What Kind of Media Do We Need to Battle a Modern Day Trojan War?

Foreword: What Is a "Modern Day Trojan War"? And What is the Stake?

First of all, what is a "modern-day Trojan War"? 

This "modern-day Trojan War" is not about fighting for the "fairest" goddess in the world, but about a battle for the future of humankind between the United States, the free world and a "hidden" force, whose ultimate goal is to destroy humanity. If the latter wins, humankind will be doomed.

Is this claim too far-fetched? Probably not, if we can really see through what has been happening underneath the surface in the past four decades or longer. 

With the future of humankind as the "trophy" for this battle, the "hidden" force has adopted a Trojan War type of ruse to achieve its goal, while the United States and the world may not be aware of it, even until the "hidden" force is very, very close to a complete success. 

How has this happened? What is this "hidden" force? What makes up the "wooden horse" in this modern day Trojan War? And what are inside it? How should the United States fight back when the "wooden horse" is already in the "city"?

In this article, I hope to answer the above questions.

Section 1: A Rising China and Its "Silent Invasion"

On August 18, 2018, President Trump tweeted, "All of the fools that are so focused on looking only at Russia should start also looking in another direction, China." 

In this short tweet lies the answer to our question: What is the "hidden" force? The answer is: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been busy dealing with the aftermath and then the terrorists, after 911. No much attention was paid to China except "engaging" it as a huge future market for western goods and services.

Not many people had realized that the CCP had "inherited" the communist ideology and aspiration to "liberate" the world. Under this circumstance, it was even less possible for people in the United State to think about changing national strategies on China accordingly.

At the same time, after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, when China was ostracized by the West, the then CCP leader Deng Xiaoping made a famous statement: "Observe developments soberly, maintain our position, meet challenges calmly, hide our capacities and bide our time, remain free of ambition, never claim leadership."

Only after three decades did people in the world suddenly realize that they were dealing with a very different China, a "rising" China, a powerful China with an economy second only to the United States, and a "China dream" to "create a community of shared future for mankind." 

It also seems that this China is not stoppable, with many predicting that its economy will overtake the U. S. in no time.

So what happened in between? Although the U. S. might not have a strategy about how to deal with the post-Cold War China, the CCP did have a strategy as to how to launch a modern-day Trojan War to "silently invade" the world.

Today we can say that inside the wooden horse of the "modern-day Trojan War" are the CCP's corrupt ideology, corrupt values and corrupt way of behavior, which aim to control, corrupt and then destroy humankind. 

And the wooden horse the CCP uses to hide its "troops" is actually constituted by many different parts, and we have to outline them one by one.

Outside China

A. Direct media deployment throughout the world as mouthpieces for the CCP. 

This part is very easy to see and understand. While the CCP never allows foreign media to enter China, it has spent billions of dollars to "export" its state-run media to the world. 

For example, a giant sign of Xinhua was seen dominating the Times Square in Manhattan; China Daily's boxes can be seen in many big cities in the United States. China Central Television (CCTV) has entered more than 90 million families in the U. S…

The list can go on and on. All these state-run media directly spread propaganda to the world.

B. Direct and indirect ownership, influence and penetration of overseas Chinese language media 

Several decades ago, there were still many independent Chinese language media outlets outside of China, some in Taiwan and Hong Kong, some scattering in other countries.

However, with the "rise" of China, coupled with the power of money, the "kingdom" of independent media kept shrinking and shrinking, and to an astonishing degree.

Turn Australia into a Red Sea of National Flags

For example, in 2008, before the Olympic Torch was going to reach Canberra, Australian New Express, a Chinese language newspaper and website owned by Chinese-Australian billionaire Chau Chak Wing, openly and proudly announced that they had ordered 1000 Chinese national flags from China, and would transport these flags to Australia at the fastest speed. 

In order to counteract "anti-China" protests from Tibetans and other "anti-China" forces, this paper also launched a campaign called "Support the Sacred Torch, Turning Australia into a Red Sea with Our National Flags".

"In order to make sure that the national flags be given to our  fellow Chinese in Australia before April 25, journalists [from the Australian New Express] rushed around amongst many shops [in Guangzhou, China] that sell flags, expressing their urgent needs for 1000 flags, which are to be donated and passed on to the Australian Chinese to support the Olympic Torch," a report on the Australian New Express published on April 9, 2008 proudly boasted. 

"Through arduous efforts of the [Australian New Express] paper, it was confirmed yesterday that 1000 size No. 4 national flags would be shipped to Australian New Express in a few days and then be passed on to local Chinese."

