE

CONTROLLED OPPOSITION

SLEEPER AGENTS

The use of hackers to breach networks or launch cyberattacks. Cyberwarfare can be used for many purposes including economic theft, censorship, military attacks, and surveillance.

The creation of groups or movements that appear to support an adversary’s interests and that can be used to play both sides of a conflict.

ENVIRONMENTAL WARFARE

INTELLIGENCE WARFARE

TERRORIST WARFARE

ATOMIC WARFARE

Operations to manipulate or block the supply of resources or to manufacture environmental issues to pave the way for regulatory warfare.

The gathering of information to understand how a target operates. This can be used to predict reactions to set issues and to create strategies.

The use of terrorist attacks on civilians in order to direct public sentiment and opinion.

The use of a pre-emptive nuclear strike, either from shipping containers or suitcase bombs, or launched from a proxy state, in order to destroy strategic targets.

DON EMMERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

TARGETING PROCEDURES

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE COURT

These procedures are used to make sure that those spied on are foreigners located outside of the United States. It also protects American citizens from being spied on while overseas.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) oversees the minimization and targeting procedures that protect Americans’ data. The FISC also has to approve any new procedures, monitors whether the government is in compliance with the law, and has to approve FISA warrants.

FOURTH AMENDMENT VIOLATIONS In a declassified top-secret report, released in April 2017, the FISC raised serious concerns about how data acquired under Section 702 was accessed, as this may have violated Americans’ rights, under the Fourth Amendment.

SCREENSHOT FBI.GOV

SPY WARFARE

ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE

Competition for the control of factories and manufacturing prowess and all industries that relate to manufacturing.

The use of spies to achieve any number of goals including political subversion, intelligence gathering, economic theft, and operations to grow influence.

The use of the electromagnetic pulse generated by nuclear weapons to destroy the electric grid and most electronics.

TRANSACTION WARFARE

ELECTRONIC WARFARE

The targeting of money as it’s being exchanged in business or economic deals. Transaction warfare aims to disrupt or subvert the exchange of goods, services, or money.

Attacks in the electromagnetic spectrum to control communication networks and attack command and control systems.

The ultimate goal is complete takeover, both economically and militarily, until permanent capitulation is achieved.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

FINANCIAL WARFARE

The competition for control of global trade. This includes the control or disruption of physical or online markets as well as trade deals such as China’s “One Belt One Road Initiative.”

FISA WARRANT The FBI and DOJ used information paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, according to a declassified House intelligence committee memo.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported

by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The use of economic aid to create dependency and corruption or to assist a target nation’s adversaries.

UNMASKING Top Obama officials, including national security adviser Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, made hundreds of so-called unmasking requests for the identities of members of the Trump campaign. Unmasking refers to the practice of requesting that the NSA reveal the identity of an American that is redacted for privacy and Fourth Amendment reasons by default in raw intelligence reports.

NSA The National Security Agency is the main agency that collects data and communications.

GETTY IMAGES

COLLECTING UPSTREAM DATA

FBI The FBI provided contractors and an unauthorized private entity with access to raw Section 702 data, without oversight.

EMPLOYEES GIVEN IMPROPER ACCESS According to a declassified topsecret FISA report, FBI employees improperly received access to 702-acquired data. The FBI employees in question had not been cleared for such access.

CONTRACTORS GIVEN ACCESS

PRIVATE ENTITY GIVEN ACCESS

The FBI gave private contractors access to raw FISA data, in violation of procedures intended to safeguard the data.

The FBI provided 702 data to a private entity that did not have the legal right to it.

The NSA is the only agency allowed to collect and access socalled upstream data. This is all internet data that travels through the facilities of an internet backbone carrier.

USE OF FISA DATA TO RESEARCH CRIME According to the declassified FISA report, the FBI conducted searches for Americans’ data collected under Section 702 that were not intended to find foreign intelligence information but rather to research domestic crime. The number of cases for which the FBI did this is unclear.

