Talk:The Epoch Times

Employing Falun Gong people?

Is there any truth in the allegations that The Epoch Times employs a disproportionate number of Falun Gong practitioners? [1] That might warrant an mention, if true...

Wall Street Journal once ran an investigation on Epoch Times's tax records, and found that XU Kangang, a FLG speaker, is the chairman of the paper's board.

Hello!? It's the "Epoch" Times, isn't it transparent from the name what it's all about? Don't people know what Falun Gong is about any more?

What should we be able to tell from the English name? It doesn't tell me anything. The Chinese title 大纪元, however, may mean something. My dictionary gives me the translation "The Great Beginning of an Era". Mlewan 08:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Falun Gong claims there are "epochs" of repeated universe histories, from creation to destruction. "Epoch" Times is pretty much equivalent to the Chinese title of "The Grand Epoch." It refers to Falun Gong. Most of the many Falun Gong media have names transparently linked to Falun Gong or, self-referentially, to Falun Gong media discourse.

History

I've been updating the languages some, which are sometimes still switched back. Korean and Ukrainian editions are in fact apparently in print. To verify the lanugages listed, go to http://english.epochtimes.com/language.html. I think it best if the article stays consistent and lists the same number of languages stated in the introduction (which should at this point be 9), until that number gets too long to be practical. (Of course, if someone thinks it's already too long of a list, let me know how long you think it should be so I won't keep updating!)

RE: allegations regarding Falun Gong and Epoch Times

The Epoch Times from what I can tell is largely put together by Falun Gong practitioners at present, who as I understand were instrumental in its founding. However, contributions to the paper do not consist solely of practitioners' contributions, nor is it by any means intended to be that way. I don't think the large practitioner contribution is something that people who work on the paper generally deny when asked. It just isn't necessarily something that they shout to the rooftops because the paper is not intended to be judged by the spiritual inclinations of its writers; it is intended to be judged by its content. If you need my source, it is my own experience helping with the paper.

It says, "The paper rarely publishes letters and opinions that do not suit its cause, such as pro-communist and anti-Falun Gong comments, which the paper deems unnecessary. The Times argues that most, if not all government-censored Chinese news sources already contain opinions in agreement with Chinese governmental policies."

Where is the news in this paper? Why do they need to masquerade as a newspaper if their objective is to cast Falun Gong in a sympathetic light by propagandizing "the other side," whatever that is...

It says "The Epoch Times is a conservative Chinese newspaper, " It's not a newspaper and it's not conservative (conservative in what?) It's an anti-CCP pamphlet with a mix of editorialized news and shrill opinions, printed in a newspaper form factor and left out in Chinatowns everywhere for free and picked up by people for entertainment or to wrap fish.

Even if there are more articles about Falun Gong in the paper than in others, its mission is not to cast Falun Gong in a sympathetic light. If you want to see the paper's goal, go to http://english.epochtimes.com/aboutus.html.

Yeah, whatever. They didn't start out as the English version. Their reputation precedes them.

RE: allegations regarding Falun Gong and Epoch Times

If my personal experience is any guide, The Epoch Times definitely is connected to the Falun Gong organization. I was given a copy by someone who was proselytizing for them. She was distributing the paper together with other pieces of literature promoting Falun Gong and their web site. And she told me that by reading these things I would understand better who the Falun Gong were.

Falun Gong practitioners do not normally distribute the Epoch Times with their flyers. This inaccuracy has been up as fact several times in the article, despite its subsequent removal by different parties. Also, although the Epoch Times is most definitely not meant to be a newspaper on Falun Gong and reports mostly on other topics, it does contain more articles than most other media sources to update people on the difficulties facing the practice in China today. Letting people know about this is actually more important to most practitioners than trying to convince people to start practicing, which they aren't supposed to push or force onto anyone anyway. This leads me to wonder whether "proselytize" is actually an accurate word for what they are attempting to do, although I agree that the reality of it might often seem otherwise. Regardless of any connection to Falun Gong, the greater number of Falun Gong articles may have been her actual reason for distributing it along with the flyers.

The number of people associated with Epoch Times is few compared to the total number of Falun Gong believers. Without commenting on my strong suspicion of the strong link as originally stated, it still seems quite conceivable that a few individuals with anti-CCP political agendas may take advantage of Falun Gong as a haven.--yiliu60 03:51, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

With regards to the accusation of Epoch Times as the mouthpiece of Falun Gong, it seems there are already at least one or two publications out there through which Falun Gong represents itself openly. Compassion magazine is one of them. I think I remember someone mentioning another to me, although I can't remember what it was called.

