The Epoch Times has been in the news a lot lately. In June, the news organization’s CFO, Weidong Guan, was charged with laundering $67 million though company accounts. This past week, the Epoch Times became embroiled in a feud with the New York Times after the latter published an expose of Shen Yun, the performing arts group run by the Falun Gong, the same organization behind the Epoch Times.
Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, the Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual movement that has been the target of a transnational repression campaign by the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Followers and activists claim that Falun Gong practitioners in China have been subject to unjust imprisonment, torture, and forced organ harvesting. To spread information about this persecution and undermine the legitimacy of the CCP, exiled Falun Gong followers began publishing a small, low-budget newspaper called the Epoch Times in 2000.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the Epoch Times found an ally in Donald Trump due to his overtly anti-China rhetoric. The organization spent millions on pro-Trump Facebook ads before being banned from advertising on the platform. According to a former employee, the Epoch Times editorial team has an almost “messianic” way of viewing Donald Trump as an anti-communist leader who could bring about the end of the CCP.
Even the volatility of Trump’s recent rhetoric on China has not changed the Epoch Times’ editorial slant, indicating that the paper’s affiliation with the far right of the Republican party is now rooted deeper than a mutual distaste for the CCP.
Trump’s position as a “China hawk” isn’t as clear-cut as people once thought it was. Since his first presidential run in 2016, Trump has called Xi Jinping “a good friend” and spoken approvingly about China’s crackdowns in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
According to Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “Beijing’s Global Media Offensive,” it’s not clear which ticket this election cycle would be “harder” on China. “The Democratic Party and the GOP have aligned in many ways on a tough China position, and in some ways, the Biden administration has had some tougher measures on China than Trump did, and I expect that to be continued under Harris as well,” he said in an interview.
Rorry Daniels, managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, agrees. “I don’t think Trump is an anti-CCP warrior himself,” she said. “He has publicly admired Xi Jinping’s role as an authoritarian leader and doesn’t seem to be highly ideologically motivated.”
As tensions heat up in the Taiwan Strait, Trump has told reporters that he doesn’t think the U.S. should defend Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion, saying that the Taiwanese have to understand that “things like that can’t come easy.”
It’s hard to imagine the Falun Gong being too happy about this, given that the Taiwanese government is one of the few to speak out against Falun Gong repression.
Despite the ambiguity around what Trump’s China policy might look like if he is re-elected in November, the Epoch Times has continued to publish materials that indicate its support of Trump and his far-right rhetoric.
While the Epoch Times perpetuated early misinformation about China and issues related to China, it has since elevated false claims about science, religion, vaccines, political parties in the U.S. and Europe, and political candidates. While a dislike for the CCP continues to unite the Epoch Times and the American far-right, “they both continue to promote conspiracy theories that have gotten wilder and wilder,” said Kurlantzick.
The Epoch Times, which once echoed Trump’s description of COVID-19 as the “CCP-virus,” continues to publish misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine over three years after it was first administered. In a November 2023 article, a reporter claimed that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine contains a DNA sequence that causes cancer. A feature published in June of this year made the argument that heart conditions that doctors associate with COVID-19, like myocarditis, can only occur after people are vaccinated. Both of these claims have been proven wrong.
While the vaccine fake news is concerning, misinformation experts are most worried about the role outlets like the Epoch Times might play in perpetuating claims of voter fraud and delegitimizing the outcome of the 2024 election.
They’ve done it before.
Throughout 2021, the Epoch Times published misinformation about voter fraud during the 2020 election, alleging that the CCP helped Joe Biden into office in an attempt to extend its influence into American society. The publication echoed claims peddled by Trump that election workers in swing states were caught rescanning ballots “thousands of times” and that “Communist China” had purchased Dominion Voting Systems – which produced voting machines used across the country – before the election. Since January 6, 2021, the Epoch Times has published over 500 stories questioning news coverage about the Capitol riots. This excludes a two-part documentary published by the organization called “The Truth Behind January 6th.”
“Everyone is waiting to see what role misinformation will play in this election and how severe the problems will be,” Dartmouth College professor and misinformation expert Brendan Nyhan said in an interview. It is not yet clear how the Epoch Times will feed into this year’s election.
In the period between presidential elections, the Epoch Times has turned its focus toward echoing rhetoric from the far-right on contentious issues, including the campus protests against the war in Gaza. On December 2, 2023, the newspaper published a special edition entitled “Israel Responds to Terror,” but the reporting focuses just as much on reiterating policy talking points as on the atrocities themselves.
In one of the featured articles, “DEI On Campus,” reporter Darlene McCormick Sanchez ascribes diversity, equity, and inclusion programs – a recent target of attacks from some members of the Republican party – as the reason behind the wave of antisemitism that has accompanied college protests. Her piece describes DEI and Critical Race Theory as “neo-Marxist thinking,” and argued that it has caused the “sudden rise in violent rhetoric and actions” on college campuses.
When asked if this rhetoric reflected an editorial slant toward the right, the Epoch Times responded with the following statement: “The Epoch Times is a nonpartisan news media that provides independent, neutral, and balanced reporting to a growing audience in both the United States and the world.” No reporters who were contacted directly responded to requests for comments.
The degree to which the Epoch Times’ “nonpartisan” reporting reflects beliefs within the Falun Gong has long been a point of confusion and contention. Following the Epoch Times CFO’s money laundering conviction, the Falun Dafa Information Center issued a press release clarifying the Falun Gong’s separation from the news organization.
A New York Times article about the Epoch Times’ pro-Trump coverage during the 2020 presidential election described the newspaper as “Falun Gong-backed,” which incited a strong condemnation from the Falun Dafa Information Center in the form of a report entitled “The New York Times’ Falun Gong Distortion.”
“The InfoCenter is not privy to the inner workings of the Epoch Times, and cannot speak to the accuracy – or lack thereof – of claims made about its business operations,” reads the report. “What the Center can address is the fact that journalists at the Times repeatedly conflate the political opinions of the Epoch Times staff – which are depicted by the Times to favor former President Donald Trump, whom the Times clearly despises.”
Nina Shea, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, said in an interview that many other religious groups, like the Roman Catholics, have newspaper outlets that are not corporately related to their respective faiths. The conflation of the Epoch Times’ takes with those of the Falun Gong, she says, is unfair.
“There has been a campaign to demonize Falun Gong by the New York Times. I don’t know what explains it, but it seems completely unhinged and hateful,” Shea said in an interview. “The Times puts a lot of weight on Chinese government statements, as if a government that systematically covers up its persecution of Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and underground Christians would give an honest opinion on this or any spiritual or religious group.”
While the degree to which the Epoch Times serves as a mouthpiece for the Falun Gong will certainly remain contested, the Epoch Times will likely continue publishing far-right rhetoric and misinformation as the 2024 election season progresses. While Donald Trump may not seem as “hard” on China as he once did, it is difficult to imagine the Epoch Times’ distancing itself from the far-right rhetoric and misinformation that its writers and editorial team have perpetuated since 2016.
Today, the Epoch Times claims to be the fourth largest digital media organization in the United States, but Dartmouth College’s Nyhan cautions against overstating the influence that its election coverage will have on public opinion.
“Even relatively widely circulated misinformation sources like the Epoch Times are seen by very few people as a proportion of the population, and it is easy to overstate their reach or influence,” he said. “In particular the amount of persuasion that they are responsible for, I think, is likely substantially overstated.”