COUNTERFEIT WARFARE

ECONOMIC AID WARFARE

The FISA system was used to spy on members of the Trump team during and after the 2016 presidential elections.

THE EPOCH TIMES

PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK

The use of weapons to destroy strategic satellites in order to disable crucial systems of a targeted nation and its military.

The creation and smuggling of counterfeit goods and currencies to attack a key brand or to undermine a target economy.

KNS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

TRADE WARFARE

The FISC became aware in December 2016 that in several instances, 702 data collected on CIA systems was not purged properly.

—Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

SPACE WARFARE

Casey Fleming, CEO, BlackOps Partners Corp.

Attacks that target a country’s currency. This includes currency manipulation, manipulation of banks to cause booms or busts, and creation of counterfeit currency.

BEHRAM BALOCH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The use of street gangs or organized crime networks to threaten or kill dissidents or influential critics.

RETENTION OF DATA

The CIA has access to most data collected under Section 702, giving it access to Americans’ sensitive data.

TRUMP TEAM SPIED ON MINIMIZATION PROCEDURES These procedures aim to reduce the amount of data on Americans that is collected. It also protects against the spreading of the data.

The use of spy networks that remain dormant until needed and can launch terrorist or clandestine operations.

INDUSTRIAL WARFARE

TECHNOLOGICAL WARFARE

Safeguards to protect Americans from having their personal data accessed were repeatedly broken

CIA

cases, however, it can have lawful access to an American’s communications if there’s a national security threat.

To protect unlawful access to the data of Americans, there are so-called minimization and targeting regulations in place.

BIOCHEMICAL WARFARE

The use of regulations to help or inhibit a targeted industry or business deal. Examples include tariffs or country-specific environmental policies.

The control of, or attacks against, a country’s natural or human resources. This can include control of oil supplies or rare earth minerals, or the hiring of niche experts in target industries, such as cybersecurity or artificial intelligence.

The National Security Agency, with the help of other federal agencies, collects large amounts of data, including emails, browsing history, text messages, photos, and video files. A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released in April 2017 shows different types of violations by the government in accessing Americans’ data.

STEP 4

IN EVENT OF WAR, USE DEVASTATING SURPRISE ATTACKS

WAGE WAR INDIRECTLY

THOMAS PETER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

STRONG-ARM AND INTIMIDATION TACTICS

LEGAL WARFARE

YOUR DATA

DATA COLLECTION UNDER SECTION 702 ata collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is intended to help the government protect America against foreign threats, such as terror attacks.

By default, the government is only allowed to read the communications of non-Americans. In some

ALL ILLUSTRATIONS

BY SHUTTERSTOCK

The luring of influential people, such as politicians and business leaders, into compromising situations, which can then be used for blackmail.

STR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

SUPPORT OPERATIONS TO ASSIST IN OTHER FORMS OF WARFARE

ECONOMIC WARFARE

The battle for technological superiority to ensure that other nations remain generations behind in economy and defense.

The subversion of schools and universities to grow academic support on key issues and plant indoctrinated youth in positions of power or to incite youth protests around key issues.

BRENT STIRTON/GETTY IMAGES

Subversion is a communist strategy, perfected by the Chinese Communist Party, to discreetly seize control of a nation.

SPENCER PLATT/NEWSMAKERS

The infiltration of political circles or of communities that can influence politics such as business circles and think tanks.

Methods for altering the way a group of people interprets information or setting emotional triggers around key narratives.

GARY DU/THE EPOCH TIMES

OVERSEAS GOVERNANCE

Use of diplomacy to push or condemn issues or to run intelligence operations. It can be used in conjunction with other strategies to manufacture controversy or grow influence.

Using or controlling platforms for public information in order to distract, lie, or alter perceptions.

These include social networks, news outlets, television networks, and others.

