(Minghui.org) The communist regime in China has been building a police state to carry out its suppression of Falun Gong for nearly two decades. Financial figures indicate that the regime spares no cost when it comes to the persecution of Falun Gong and cannot concede that it has lost its footing.
Monitoring and Suppression at All Costs
It was recently reported that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is testing cutting-edge surveillance tools. The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the results of its Global Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), in which algorithms developed by Chinese groups occupied the top five positions in the leaderboard.
These leading companies in China have all received full support from the CCP, including the Ministry of Public Security, in the development of FRVT products. According to a publication by the Chinese Leiphone company, the CCP's monitoring technology has achieved a leading position in the world.
Instead of using the latest technology to benefit citizens, the CCP uses it to monitor and suppress people for their ideological and religious beliefs–all at the expense of taxpayers.
Stability Maintenance Cost
The 2018 budget announced by the CCP shows the allocation of 200 billion yuan (approx. $29 billion USD) to “maintaining social order.” However, some experts have pointed out that its budget of maintaining stability reached the level of 500 to 600 billion yuan (approx. $72 to $87 billion USD) per year over ten years ago. As society grows more and more resentful, the position of the CCP becomes more and more precarious and unstable.
Lv Bingquan, a senior lecturer at the Hong Kong Baptist University's Department of Journalism, has long tracked the CCP's stability maintenance spending and revealed that these expenditures have three major pillars: in addition to the aforementioned central government budget, there are also a “central to local financial subsidy” and a local budget for maintaining stability.
Lv summarized the data from 2011 to 2014 and found that the central government budget accounts for 16% to 17% of the total national budget for maintaining stability, and the average annual growth rate is 0.275%. Therefore, from the 200 billion central government budget in 2018, it can be calculated that the total national budget for maintaining stability exceeds 1.1 trillion yuan (approx. $159 billion USD).
Social Security Dilemma
While the stability maintenance spending used for suppression steadily increases, there continues to be a large deficit in social security. A senior official of the Social Security Fund Council recently stated that the current social security system is not sustainable.
According to the Ministry of Finance, financial subsidies for social security at all levels were 1.2 trillion yuan in 2017. In the prior five years, the annual balance was much less than the total financial subsidy for the same period. In other words, social security has always been in a deficit, and financial subsidies are used to fill the gap.
Although China's social security contribution rate (40%) is twice as high as that of most developed countries, the pension deficit is growing larger. According to the “China Pension Development Report 2016,” the deficit for China's personal pension insurance accounts in 2015 reached 4.7 trillion yuan.
How was this “deficit” formed? The direct cause was the mess left by Jiang Zemin, the former head of the CCP who initiated the persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. He set up the 610 Office, also known as “stability maintenance office,” specifically to carry out the suppression of Falun Gong.
Funding the Persecution of Falun Gong
In the early years of the persecution, Jiang Zemin required that financial departments at all levels of government, through the central government and the Ministry of Finance, to allocate “more than double the funds for political and legal affairs compared to other administrative departments,” as well as to “prioritize personnel and funding for political and legal affairs,” and so on. Large amounts of funds were directly used to persecute Falun Gong.
Large sums were allocated to police, national security, Political and Legal Affairs Committees, the 610 Office, and other agencies dedicated to the persecution of Falun Gong. Huge investments were made in the judicial system to expand prisons and labor camps and establish brainwashing centers for the detention and “transformation” of Falun Gong practitioners.
In order to defame Falun Gong, the regime made use of all propaganda machines available to the state. Large investments were made in newspapers, radio, television, literature, culture, and education. Huge amounts of funding were invested in the censorship of Falun Gong information and for a comprehensive surveillance system, both on the ground and on the internet.
To extend the persecution overseas, the CCP made a large bet on diplomacy and buys the favor of other countries to avoid condemnation by the United Nations. It buys and infiltrates overseas Chinese media to cover up its bloody persecution of Falun Gong. It also sends a large number of spies to collect information on Falun Gong practitioners outside of China.
The Future of China
It can be seen from the above analysis that the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong consumes a large portion of national funds. In the words of CCP officials, the suppression of Falun Gong has already exceeded the cost of a war. Undoubtedly, this persecution is perpetuated at the expense of the financial needs of the rest of society.
Why does the CCP continue to persecute Falun Gong at all costs? As stated in the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the essence of the CCP is the possession of an evil spirit. As long as it exists, its evil nature will remain. As described in the newly published book, The Ultimate Goal of Communism, “The essence of communism is that it is a specter. It is made up of hatred and degenerate elements of the universe. It has a deep hatred for human beings and wants to destroy them.”
To achieve its goal, the CCP attacks those who follow Falun Gong’s principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. It does so out of hatred, without regard for putting people in harm’s way and without consideration for consequences.
For the Chinese, to recover the moral values and social order the society should have, the only way is to disintegrate the communist regime. For each Chinese person, recognizing the nature of the Communist Party and quitting the Party and its youth organizations is the only way to secure a bright future.
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Category: Perspective