Sure enough, not only these 1000 flags, but many other more arrived on time, and really turned Canberra into a "sea of red flags" with 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese students from all over Australia bused to Canberra to "defend our sacred torch". 

With dominatingly bigger crowds, the "patriotic" and emotional Chinese students did "win" the "war" in a sense, with a much smaller number of Tibetans, pro-democracy activists and local Australians "drowned" by the red sea. Some even got beaten up by the Chinese students.

Many years later, it was widely reported that Chau Chak Wing was accused of meddling in Australia's politics on behalf of China, and conspired to bribe a prominent United Nations diplomat. 

It was reported that Chau Chak Wing had given more than $4 million to the major parties, and was one of Australia's biggest political donors. 

He was also the honorable president of "Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China", as well as a member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. 

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released a report on "China's Overseas United Front Work" on August 24, 2018, detailing how the CCP's United Front Work Department seeks political interests overseas. The Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China is definitely part of the "United Front" of the CCP. 

This is just one example of how "far-reaching" the CCP's manipulation of overseas media can be.  

"Troops Are Kept a Thousand Days to be Used on One Day"

Another example happened in Hong Kong.

In 2014, while people in Hong Kong were fighting for universal suffrage in the election of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, on October 2, 142 overseas Chinese language media outlets from 46 countries and regions in all five continents jointly published a "Declaration of Defending Hong Kong" to condemn the Hong Kong Occupy Central, a civil disobedience movement, as "an illegal activity" and "big chaos". 

People were amazed to see how "united" these media were, and how fast they could coordinate with each other and then act together. 

This again indicated how far-reaching the CCP's influence was amongst overseas Chinese language media, just as a Chinese idiom has expressed: "Troops are kept a thousand days to be used on one day."

"Small Curses, Big Help"

Another more sinister way of influence and penetration is called "small curses, big help" in Chinese. 

What does this mean? The CCP has "cultivated" some "small curses, big help" overseas Chinese language media outlets and "dissidents". In ordinary times, these media and "dissidents" keep on criticizing the CCP on small or not really important matters. Because of this, people tend to trust them and regard them as trustworthy sources for information. 

However, when issues that will really "hurt" the CCP emerge, these media outlets and "dissidents" will play the role of "big help" for the CCP by discrediting reports, issues or people that truly expose the evil nature of the CCP, and which the CCP really fears.

Because "small curses, big help" media or "dissidents"  have won people's trust, the "help" they can offer can be even greater than CCP's mouthpieces. 

For example, there was once a very prominent Chinese dissident who used to expose the CCP's practice of harvesting executed prisoners' organs. This person had won international fame and respect for his efforts.

To the astonishment of many people, after the Epoch Times and the New Tang Dynasty Television broke the story of CCP's practice of killing people on demand to harvest their organs, a crime "yet to be seen on this planet", this prominent Chinese dissident went so far as to write many individual letters to U.S. congressmen to discredit reports about CCP's live organ harvesting crimes. 

This kind of "small curses, big help" tactics is very hard for people, especially people in the West to tell and know. 

As a result, people fall into the trap that the CCP set for them. In the meantime, the CCP successfully confuses people, diverts people's attention, and makes the world ignore or overlook the real issues.

"Shame on Our Journalist Community!"

People might have problems understanding and believing that even some Chinese language media outlets established by western governments to counter the CCP's propaganda and to promote freedom and democracy,  have also been penetrated and influenced by the CCP to different degrees. 

A relatively high profile case is the "Zhang Danhong Incident" in 2008. 

Zhang Danhong is the vice director of the Chinese language division of the Deutsche Welle, Germany's public international broadcaster funded by the German government. It was set up in 1953, and once played an important role in opening a window to the free world for people whose freedom was deprived of during the cold war period. 

During May to August in 2008, Zhang Danhong publicly defended the CCP's crackdown on Tibetans and its suppression of free speech. She stated, "Some of the websites are blocked (in China), such as ‘Free Tibet' and Falun Gong's website. But the German government also blocks some websites such as child pornography and Neo-Nazism sites."

She also stated that "The CCP's contribution is greater than any other political forces in the world in terms of article 3 of ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights', as China successfully liberated 400 million people from absolute poverty."

Her speech evoked huge public outrage, and demonstrated how far the CCP had gone in terms of penetrating into these western government-owned media. While the CCP might not have the ability to "buy over" the entire media outlet, by influencing people in key positions, its goal can be achieved all the same.