DANIEL SANNUM-LAUTEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

VCG/VCG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Pressing government control into a foreign country. An example is the operations of the Chinese Overseas Affairs Office, which manages Chinese communities abroad.

The introduction and spread of ideas among a targeted population in order to introduce concepts and eventually influence the culture.

A mission to Mars would require a renewable source of food, so the United States will need to develop new farming methods for surviving in environments where growing crops currently is not possible.

The continuation of a Mars mission would require the development of self-sustaining living environments that could support human life indefinitely.

Unlawful UnlawfulFISA FISASpying SpyingWidespread WidespreadUnder UnderObama ObamaAdministration Administration

D

STEP 3

STEAL FROM AND DESTROY THE ECONOMY

The creation or control of groups, businesses, think tanks, and other institutions in a foreign country, which can be mobilized for numerous goals.

ROBERT MACPHERSON/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

MEMETIC WARFARE

MEDIA WARFARE

SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS The control or creation of movements in a society to launch protests or attacks against a targeted group or issue.

The promotion of a set image for a nation, a national figure, or a targeted issue. This can include framing a politician as strong or weak or an issue as desirable or undesirable.

FARMING

SELF-SUSTAINING ENVIRONMENTS

PRIVATE SPACE INDUSTRY Many private companies are developing technology for space programs, which include shuttling services, luxury services, mining operations, and other services or programs.

MINING

BULL'S-EYE ARTS/SHUTTERSTOCK

PROPAGANDA WARFARE

Many countries and private companies are researching ways to capture asteroids and bring them into planetary orbit, in order to mine them for valuable resources.

Unrestricted warfare is a strategy of using every facet of a country to achieve a miltiary objective.

PERSONAL DATA EXPORTED

MAINTAINED ACCESS

UNSUPERVISED ACCESS

RETENTION OF DATA

Some of the data collected under Section 702 was exposed after it was obtained by FBI employees who should not have had access to it.

Contractors maintained access to 702 data even after their work for the FBI was concluded.

Those working for the private entity given access to the data were not supervised or given any oversight by the FBI. It is unclear how this undisclosed private entity used the sensitive data.

The FBI retained some Section 702-acquired information longer than allowed by law.

SEARCHING THROUGH AMERICANS’ DATA A declassified top-secret FISC report found that the NSA had an 85 percent noncompliance rate when it came to searches it conducted for Americans’ data.

These were searches in which an NSA analyst would type in the name of an American to search through their data. These type of searches are normally only allowed after proper vetting.

SPREADING THE NET TOO WIDE

RETENTION OF DATA

Under the targeting procedures, the NSA is supposed to ensure it only targets foreigners and not unwilling Americans. However, using so-called multiple communication transactions, such as an email thread with multiple people on it, the NSA ended up spying on Americans.

The NSA did not delete all of the personal data it was supposed to, even after it was ordered to do so by the FISC. This means Americans’ data could be accessed for longer time periods than was allowed.

2008

2011

2016

2018

Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed under then-President George W. Bush, allows for spying and collecting data on foreigners.

Under then-President Barack Obama, the FISC approved a modification that allows the NSA to search through the data of Americans, using their names.

The Trump campaign and transition team is spied on using both a FISA warrant obtained on Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page and the unmasked identities of members of the Trump team, requested by top Obama administration officials.

Trump orders his director of national intelligence to establish new procedures to help protect Americans’ identities captured in intelligence reports.

SHUTTERSTOCK

TIMELINE

T

Methods of subversion and unrestricted war used to undermine the United States

CONTROL INFORMATION AND PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS

ASTEROIDS

HELIUM-3 The Moon is believed to have a greater reserve of helium-3 than found on Earth. China has proposed mining the element for future use in fusion energy reactors.

INVESTIGATION

INVESTIGATION

China’s Secret War Against America

STAGES OF SUBVERSION

WATER ON MARS NASA has discovered liquid and frozen water on Mars, which could make long-term settlements and operations more viable.