The Chicago Reader recently published about the Epoch Times, and mentions some of the connections with Falun Gong. One section in particular says, "In 2000 a group of practitioners retaliated [to the persecution of Falun Gong], choosing a name evocative of the new millennium and launching the Epoch Times as a Chinese-language newspaper distributed in expatriate communities. The paper's representatives insist the Epoch Times isn't controlled by Falun Gong and doesn't speak for Falun Gong -- though contributions from individual Falun Gong practioners help keep it afloat. What's certain is that if China hadn't put its foot on Falun Gong's neck the Epoch Times wouldn't exist." The link to the article is http://www.chicagoreader.com/hottype/2005/051014_1.html.

This article essentially states that Falun Gong is not affiliated with the Epoch Times. My personal opinion is that it is -- I suspected as much the first time I ever picked it up, and it seems like way too big a coincidence that it popped up in New York at about the same time as Falun Gong demonstrations and literature handouts; the party line of the two is identical; distribution techniques are very similar; and an inordinate amount of space is devoted to the subject. I believe the argument that Falun Gong already has official organs, so why would it need the Epoch Times, to be extraordinarily weak. It has always been in any organization's interest to make people believe that it is supported by unbiased sources. In fact, nobody denies that the Epoch Times is a Chinese newspaper, but if you read the newspaper itself, the Chinese connection isn't apparent at all until you notice the strategically placed articles about China. I believe this obfuscation is probably intentional. Of course, this is all my personal opinion, which has no place in Wikipedia. But the opinion that the two are unrelated is just that, an opinion, and it has no place in Wikipedia, either. So I'm removing it from the article. --Masterofzen 21:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Criticism

A previous version of this article stated that with regards to the Epoch Times' penchant for negative reporting on China, "It should be noted that although a concentration of these articles may be published in the Epoch Times, many of these negative reports can also be found in neutral overseas Chinese newspapers." Does anyone know if other overseas Chinese papers do carry these articles? A lot of US papers do carry some of them. Should something about this be added back in?

That depends on how you define "neutral newspaper". It is a fact that most papers in almost any language take one stance or another to some degree. In the US, for example, NY Times and LA Times are left leaning newspapers, while NY Post and Wall Street Journal are conservative. In my opinion, there are hardly any newspapers that are neutral. So to answer the question, you can find plenty of these negative-China stories in anti-PRC overseas Chinese papers, such as those Taiwan affilaited ones like the World Journal and International Daily News. However, I would hardly call these papers "neutral". Pseudotriton 06:07, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

CCP renunciations

The number of CCP renunciations reported by the Epoch Times is constantly revised on their site. This number recently broke 4 million, so it would be more current to keep this number in the article than to change it back to 3.5 million. If you want to check revisions to this number, go to their English website at http://english.epochtimes.com. It's not too hard to find their updates on this subject. Thanks.

The number of CCP renunciations reported by the Epoch Times is still going up. It is now over 4.6 million.

Their so called 'renunciations' are a joke, and should be put onto petitiononline.com. There's no confirmation of identity or membership, and even non-members, babies, dead people, and non-existant people can be signed into, and each IP can be signed more than once. They recently held an anti-China rally on October 1 in Sydney, and I saw local Australians signing, 'renouncing' their CCP membership. Since when did CCP employ foreigners as members? These 'renunciations' means nothing and are not legally recognised, unless done through the proper channels (US immigration forms I-400 & I-485, and [2].

The current article says that "no major CCP official in either the central or regional governments had ever resigned because of the 'Commentaries.'" I'm not entirely convinced that this is not at least a little misleading. There was a case this summer of two diplomats in Australia, Chen Yonglin and Hao Fengjun, who resigned within about a month of each other. I don't know what you'd count as a major officials, but the cases were widely publicized in Australia, and Chen Yonglin received some attention from the New York Times. It seems the Chinese government was (naturally) a bit worried about the publicity the defections were receiving, in any case. It seems also that they may both have been influenced by the Nine Commentaries in their renunciations. Although most reports mentioning this specific point are associated with the Epoch Times, there seem to be a few mentions elsewhere, too.

Diplomats hold little power in or outside China, and it's more likely that these two left the embassy (not resigned) for personal reasons (such as wanting to betray China because its poor) rather than the 'Nine Commentaries'. These two never quoted from 'Nine Commentaries' and are, according to themselves, free from outside influences. Since then these two has disappeared off the media, and faced wrath from the general Chinese community in Australia.

