(Minghui.org) Many find it difficult to understand why Chinese people have been so heavily brainwashed by the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) propaganda on issues like Falun Gong. Below are two examples that provide a glimpse into the pressure that the CCP puts on people, both in and out of China.

Bi Fujian is a renowned Chinese TV host and journalist. While attending a private party in April, he made sarcastic remarks about Mao Zedong that brought him a world of trouble. After the short video with him making the comments was made available online, within 48 hours all programs he hosted were taken off the air. The shows he hosted resumed later, but with different hosts.

Although Mao Zedong had died over four decades ago and his Cultural Revolution is considered a catastrophe, the CCP forbids public criticism of him.

In another episode, Jack Murphy, a military writer who served as an Airborne Ranger and Special Forces sergeant, published an article on August 7 in Business Insider,entitled, “What it's like to rub shoulders with Chinese student spies.” It's about a political class he took at Columbia University, in which he was in a small discussion group with one Chinese American and two Chinese students.

Out of curiosity, Murphy asked why Falun Gong was persecuted in China. To his surprise, the question was met with stunned silence initially and the Chinese students later switched to other topics.

When Murphy did some research to figure out why the students refused to answer his question, he was surprised by what he discovered, “As someone who served in American special-operations units and who studies these types of units all over the globe, I tend to think I’m pretty savvy on the topic.” “Of course, you don’t know what you don’t know. As it turns out, there is a whole lot I don’t know, especially when it comes to espionage.”

China has intelligence services, such as the Ministry of State Security (MSS), but they are not the same as their equivalents in the West, he wrote in the article. Rather, “China is very good at leveraging their strengths against us, namely by utilizing and mobilizing a nation of over 1 billion people.” “The Chinese are masters at collecting open-source intelligence. They slurp it up, and when they can’t, they steal it — filing it through a unique form of library science that funnels the information to relevant state employees who can make use of it.”

In fact, Chinese students in the West are closely monitored by the Chinese government back home. “The two Chinese students knew that whatever they said in that room would be reported back to the PRC eventually. Neither of them had any idea what the other may or may not say to the MSS or other state security services back home. I, of course, was completely unaware of this.”

Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who defected in June 2006, said there were about one thousand Chinese spies in Australia. He presented evidence to show how these special agents collected detailed information about Falun Gong practitioners.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has controlled Chinese people's minds since it took power more than 60 years ago, and it will continue to do so as long as it exists. More than 212 million Chinese have quit the CCP, but in a country with over one billion people, more withdrawals are needed needed for Chinese to remove the shackles on their minds.