To some attentive observers of overseas Chinese media, what matters for these western government-owned media, such as the Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, and Radio Free Asia, is not what they choose to cover, but what they choose NOT to cover. 

Like those "little curses, big help" media outlets, they may keep on criticizing the CCP's problems all the time. However, they avoid covering or cover very little the really "sensitive" issues that the CCP wants to cover up.

Notably, during a congressional hearing on "Organ Harvesting on Religious and Political Dissidents by the Chinese Communist Party" on September 12, 2012, after many compelling and convincing evidence and testimonies were presented, Dana Rohrabacher, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who chaired the hearing, called out the names of the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and "shamed" them twice: "And yet the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia haven't done any stories about it, yet we have major journalists in this country and countries throughout the West who have not done stories about this. Shame on our journalist community. I am a former journalist. That is how I earned by living before I went into politics. Shame. "

C. Indirect influence and penetration of overseas mainstream media

In a hearing before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission of the U. S. Congress, Sarah Cook, senior research analyst for East Asia of Freedom House, discussed CCP's strategies to influence media narratives in the United States, such as "insinuating state-media content into mainstream media or other existing dissemination channels" and "co-opting or partnering with privately owned media to produce and publish content that serves Beijing's aims". 

For example, the CCP paid to have its own contents to be inserted in prominent U.S. papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

A similar thing happened in Australia as well, with Fairfax Media reaching a deal with China's propaganda arms, resulting in Fairfax Media running China Watch, an eight-page lift-out prepared by the Communist Party's official English-language China Daily, monthly in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and Australian Financial Review.

In November 2015, a Reuters investigation revealed that programming from the state-funded China Radio International (CRI) was appearing on stations in 15 U.S. cities, including Washington DC, via intermediaries of a privately owned media group.

Another notable phenomenon with the mainstream media in the West is also the lack of coverage of the most "sensitive", yet very important issues, due to the CCP's intensive "soft power" efforts, coupled with financial interests. 

In 2006, a Falun Gong practitioner in the United States was invited to appear on a live TV evening news show of a certain U.S. mainstream channel. Before the interview began, she was "kindly" reminded and requested that she avoid talking about the organ harvesting issue during the interview. 

She could talk about the persecution of Falun Gong as much as she liked, but not the organ harvesting issue. The reason given to her was that the audience would be having dinner while watching the news, so it was better that they avoid talking about the "disgusting" organ harvesting issue to avoid affecting people's appetite.

D. Cultural channels including Confucius Institutions

CCP paid cultural exchange programs, such as performing arts troops,  also play a very important role to "advance" CCP's ideology and "soft power" in the West. Among these, the Confucius Institutions worldwide are most "prominent".

Confucius Institutes (CI) are a Chinese language and culture program set up in partnership with foreign educational institutions. Since 2004, CIs have found their way into over 1,600 universities and schools worldwide. 

According to Hanban (Chinese Language Council), which governs CI,  "in 2009, Confucius Institutes/Classrooms around the world offered 9,000 Chinese courses of a multitude of styles, with a total enrollment of 260,000, a 130,000 strong enrollment increase from the previous year. More than 7,500 cultural exchange activities took place, involving the participation of over 3 million reaching double the participation figures of the corresponding period of the previous year."

While on the surface, the CIs are harmless and free. But as an old saying goes, "There's no such thing as a free lunch", why would the CCP fund foreign students when many students in China are too poor to get schooling? 

As a matter of fact, the CI system serves the purpose for the CCP to create a "positive" image that CCP wants for itself. Yet this "positive" image could be deceptive at the same time. 

Little by little, people started to accept a benign China, to impose self-censorship, or become reluctant to talk about things the CCP doesn't like. What are taught in schools are contents created and selected by the CCP. So these CIs will continue to influence the future generations if they are allowed to carry on. 

Although more and more people have realized the sinister nature of the CIs, and the U. S. has banned the Department of Defense from funding the CIs, due to its "free money", and the sheer number of it, the CI system will continue to play an important role in this modern day Trojan War to smuggle the CCP's troops into our cities.

E. People channels: "People Mountain, People Sea" Strategy and Corrupting Western Politicians and Lobbyists

"People mountain, people sea"  is a Chinese expression to describe very large crowds, as large as mountains and seas. While not giving up employing and dispatching a huge number of professional spies to overseas countries, the CCP also adopts a "people mountain, people sea" strategy to turn ordinary Chinese people info informants and useful tools in terms of gathering information, spreading CCP's messages, monitoring overseas communities, reporting back to the CCP, so on and so forth. 

