New Report Exposes Chinese Communist Party’s Platform Manipulation to Attack Shen Yun

Tim Pool, the host of the wildly popular TimCast show on YouTube who boasts over 4 million subscribers and 3 billion views between his three channels, recently reveaeld that the Chinese Communist Party pays off influencers to push their narrative, such as attacking the Chinese religious group Falon Gong and Shen Yun, a entertainment group affiliated with it.

During an episode of his show, Pool shared the story of how they unsuccessfully tried to recruit him, an explosive revelation which largely went under the radar. 

Pool revealed that the CCP has a task force devoted to attacking Falon Gong, telling his audience that “The Falon Gong people were handing out flyers and stuff, and it’s funny because China started hiring YouTubers. They offered – I’m pretty sure I got offered this at one point – they said they’d give me $200 to post a video to my YouTube channel.” 

“It was a video of a white dude complaining about this group. And I’m thinking ‘I’m not posting this to my channel.’ But a lot of people were like, ‘two hundred bucks, I’m gonna take it.’”  

Watch for yourself in the video below:

Joshua Philipp, the host of the show “Crossroads,” had a similar story, specific to how the CCP was boosting the NY Times’ recent hit pieces on Shen Yun. 

For background; since August 2024 The New York Times has ramped up attacks on Shen Yun Performing Arts, a renowned organization dedicated to reviving traditional Chinese culture before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime took over, uprooting traditional culture, and began violently silencing dissent. The frequency of the hit pieces borders on an obsession with the group with the Times publishing ten hit pieces on the topic within just the past six months.

These pieces, authored by the so-called “investigative reporter” Nicole Hong and co-author Michael Rothfeld, allege mistreatment of performers and financial improprieties within Shen Yun. Over 60% of her articles since August have been on the sole topic of trying to discredit Shen Yun. Performers quoted in their articles as individuals speaking out against Shen Yun have in turn spoken out to discredit the Times’ shoddy reporting. 

Interestingly enough, Hong’s father is a visiting professor at the CCP-affiliated Zhejiang University and Jiangxi Normal University in China. The former is a public university affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education, while the latter is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the communist Jiangxi Provincial Government.  Meanwhile Rothfeld was a member of the first cultural delegation from the United States to the People’s Republic of China.

It would be shocking if they didn’t have any pro-CCP bias. 

As Phillip explained:

It turns out, a network of thousands of CCP linked accounts – fake accounts, some of them may be operated by Chinese spies on the internet, were promoting the New York Times. The New York Times was writing hit pieces on Shen Yuan Performing Arts, which the CCP is targeting. As a result, Shen Yun got targeted with bomb threats and death threats, but the New York Times is not covering that. Instead, they’re using these hit pieces targeting Shen Yun doing the exact thing the CCP wants, and then the Chinese Communist Party linked accounts are promoting the New York Times articles. Thousands of these fake accounts tied to the CCP. Some of them have now been removed by X. This is confirmed our investigation has shown. 

According to the report that Phillip is referencing, over the past month, Twitter/X has removed thousands of accounts suspected of being linked to the CCP. These accounts were primarily used to promote articles from The New York Times that criticized Shen Yun, which showcases traditional Chinese culture and exposes CCP human rights abuses. One Chinese-language article attacking Shen Yun became the most shared New York Times piece on X in over a year, amplified by the banned fake accounts.

Cybersecurity experts said the activity resembles a nation-state automated bot attack. X has confirmed it removes millions of accounts weekly for spam and manipulation violations, including these. Every one of the ten articles the Times has pumped out to attack Shen Yun has been artificially promoted by CCP bots. Their motivation is Shen Yun’s connection to Falun Gong, a group they targeted for destruction in 1999. The CCP has targeted the Falon Gang specifically since 1999 with their campaign to “eradicate” (their phrasing) the religion to maintain state atheism. China has been documented to have detained practitioners for “reeducation through labor” (i.e. slavery), has tortured 2,000 to death as of 2009, and has killed 65,000 to harvest their organs from 2000-2008 alone. 

Whistleblowers with ties to CCP security confirmed a 2022 campaign launched by Xi Jinping to discredit Falun Gong overseas, using Western media and social media platforms like X. The New York Times articles align with this effort.

Data analysis revealed 80% of accounts sharing these articles had zero followers, indicative of bot activity. Signs of inauthenticity included repetitive posts across accounts, and crude anti-Falun Gong content mirroring CCP propaganda. Some accounts, active since 2019, shifted to exclusively anti-Falun Gong posts over time, often using stolen or AI-generated profile images. 

New bot accounts continue to emerge, leveraging AI to create believable profiles and amplify content efficiently. Even accounts with over 10,000 followers showed inauthentic behavior, often hijacked, purchased, or repurposed from older, dormant profiles. This operation reflects a bold escalation, with the CCP increasingly operating openly rather than in the shadows, raising significant concerns about foreign influence on American platforms.