MOON

Investigative reporting used to be a hallmark of newspapers, a critical category of content that allowed the public to hold those in power accountable.

Steal From and Destroy the Economy continued

PHOTOS BY GETTY IMAGES

March 9, 2018 CHINA’S SECRET WAR AGAINST AMERICA

March 16, 2018 UNLAWFUL FISA SPYING

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“

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Reviving a TimeHonored Tradition T

rust in Media Trust in the media is at a record low, and the media landscape is becoming more and more polarized. Unfortunately, negativity sells, and the media today is full of negativity.

The Epoch Times is different; we seek to help heal the divide by providing honest and nonpartisan reporting.

Our goal is to bring readers accurate information so they can form their own opinions about the most significant topics of our time.

We don’t follow the unhealthy trend of agenda-driven journalism prevalent in today’s media environment.

Instead, we use the principles of Truth and Tradition as our guiding light. We highlight in our reporting the best of humanity, valuable lessons of history and traditions that are beneficial for society.

Why The Epoch Times When our founder, John Tang, started The Epoch Times in a basement in Atlanta, Georgia, he faced a nearly impossible task.

John’s dream was to build a media company that would be truly independent.

He himself had left communist China following the Tiananmen

John’s dream was to build a media company that would be truly independent.

Square massacre and had enrolled in a postdoctoral program at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

When he saw friends and loved ones in China being persecuted for their religious beliefs, and that the media weren’t covering it, he felt motivated to take action.

As an immigrant, John saw America as a land of opportunity and a place where one can start big things from nothing. So with almost no money and no experience, John set out to create a media company that would become a vital lifeline for tens of millions of Chinese living under communist oppression and censorship.

But our independent reporting came at a price. Ten staff members in China were jailed and sentenced to long prison terms ranging from three to 10 years for charges like “inciting subversion of the state power,” forcing us

Jasper Fakkert

to work largely underground in China.

Soon after, the English edition of The Epoch Times was launched with the same mission of providing free and independent journalism. While the organization faced constant threats from the Chinese communist party and many financial challenges, John and his team persevered.

In many ways, John’s story is an American success story.

The Epoch Times has now grown to become an international media company that publishes in 23 languages and in 35 countries.

Times has always stuck to its core mission of reporting truthfully.

We believe that the cornerstone of a free republic is a truly informed public. That’s why our team of reporters and editors around the world work tirelessly to bring our readers the most accurate reporting.

We don’t see our job as telling you what to think, but rather as presenting you with the facts so that you can make up your own mind.

Many media have resorted to agenda-driven journalism in recent years. The Epoch Times is different because it is free from the influence of any government, corporation or political party.

I hope that you will enjoy this sample and give the paper a try for yourself.

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Traditional Journalism Since its founding, The Epoch

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Why Truth And Tradition?

O

ur goal is to bring you accurate information.

We believe it is not our job to tell you what to think, but rather to provide you and your family with the best information to form your own opinions.

Only in America could The Epoch Times have started and flourished.

Founded in an Atlanta basement with little to no funding and experience, it has now grown to become an international media entity.

We live, write, and publish under our motto “Truth and Tradition.”

But what does that really mean?

Truth stands for our commitment to honest and independent reporting.

Our team works tirelessly to gather all the relevant facts and present them as completely as possible.

Rather than draw conclusions for you, we’d rather you make up your own mind.

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Lifestyle Content “

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Part of what we do at The Epoch Times is all about helping you become a better you. And so we offer great sections each week designed to uplift your spirits and improve your quality of life. Our special sections include: •

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•

MIND & BODY – keeping you

•

FOOD – helping you discover

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explore traditional values and wisdom to help you live better.

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healthy in mind, body and spirit.

delicious and healthy eating habits[1].

•

PUZZLES – your mind will always

•

ARTS & TRADITION – everything from movies and TV to the fine arts[2].

