Parade in San Francisco Celebrates Over 400 Million Quitting CCP
SAN FRANCISCO—Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners from around the San Francisco Bay Area held a parade in San Francisco on Aug. 20 to celebrate millions of people quitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).“I’m very happy. Now there’s 400 million people quitting the CCP,” Hong Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, told NTD, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times. “That’s a milestone number. That’s a big number. And I think that it should scale even higher. And I think with that kind of number it can wake people up who are not Falun Dafa practitioners, to understand the importance of why and why they should sign that as well,” Scott Shields, a Bay Area resident, told NTD. As of Aug. 3, over 400 million Chinese people in mainland China and overseas have joined the movement to renounce their membership with the CCP or its affiliated organizations. That’s according to data compiled by the New York-based Global Tuidang Center, which focuses on encouraging people to renounce their oath to the Party. Many use aliases to protect themselves from reprisals. Falun Gong practitioners from around the San Francisco Bay Area held a parade in San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2022 to celebrate over 400 million people quitting the Chinese Communist Party. (Ilene Eng/NTD) “All Chinese people in China have to listen to what the Chinese Communist Party says and what they want us to think,” Jollia Xiong, coordinator for the Tuidang San Francisco branch told NTD. “When I was very little, we had to say oh, we have to follow the communist party, to sacrifice our lives there.” Their purpose to make it public is to hope more people are aware of the CCP’s history of crimes against humanity and the truth. “They [CCP] did so many evil things,” Xiong said. “The Cultural Revolution, you know, the student movement in Tiananmen Square—so many students [were] killed.” On June 4, 1989, after the pro-democracy student protest, the communist regime rolled out tanks and deployed guns in the heart of China’s capital, Beijing, crushing people and objects in their way. It became known as the Tiananmen Massacre. “But I was in China at the time. I don’t know at all. They said…no single student killed, I believed because all I can get is the state-run media—radio, television,” Xiong said. She didn’t learn the truth about the deaths until she got to the U.S. Zhang recalled her experiences working in a hospital after the Tiananmen Massacre. “I was part of the medical staff trying to rescue the students and citizens. Our hospital floors—it was like a river of blood—there was blood everywhere. We’ve never seen this before. It was like war,” Zhang said. Like Xiong, Zhang said she remembers the propaganda news on television reporting no deaths, but what she witnessed was one death after another. After that, she made up her mind to move to the U.S. for freedom. For years, Zhang made calls to China, encouraging people to quit the CCP. One time she called a dorm with six college students to expose the communist party and told them about the June 4th massacre. “After they heard that, they were very shocked,” Zhang said. “After that all six of them quit the CCP.” Religious and ethnic groups are also persecuted in China. Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners were tortured, forced into labor camps, and even live organ harvested for their faith. Falun Gong practitioners call for an end to the persecution in China during a parade celebratingover 400 million people quitting the Chinese Communist Party in San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2022. (Ilene Eng/NTD) Parade onlookers were able to learn about the practice and what the Chinese government has done. “We never thought that something like this is happening in the world,” said Victoria, from Austria. “It should be the freedom to meditate.” “I think the greatest support you can give someone is to listen, understand—much like we did today,“ Dylan Dawson, a San Francisco resident, told NTD. “We just came out for a stroll in the city where we live and witnessed a parade and wanted to know more about it.” “Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance—the exact opposite of lie, cheat, steal. The CCP does lie, cheat, and steal as we know in tech, and in politics. So the next step they do is like a gang—fear, force, extortion—that’s what they’ve done with practitioners,” Shields said. Pedestrians stop to watch a parade hosted by Falun Gong practitioners to celebrate over 400 million people quitting the Chinese Communist Party in San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2022. (Ilene Eng/NTD) “We all know that the Chinese Communist Party is not welcomed here, right? So, so many Chinese Communist Party [members] don’t want to say that ‘I’m a Chinese Communist Party member,’ right? So that’s why we encourage all Chinese people [to quit it],” Xiong said. The international community has been increasingly turning away from the CCP. In a tweet on Aug. 6, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote, “End the CCP,” while sharing a COVID-19 related
Udumbara
SAN FRANCISCO—Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners from around the San Francisco Bay Area held a parade in San Francisco on Aug. 20 to celebrate millions of people quitting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“I’m very happy. Now there’s 400 million people quitting the CCP,” Hong Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner, told NTD, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
“That’s a milestone number. That’s a big number. And I think that it should scale even higher. And I think with that kind of number it can wake people up who are not Falun Dafa practitioners, to understand the importance of why and why they should sign that as well,” Scott Shields, a Bay Area resident, told NTD.