Because of the CCP's absolute control of the Chinese society, this strategy becomes possible as many people's mindsets have been "shaped" into believing that doing what CCP requires them to do is patriotic; or they are just too afraid to refuse their tasks.

As stated in the "China's Overseas United Front Work" report, the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA) "receive guidance from the CCP through Chinese embassies and consulates—governmental ties CSSAs frequently attempt to conceal—and are active in carrying out overseas Chinese work consistent with Beijing's United Front strategy."

As a matter of fact, not only Chinese students and scholars, but virtually every Chinese person who comes overseas with an "official passport" will be given a "talk" by the national security staff to make sure they collect information and report back to their "motherland". 

Even people who have migrated to other countries for many years are also reached out by the CCP's national security staff when they go back to China to visit. 

In one instance, a Chinese woman who has migrated to Los Angeles for over 20 years went back to China and had a small gathering with relatives and close friends at her parents' home in a city in Sichuan province. Shortly afterwards, a relative who worked for the National Security Bureau told her that he had seen photos of her family gathering at the National Security Bureau, and asked her to be careful. She was extremely astonished when learning this, as she couldn't imagine who, among her relatives and close friends, had given the photos to the CCP's National Security Bureau, and why.

The next time when she visited China again,  the national security staff directly sought her out for a talk and asked her to gather information for them. And what they were especially interested in was information about overseas Falun Gong practitioners and activities.

F. Diplomatic Channels

Diplomatic channels are "naturally" part of the CCP's system. One "extreme" example happened during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Aukland, New Zealand, in September 1999. The then CCP head Jiang Zemin personally handed out a book attacking Falun Gong to many participants at the meeting, including President Clinton and other world leaders.

Other "ordinary" and "regular" CCP diplomats around the world work tirelessly to spread CCP's propaganda and messages. Sometimes they go so far as to write to, call and fax every single member of the parliament whom they believe will attend an event that the CCP doesn't like. Sometimes they seek individual politicians for a "talk". And they also make sure that the overseas Chinese communities are informed about the CCP's official lines about things and are under total control. 

The websites of Chinese embassies and consulates throughout the world faithfully act as the CCP's mouthpieces all the time as well. 

G. Internet

Apart from Internet control,  hiring large amounts of fake online "commentators" to "direct" public opinion and defend CCP is another very important tactic. According to a study by Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret Roberts at Harvard University, Chinese government employees generate about 448 million comments every year. A large proportion of government website comments, and about one of every 178 social media posts on commercial sites are fabricated by the government.

These fake commentators, also known as "50 cent party", effectively confuse, distract and deceive the public, and play an important role in this modern day Trojan War.

H. Chinese Market

The Chinese market is a very "unconventional", but very effective "weapon" for the CCP in the this war.  Many western companies, including IT giants, see the Chinese market as a big mine for gold. In order to get access to this big gold mine, they willingly help the CCP with only not censoring the Internet, and but also spreading "positive" messages and creating “customized” censored search engines. for the CCP.  When money talks, sometimes it goes very far.

Inside China

For the above different "parts" of the "wooden horse" to work overseas, tight control inside China is a must as well. To achieve this, the CCP has adopted the following methods:

Media control. Media inside China are almost under 100% control of the CCP to make sure that people only get what the CCP wants them to know. Even in the age of the Internet and social media, unpermitted information will be deleted very quickly, or totally blocked. 

Internet blockade. The CCP spent hundreds of millions to build a "Great Fire Wall" to make sure that Chinese people don't get what the CCP doesn't want them to know.  

Comprehensive "reshaping" Chinese people's view about the world through rewriting textbooks and dictionaries. Literature and artwork, movie, TV, performing arts and many other channels are also ways to achieve the same goal.

Limiting foreign journalists' ability to report from within China, or banning some of them completely.  Foreign correspondents face huge challenges when reporting from China. Sometimes their coverage could bring real danger to their interviewees, if not themselves. So in some instances, in order to avoid this kind of danger, they have to avoid too "sensitive" issues or persons. 

One "small" incident in Sydney could serve as an example of how all these factors work together toward the CCP's misinformation goal.

One day several years ago,  when a train passed a park near the Central Station in Sydney,  several Falun Gong practitioners could be seen doing Falun Gong exercises in a park. A Chinese student on the train said to her mother and aunt who had just come from China to visit her, "Those Falun Gong people get paid $100 per day for doing this here." 

