The Epoch Times

By Mu Qing
Epoch Times Staff

Wang Shaojiu, known by the English name of Joe Wang, the executive of an independent Chinese television station, received a surprising phone call yesterday: from an agent with the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign intelligence agency.

The intelligence agent, from the Ministry of State Security, was in the house of Wang’s father, in Anhui Province. The call was a statement from the MSS that Wang had better be careful about his activities in the United States, and lay off criticizing the Party, given that the communists have no trouble harassing his family.

Wang is the president of the Canadian branch of New Tang Dynasty, an overseas Chinese broadcaster that regularly reports on human rights abuses and political strife in communist China. The MSS is the Communist Party’s foreign intelligence agency, whose job it is to collect information on overseas dissidents and others that the Communist Party considers to be its enemies.

He thinks the telephone call was an attempt at intimidation. “People from the National Security know my cell phone number. They could have called me directly, but instead they reached me through my brother and my family. This is clearly a threat,” he said.

“The Communist Party wants to silence New Tang Dynasty Television. Even though that is impossible, the officials who are under the regime still try to,” he said.

“During the conversation, the main message was that I had to put off criticism of the Chinese Communist Party broadcast [in news reports] by New Tang Dynasty Television,” Wang said.

“When truth is told both in China and outside of China, the Chinese people will question the Chinese Communist’s power. This is why the National Security Department called me during this sensitive time period,” Wang added.

He said he was not deterred, and instead tried to turn the tables on the interlocutor. “I said to him that if you are Chinese and you still have a conscience, you should quit from the Communist Party,” Wang said. “He listened to me, and did not say a word.”

NTD Television and its media partner, The Epoch Times, have in the past six months reported closely on the unfolding political scandal in the Chinese Communist Party, including a series of insider leaks revealing extensive crimes committed by Party officials, including the widespread, live organ harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, which ousted official Bo Xilai was involved in.

“I told him that [curtailing reportage] is not going to happen,” Wang said. “The Party does not want the Chinese people to watch NTD Television. But NTD Television will keep on reporting about what is truly happening in China.”

Read the original Chinese article.

Original article in English