This comes from http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-7-7/30101.html, which is a statement of the Chinese defector Han Guangsheng (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Guangsheng): "After carefully reading the “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” I feel even stronger that the CCP’s rule that is forced upon the Chinese people is a tragedy for the Chinese nation. Therefore, I admire very much the courage in of former CCP diplomat in Sydney Chen Yonglin and former “6-10 Office” officer Hao Fengjun, who came out publicly to resign from the CCP and to expose its crimes. I would like to come out to support them so that they know they are not alone."

It seems in here that he claims that he and others including Chen Yonglin resigned as a result of reading the 9 Commentaries. I knew about Chen Yonglin's defection and assumed it was because of the 9 Commentaries since he gave exclusive interviews to the Epoch Times. So when I read: "Regardless, the commentaries have had no discernible effect on Chinese politics, and no CCP official in either the central or regional governments is known to have resigned on account of the "Commentaries"." I thought that that wasn't right. I would say that the 9 Commentaries has had some effect on Chinese politics since having diplomats defect and give speeches against a government must have some impact. And if Chen Yonglin resigned after reading the 9 Commentaries, that means at least 1 official resigned because of them.

What that text said was "major, influential officials inside China". FLG and Epoch Times claimed that over 10 million people resigned because of the "9 commentaries", yet only two minor embassy workers has came forward. Both Chen and Hao has now disappeared from the media, and influenced little inside China. --PatCheng 14:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Reversions

When making reversions, please make sure you check all the reversions you make to be sure the edits you are cutting aren't actually based on anything. Among the last few reversions, there was a mention of a second recent award won by the Epoch Times in Canada during Ethnomedia Week 2005 earlier this month (September). The Epoch Times did receive recognition in this ceremony, and it is worth note regardless of Wikipedia writers' opinions of the newspaper itself. The mention of the Epoch Times itself can be found at http://www.nepmcc.ca/articles/awards03.htm (the paper's publisher was recognized), which can be reached from Ethnomedia Week website at http://www.nepmcc.ca/frnt.htm. Thanks.

I find it rather ironic that this cut was made by the editor who seems to want to cut out any seemingly negative parts of the article, and limit the views presented on this page. One of the other editors accused you of "Falun Gong vandalism" in his reversion because of this, as the significant number of Falun Gong practitioners involved in the paper was discussed above. I don't know if you're a practitioner trying to defend the paper or not, but if you really consider yourself to be one, I am rather surprised that you would go about engaging in edit wars when there is a perfectly decent discussion page on which to explain your edits, and perhaps reach some resolution might be reached. (I would appreciate your using the discussion page a little more regardless. Having the page change so often makes it more difficult for the article to stay stable, gain any reliability, and eventually be updated and improved.) I'm sorry for my impatience with this, as I realize I haven't been much of a help taking a stance in or stopping the edit wars up to now.

CCP members resigning

has caused over 5.2 million CCP members to resign. The number is somewhat disputed, as anyone regardless of Chinese citizenship or CCP membership can sign more than once.

Can sign what more than once? Or should it read "can resign more than once"? AxelBoldt 22:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Biblical ?

The paper's Chinese editions tend to carry a large number of articles promoting traditional Chinese mythology and Biblical stories

I don't think the Chinese edition contains a significant amount of Biblical stories in any sence. Maybe Falun Gong stories is a better term.--Skyfiler 16:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually they refered to the CCP as the anti-Christ and that the CCP will be destroyed by "God". I didn't know Falun Gong worshipped a god.--PatCheng 00:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

maybe they were refer to Li Hongzhi, but I am not sure because they have their own definition of Christianity.--Skyfiler 01:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Falun Gong practitioners don't worship anybody, Li Hongzhi included (or at least they're definitely not supposed to, or they're not following the teachings of Falun Gong!).

Based on what I've read and heard from practitioners' perspectives, I don't think that practitioners mean that Li Hongzhi will destroy the CCP as "God," although he certainly seems to play that role in many regards. I think in general practitioners believe that given the nature/laws of the universe, heaven, earth, today's society, etc, or however you wish to express everything that is relevant to us currently, put together with the past and present of the CCP, the CCP cannot survive and will (and is) destroying itself.

Why even give them credit by discussing all their claims like they are real? Pseudotriton 06:14, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

You don't have to give Falun Gong credit, you can always wait and see. But in the mean time why not get informed and judge for yourself.