•

TRAVEL – places to go, things to see, and the best times to set sail[2].

be its sharpest on our puzzle page.

[1] - only in Eastern Edition Thursday weekly paper

“

WAVEBREAKMEDIA/SHUTTERSTOCK

KATSIARYNAKA2/SHUTTERSTOCK

SLEEP WELL

RELATIONSHIPS

Remedies for Poor Sleep

That easy going child is easier to love, but there are consequences.

See C2

MIND & BODY

Acquacotta, a Peasant Soup From the Maremma

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2020 C1

The immune system’s complexity has long challenged doctors and researchers.

A22 | PUZZLES

The ancient honey wine, believed to be the world’s oldest alcoholic drink, is making a 21st-century comeback.

CROSSWORD

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2020

90. Befuddle 92. Dead body, in slang 94. Gold-assaying cup 96. “... can ___ long way” 97. Removing biohazards 102. Bark used for bitters 104. Catch rays 105. Prince, sometimes 106. Ezra Pound, e.g.

107. Slightly 108. Weild a surgical beam 109. Capital on a fjord 110. At one time, at one time 111. Tie up 112. Qatari leader 113. Potpourri

CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON EPOCH TIMES STAFF

See D6

GOOD EATS&&&|&&&RECIPES&&&|&&&DRINKS

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2020 D1

FOOD

ALL IMAGES BY SHUTTERSTOCK

PATRICIA NIVEN

with

Yasmin Fahr

How to Win the

Down

Weeknight

Across

1. Sort 5. Set 9. Take a chance 13. Turkish pooh-bah 17. Tints 18. Carnival attraction 19. Amazon berry 20. Neighbor of Pakistan 21. Pair at sea 22. “Magilla Gorilla” girl 23. Lovely Rita of song, e.g.

25. Reserved 28. Grand ___ (“Evangeline” setting) 29. Nonsensical 30. Didn’t take off 31. Windblown soil

Dinner

Cookbook author Yasmin Fahr shares her pantry staples, time-saving tips, and a week’s worth of easy, feel-good weeknight meals

[2] - in daily editions

Thank you for being the best most

WINE

Mad for Mead

Eggs and cheese add modern richness, but stale bread and bare-bones vegetables remain at the heart of Tuscany’s humble ‘cooked water.’

See D5

See C6

WELL-BEING'''| '''DIET''' | '''FITNESS

A. ALEKSANDRAVICIUS/SHUTTERSTOCK

FROM THE TUSCAN TABLE

Research Into Sibling Rivalry

Unexpected influences could be ruining the quality of your slumber.

WORDSEARCH

33. Songbird 35. “Chosen one” played

by Keanu 36. Photographer Goldin 37. Ad ___ 38. Fume 40. Surgical spirits 46. Stiff-upper-lip type 48. “Milk” source for vegans 49. Masseur’s workplace, maybe 50. Time immemorial 51. Juries 53. Switch positions 56. Australian runner 58. Sitcom newsman Baxter

59. Very plentiful 63. Tube top 66. Freddy Krueger’s street 67. Wild ___ 68. Reason to close up shop 72. Skin cream ingredient 74. “... affright the ___ at Agincourt?” Shak.

76. Grasp 78. Arc lamp gas 79. Day before Good Friday 84. Trading center 85. Denials 86. Time piece?

87. Bird of myth 89. “American Pie” rhyme

KAKURO

CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON EPOCH TIMES STAFF

1. Grand 2. Chinese dollar 3. Low ground 4. Industrial city of Germany 5. Frank Sinatra, e.g.

6. Woody 7. Poetic tributes 8. “Choppers” 9. Fast month in Mecca 10. Bar accessory 11. Audited, with “on” 12. Capital in 2004-05’s Orange Revolution 13. Point 14. Cannon ammo 15. “CSI” clues 16. Chilean range 24. Excavation find 26. “Holy smokes!”