As of Aug. 3, over 400 million Chinese people in mainland China and overseas have joined the movement to renounce their membership with the CCP or its affiliated organizations. That’s according to data compiled by the New York-based Global Tuidang Center, which focuses on encouraging people to renounce their oath to the Party. Many use aliases to protect themselves from reprisals.
“All Chinese people in China have to listen to what the Chinese Communist Party says and what they want us to think,” Jollia Xiong, coordinator for the Tuidang San Francisco branch told NTD. “When I was very little, we had to say oh, we have to follow the communist party, to sacrifice our lives there.”
Their purpose to make it public is to hope more people are aware of the CCP’s history of crimes against humanity and the truth.
“They [CCP] did so many evil things,” Xiong said. “The Cultural Revolution, you know, the student movement in Tiananmen Square—so many students [were] killed.”
On June 4, 1989, after the pro-democracy student protest, the communist regime rolled out tanks and deployed guns in the heart of China’s capital, Beijing, crushing people and objects in their way. It became known as the Tiananmen Massacre.
“But I was in China at the time. I don’t know at all. They said…no single student killed, I believed because all I can get is the state-run media—radio, television,” Xiong said.
She didn’t learn the truth about the deaths until she got to the U.S.
Zhang recalled her experiences working in a hospital after the Tiananmen Massacre.
“I was part of the medical staff trying to rescue the students and citizens. Our hospital floors—it was like a river of blood—there was blood everywhere. We’ve never seen this before. It was like war,” Zhang said.
Like Xiong, Zhang said she remembers the propaganda news on television reporting no deaths, but what she witnessed was one death after another. After that, she made up her mind to move to the U.S. for freedom.
For years, Zhang made calls to China, encouraging people to quit the CCP. One time she called a dorm with six college students to expose the communist party and told them about the June 4th massacre.
“After they heard that, they were very shocked,” Zhang said. “After that all six of them quit the CCP.”
Religious and ethnic groups are also persecuted in China. Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners were tortured, forced into labor camps, and even live organ harvested for their faith.
over 400 million people quitting the Chinese Communist Party in San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2022. (Ilene Eng/NTD)
Parade onlookers were able to learn about the practice and what the Chinese government has done.
“We never thought that something like this is happening in the world,” said Victoria, from Austria. “It should be the freedom to meditate.”
“I think the greatest support you can give someone is to listen, understand—much like we did today,“ Dylan Dawson, a San Francisco resident, told NTD. “We just came out for a stroll in the city where we live and witnessed a parade and wanted to know more about it.”
“Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance—the exact opposite of lie, cheat, steal. The CCP does lie, cheat, and steal as we know in tech, and in politics. So the next step they do is like a gang—fear, force, extortion—that’s what they’ve done with practitioners,” Shields said.
“We all know that the Chinese Communist Party is not welcomed here, right? So, so many Chinese Communist Party [members] don’t want to say that ‘I’m a Chinese Communist Party member,’ right? So that’s why we encourage all Chinese people [to quit it],” Xiong said.
The international community has been increasingly turning away from the CCP.
In a tweet on Aug. 6, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote, “End the CCP,” while sharing a COVID-19 related news clip.
The CCP is blamed for allegedly mishandling and covering up the coronavirus leak from a lab in Wuhan, China. Thus the virus is also referred to as the CCP virus.
In November 2021, NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom criticized the CCP for forced organ harvesting in an instagram post.
The Tuidang Center organized a petition to support “end CCP,” which has collected over 2.5 million signatures.
With reporting by Jason Blair