When the passenger who sat opposite her, and who happened to be a Falun Gong practitioner herself,  asked the Chinese student where she had gained this piece of information, the answer was that she heard this from a Chinese consulate staff member, and that everyone within the Chinese community in Sydney said so too.

They were also told that it was either the Central Intelligence of Agency of the United States or the Taiwan government that made this kind of payment to Falun Gong practitioners for them to protest against China.

This kind of saying will easily be discarded as unbelievable by people who know how the western societies work. But a typical Chinese student would willingly believe in it because she was told since childhood that the West was against China, the U. S. and Taiwan government would do anything to overturn the Chinese government. 

She had also been made to believe that Falun Gong was also against China, and that any government in the world could spend money in whichever ways they like, just like what the CCP has been doing in China. 

Sometimes it is very sad to see that even after they come to the free world and have access to free information, many Chinese people are still reading Chinese language media run by the CCP, listening to what the Chinese consulate officials had to say to them, and shutting themselves off from western media reports, etc., as their mindset, their logic, their way of thinking had already been shaped and fixed by the CCP. 

In conclusion,  the CCP's info war is extremely sophisticated, comprehensive and far-reaching. Unlike the Russian hackers, who only make some "noises" and damages on the Internet, and virtually from the outside, the CCP's Modern Day Trojan War is corrupting the West from within and has achieved great success. 

Section 2:  How to Fight Back

Only after 40 years of China's "opening to the outside world", has the world started to realize that "engaging China" was a huge strategic mistake; and that the CCP has taken advantage of the rosy illusions of the world and gone as far as it has.

If the United States and the world don't wake up and adopt serious, vigorous and effective ways to fight back, the mistake and damage would be too great to regret or recover. 

And next, how do we fight back?

The "Force"

The good news is, the "force" is already there, and this "force" is most effective in terms of countering CCP's Trojan War and is what the CCP fears most. 

The sad news is, the force has been fighting alone against the most powerful evil regime with very limited resources and little help from the world. So it is high time we identify this force and rally behind it to win the war.

Back in 2000, a group of Chinese Americans, most of them still students, were acutely pained by the lack of free and independent Chinese language media in the supposedly "free" western society.  Important issues in China were not covered. The world was deceived by the CCP, and mainstream media sometimes could only repeat or re-carry CCP's media contents as they didn't have other information sources. Victims of the largest scale human rights disaster, the persecution of Falun Gong in China, even had problems to have their short articles published in some Chinese language newspapers at the advertisement page as paid content, let alone had reporters cover their plight. 

The Stories

So they started off a Chinese language newspaper and website called Da Ji Yuan in Chinese, meaning the Epoch Times, with virtually no funding, no experiences, but with a strong will and a firm determination to have an independent voice. 

In the following year, in 2001, another group of Chinese Americans started off a Television Station, New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television, in a New York basement with a green screen and a single handycam. 

Many years later, the Epoch Times and NTD would both become properties of the Epoch Media Group. 

The Epoch Times and NTD set themselves apart from day one in that they never shy away from the most sensitive issues, they will never be bought over or bent over by the CCP, they know the nature and the tactics of the CCP well and will never be confused, they stand firm on their principles and are willing to go against the tide to fight for what is good. 

For example, in 2003, the Epoch Times was the first media to systematically and continuously report on SARS, three weeks earlier than all other Chinese language media. 

At that time, it was just before China's political Two Sessions meeting. The authorities were trying very hard to play down the issue and cover up the epidemic.

The Epoch Times reported the deadly virus as important news and published hundreds of news articles. During that period, its online circumvention software usage and Internet traffic almost doubled.

Following the Epoch Times' reports, other Chinese media began to publish related information. With the growing public pressure, the Chinese government was forced to admit to the SARS outbreak in China.

For the international community, the tight information blockade increases the difficulty of understanding the true political and economic situation in China. But for people living in mainland China, true information means life.

In 2004, NTD got satellite over China, broadcasting first independent unencrypted signal into China.

Because of the independent nature the Epoch Times and NTD, the CCP fears and hates them the most, and tries hardest to block them. However, through working with like-minded, world-class scientists, they have been successfully bypassing CCP's "Great Fire Wall", which was constructed with the help of Cisco, costing hundreds of millions. 

As a matter of fact, the circumvention software developed out of the need to bypass CCP's Internet blockade has not only helped countless Chinese Internet users to access overseas websites, but has also become so popular internationally that it played a very important role in the 2009  Iranian Green Movement by enabling the public to communicate and mobilize gathering when the Internet was blocked. 

Many westerners working in China use this software to access their Facebook, Twitter or Gmail accounts as well.