27. A chador wearer 32. Instrument in a wind quintet 33. Recipe amt.

34. Tiny amount 37. Andean animals

39. Baloney 41. Rude person 42. Easily 43. Acted like “King Kong”?

44. Inseparable 45. It was dropped in the 60’s 47. Lead 52. Expands 54. Secretive org.

55. “It ___ to Be Me” (“Avenue Q” song) 57. Linux’s ancestor 60. Shed 61. Requisite 62. Abound 63. Video maker, for short 64. In the manner of 65. Weights 69. Most knotty 70. Conservative 71. Get the pot going 73. A puzzling organic compound 75. Bombast 77. Daffodil and jonquil, e.g.

80. Exploits 81. Go 82. Flat floater 83. Lad 88. Busy bee in Apr. 90. Visibly astonished 91. Philanthropist 92. Free-diving alternative 93. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” e.g.

95. Community spirit 98. Abbr. at the end of a list 99. “Dear lady” alternative 100. “Aida” backdrop 101. Increase 103. Polo Grounds legend

4NUMBERS

CONSTRUCTED BY C. CHANG AT 4NUMS.COM

Use the four numbers in the corners, and the operands (+, - X, and ÷) to build an equation to get the solution in the middle.

There may be more than one “unique” solution but, there may also be “equivalent” solutions. For example: 6 + (7 X 3) +1 = 28 and 1+ (7 X 3) + 6 = 28

Hard 1 - 1 Solution

Hard 2 - 1 Solution

Easy 2 - 1 Solution

CONSTRUCTED

BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF

Large: Easy

Large: Hard

Baked feta with greens and lemontahini dressing, one of Yasmin Fahr’s go-to weeknight meals.

What Is the

Immune System?

This complex interaction of organs, cells, and microbes keeps us alive, though few of us understand it CONAN MILNER

R

emember learning the systems of the body? The skeletal system describes our inner architecture. The circulatory system shows our heart and blood vessels. The digestive system traces the path of our food as it travels from assimilation to elimination.

Each system provides a basic lesson in anatomy and function. Together they reveal

Modern medicine has just begun to verify ancient notions about how the body protects itself from disease.

the body’s multi-layered complexity.

But where is your immune system? What parts are involved? How do they connect and communicate?

These questions can be difficult to answer, because you can’t get a good understanding of the immune system from just one angle.

It’s also a bit of an enigma. The immune system is a relatively recent discovery, but the concept may be as old as medicine itself.

AGAPE ANDES DEEDS DONOR ESSEN ETHOS FABLE GRAPESHOT HAD ON HAIRS INANE LOESS

SUCKS TEETH URINATE XENON YOUNKER ADDLE ANGOSTURA CROONER CUPEL LIGNEOUS LLAMAS

WORK SPACE

SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD

KAKURO LARGE: EASY

KAKURO LARGE: HARD

4 NUMBERS HARD 1

HARD 2

My goal is really to encourage people to get in the kitchen more and take the stress and worry out of it.

Yasmin Fahr, author, ‘Keeping It Simple’

EASY 1

EASY 2

CRYSTAL SHI

See Story on D2

Continued on C4

positive source of news for

NARCISSI PANELS PERDITION RAMADAN RELIC SATIN SCUBA SIESTA SNARLIEST SPLAYS STIFF STOIC

COMICS

America.

MARIAN T., SUBSCRIBER IN CALIFORNIA

DILBERT

GARFIELD

PEANUTS

GINGER MEGGS

MARY W., SUBSCRIBER

Easy 1 - 2 Solutions

Kakuro puzzles are like crosswords that use numbers instead of words. The goal is to fill the blank squares associated with a clue (called a “run”) with the numbers 1-9 so that the numbers add up to the corresponding clues. Like Sudoku, digits in a run cannot repeat. When the grid is filled, the puzzle is complete.

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