Gan Jing World, a video-sharing platform, said it was hit with a “coordinated online attack” that flooded its platform with thousands of hate messages aimed at silencing Falun Gong‐related programming on the 26th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) persecution campaign against the faith group.
The barrage started around 9 a.m. ET on July 20 and persisted until 3 p.m., swamping comment sections attached to GJW+ Streaming’s special feature, “July 20: A Film Tribute to Falun Gong Resisting Persecution and Defending Freedom,” the company said.
Media livestreams covering Falun Gong practitioners’ July 20 parade in New York City were also targeted, as users worldwide posted under hashtags such as #720 and #July20Rally.
Gan Jing World reported that the suspected troll accounts were mass-created between July 7 and July 14, using overseas email addresses and virtual private networks to hide their location.
Although the hate comments appeared in traditional Chinese, platform technicians said the accounts were configured in simplified Chinese and routed through Taiwanese IP addresses, a pattern the company linked to prior “Spamouflage” operations traced to mainland China. Simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, and traditional Chinese characters are used in Taiwan.
Moderators collected evidence—including account names and email addresses—for submission to law enforcement and removed the abusive content in keeping with the site’s community guidelines, Gan Jing World said. The New York-based firm, founded in 2022 with the motto “Technology for Humanity,” said it remains committed to protecting user privacy and free expression through continual technology upgrades.
“Gan Jing World urges the American public and government to recognize this incident as part of the CCP’s broader campaign to silence free expression beyond China’s borders—and to take it seriously,” the platform said in its July 22 statement.
The company noted that July 20 is a sensitive date—it marks the launch of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong in 1999. Similar interference struck the site on July 20, 2023, resembling tactics long used against Shen Yun Performing Arts and other Falun Gong-related voices.
Documentary Puts Organ Harvesting in Spotlight
This year’s anniversary has also drawn fresh scrutiny because of “Ironclad Irrefutable Evidence,” a 32-episode documentary series from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG). The series, available in Chinese and English, compiles more than a decade of research—secretly recorded phone calls, eyewitness testimony, and data from 41 hospitals—purporting to show state-sanctioned harvesting of organs from living practitioners.
In one recording, a hospital director told investigators, “We might have [the organ] tomorrow,” highlighting how quickly matching organs could be sourced, the organization said. Episodes 23 through 26 cover how the forced organ harvesting was ordered by former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and implicates senior military and political figures.
WOIPFG cited official statistics showing that national liver transplants jumped from 78 in the eight years before 1999 to more than 15,000 in the seven years afterward—a spike the researchers argue would be impossible without involuntary donors. More than one-quarter of emergency liver surgeries reportedly occurred within 72 hours of admission, and some teams performed up to 24 transplants in a day.
By June 2020, the investigation had released 730 phone recordings implicating 891 hospitals and more than 9,500 surgeons involved in or aware of the illicit practice.
Later episodes describe psychological and drug experiments, secret detention facilities likened to concentration camps, and claims that plastinated bodies of murdered practitioners were displayed in exhibitions. The series also revisits the 2001 “Tiananmen Square self-immolation,” labeling it a staged event used to demonize Falun Gong.
US Response and Legislative Push
The seriousness of these accusations is reinforced by statements from U.S. lawmakers and international experts.
“Forced organ harvesting is an atrocity reminiscent of the Nazis, and it’s happening tens of thousands of times every year,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told The Epoch Times, referencing conclusions from the China Tribunal, an independent panel that in 2019 determined that detained Falun Gong practitioners were the primary source of organs for Chinese transplants.
In March, federal agents arrested two men accused of running an illegal Chinese police outpost in New York that allegedly targeted Falun Gong practitioners—evidence, Smith argued, of Beijing’s expanding reach on U.S. soil.
Pattern of Transnational Repression
Gan Jing World said the July 20 attack fits the CCP’s “ongoing playbook of transnational repression” and called on authorities to hold perpetrators accountable. The company said user privacy had not been compromised and vowed to “continue safeguarding freedom of speech with technology innovations.”
As Falun Gong adherents mark 26 years of persecution, both the cyberattack on Gan Jing World and the WOIPFG documentary renewed demands for international scrutiny.
“The full weight of evidence now available should serve as a rallying cry to ‘choose justice and conscience,’” the investigative group said.
For Gan Jing World, the next step is turning evidence over to investigators—and remaining vigilant, it said.
“This is not the first time we have been targeted,” the platform said, “and it may not be the last.”