For many Chinese people, they would have never been able to know what the CCP had not allowed them to know if there were no such software or such media as the Epoch Times and NTD.

In 2005, when Eutelsat, a European satellite operator, decided not to renew the contract under which NTD broadcasted to China, due to the pressure of the CCP, numerous Chinese audience  members expressed their anger toward Eutelsat and strong support for NTD, saying that watching NTD had become as important to them as breathing fresh air; and that they couldn't go on with their daily lives without watching NTD.

Many individuals in China even risked their lives and freedom to help people install satellite TV receivers to watch NTD. For people who live in a suppressive environment with no access to free information, independent voices are treasured more dearly.

"Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" and "Tuidang Movement"

In 2004, the Epoch Times launched an editorial series called "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party". For the first time ever, the Communist Party was examined and judged from a realm outside of, and higher than politics. The "Nine Commentaries" squarely pointed out that the Communist Party is an evil specter which attaches itself to Chinese nation and Chinese people. It opposes the universe, and cannot be changed for better. The only way out for the Chinese nation and Chinese people is to get rid of the CCP's possession and to reestablish the Chinese civilization based on respect for human nature and compassion for all. 

For many, the "Nine Commentaries" were like a thunderstorm that "opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind". For decades, after as many as 80 million Chinese people died of unnatural deaths under the CCP's rule, intellectuals and ordinary Chinese people had been struggling to figure out what had been wrong with China, and what was the way out.

"Nine Commentaries" offered a new perception and a way out. And a great spiritual awakening movement followed, with more than 317 million Chinese people publicly denouncing the CCP and its related organizations at the Epoch Times website up to October 21, 2018. The number keeps growing at a speed of dozens of thousands every day.

The Track Record and the Expansion

Because of all these, the CCP has been using all means possible to undermine the Epoch Times and NTD.  Blocking websites, arresting Chinese people who help other people to watch NTD, intimidating advertisers, physically damaging offices, forcing people to become spies and to do damages from within, and even physically attacking a chief IT personnel and taking away his computer, so on and so forth, have all been part of the means adopted.  

However, the Epoch Times and NTD have been standing firm against all odds, and never give in. Their "track record", moral courage, unique analysis, and insights have won them respect and ever-growing readership, audience and influence among mainland Chinese, as well as overseas Chinese communities, including intellectuals, dissidents, and activists. 

In 2004, the Epoch Times launched its English version. Today it is in 21 different languages and 35 countries, including Bulgarian, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, other than Chinese and English.

NTDTV officially became the world's largest Chinese television reporting network, with over 60 bureaus worldwide in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia in 2006. Now with English, Japanese and Korean versions added, NTD consistently ranks among the top 10 digital news and media properties in the world, generating 3.9 billion video views every month, and inspiring over 60 million Facebook fans.

In total, the Epoch Media Group now has over 115 million Facebook fans, and 5 billion video views per month, producing high-quality content, in over 21 languages.

If, like we have stated at the beginning of this article, what are inside the wooden horse of the "modern-day Trojan War" are the CCP's corrupt ideology, corrupt values and corrupt ways of behavior, which aim to control, corrupt and then destroy humankind, then the Epoch Times and NTD are the best force to fight it. This has already been proven by their "track record", especially by the publication of "Nine Commentaries" and later on, two more special series, "The Ultimate Goal of Communism" and  "How The Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World", as well as the global "Tuidang", or Quit the CCP movement. 

No other media have given such thorough and clear analysis of the real nature of the Communism and Chinese Communist Party. The Epoch Times and NTD have helped numerous people see through the CCP for what it really is, and gave up false illusions about "changing the party for the better".

Furthermore, if the "wood horse" used to "smuggle" CCP's troops are mainly media outlets and other channels which spread the deceptive and false information, media outlets such as the Epoch Times and NTD, which "specialize" on revealing the truth and faithfully spreading the truthful information, are the best means to "dissolve" the CCP's wood horse. 

It took the United States and other countries almost four decades to accept a painful and long-denied reality:  four decades of Western engagement have failed to induce critical changes in the domestic and foreign policies of the Chinese Communist Party.

If the voices of the Epoch Times and NTD had been heard more widely, things would have been very different.

However, like the idiom goes, "better late than never".  As the United States and the world have just started to wake up to the reality that the Chinese Communist Party had already had their troops in our town, we still have a long way to go to identify and then drive them out. 

And the most powerful and effective tools we can have are the media outlets such as the Epoch Times and NTD.

10/21/2018