China’s reach is nothing if not extensive, and it does its best to cause trouble for persons of Chinese nationality regarded as enemies of the Chinese state no matter where these enemies may be in the world.
One target is the New York base of the Falun Gong organization, which has tax-exempt status in the U.S. Two agents of China, John Chen and Lin Feng, reportedly sought to get this status revoked by bribing the IRS.
According to a May 2023 article in Al Jazeera, “In seeking to undermine Falun Gong in the US, federal prosecutors allege, Chen and Feng’s urged the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke the organisation’s non-profit tax status. In a whistleblower complaint to the tax agency in February, Chen described Falun Gong as a ‘gigantic mega cult’—echoing language China’s government uses to describe the movement [which originated in China in the 1990s and has millions of adherents].
“Chen and Feng then turned to the undercover officer to make sure the IRS acted on the complaint, offering a payment of $50,000—and handing over $5,000 in cash as a down payment—if the tax agency conducted an audit, prosecutors said.”
