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In Princeton Junction, a Chinese dissident faces harassment as part of a disinformation campaign by a billionaire with close ties to Steve Bannon

Protesters on Tuesday in Princeton Junction.

Chinese dissident Teng Biao was at home in his quiet neighborhood in Princeton Junction on Tuesday teaching a course online when a group of more than 15 people lined up outside his house, carrying posters, shouting slogans, and calling him an agent and spy of the Chinese government.

“Who planted the virus? The virus is a biological weapon made by the Chinese Communist Party,” one protester said. Another then falsely claimed that Teng Biao helped the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spread the coronavirus in the United States.

Protesters did not want to give their names, and many shielded their faces from photographs. Instead, they referred people to the conservative Chinese media websites GTV Media and G News. The sites are run by Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and former Trump strategist and far-right operative Steve Bannon.

Teng Biao, who has lived in Princeton Junction since 2015, is the latest Chinese dissident to be targeted by Guo Wengui. Teng Biao has been critical of both President Donald Trump and GuoWengui in articles and social media posts. Dissidents who have criticized the government of China have also been harassed in California, Virginia, Texas, and other states in recent months. The incidents began in the fall after Guo Wengui called on his followers to “eliminate traitors in the world” saying in a video naming some people, “Let’s get started, let’s finish with these traitors first.” It is unclear whether the protesters actually believe Guo Wengui’s claims. Some people speculate that the protesters are paid for their efforts.

Supporters of Guo Wengui first showed up at the home of Wu Jianmin, a Chinese democracy activist in Southern California, four times in September and early October. Wu Jianmin told a reporter for Foreign Policy that they parked outside his house on the curb and shouted obscenities.

Also in September, about 20 people surrounded the house of Guo Baosheng, a critic of the Chinese government who lives in Virginia. He told a reporter from Axios that people held anti-CCP signs, took photos of him, and waved flags of the New Federal State of China, an anti-CCP movement spearheaded by Guo Wengui and Bannon. After Guo Baosheng successfully filed a protective order, the protesters stopped coming to his house.

Then in October, Bob Fu, a former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement and a Chinese American pastor in Midland, Texas who supports Christians in China who are facing repression, had to be taken into protective custody after dozens of people protested outside his house for weeks. Lawyers for the pastor filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Midland last month alleging that Guo Wengui and his associates unlawfully targeted him through online death threats and protests. The lawsuit claims that Guo Wengui has orchestrated a campaign of character assassination to silence Pastor Fu and stop his work to promote religious freedom and human rights in China.

“Although claiming to support the Chinese pro-democracy movement, Guo employs his vast legal, financial, and corporate resources, together with his robust social media presence, to systematically target pro-democracy and pro-religious freedom activists in the Chinese American community,” the lawsuit says. “Since 2018, Guo has attacked Chinese human rights activists and bona fide Chinese Communist Party dissidents in the United States.”

Now for the third day in a row the first week of December, the group has been harassing Teng Biao and his family, shouting out insults from his street in Princeton Junction.

These recent actions of Guo Wengui and his followers have drawn the attention of the FBI and rebukes from Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. They have also generated lots of speculation about what Guo Wengui is really up to.

Guo Wengui, 40, is also known as Guo Wen Gui, Guo Haoyun, Miles Guo, and Miles Kwok. He left China in 2015 after being accused of corruption, bribery, money laundering, and other offenses – all claims he has denied. The former real estate tycoon and owner of Beijing Zenith Holdings now lives in a penthouse on Fifth Avenue in New York and says he is a member of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. He recently launched his new online media ventures with Steve Bannon, who was arrested while on Guo Wengui’s $35 million yacht in August. The Wall Street Journal reported that the pair’s GTV Media Group, which raised more than $300 million in a private offering this spring, is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A self-described whistleblower, Guo Wengui says he is “the one man who single-handedly challenged the CCP and exposed the CCP’s building of an intelligence network in the United States and other countries.”

But his media outlets have been used as platforms to spread a broad range of misinformation, including conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus and accusations against Hunter Biden. As recently as this week, the websites featured numerous stories claiming election fraud in the U.S. The sites refer to the coronavirus as “the CCP virus.” Guo Wengui claims in several videos that the Chinese Communist Party rigged the U.S. election and manipulated the media. He also makes the false claim that “vaccines for the virus are all bullshit,” and characterizes the Black Lives Matter movement as violent, saying if Trump loses the election people will be captured and killed, and the U.S. will become the next Hong Kong. He claims with no evidence that “big tech shifted six million votes” in the election, and he appears to buy into bogus QAnon conspiracy theories alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles tied to the Democrats is running a global child sex-trafficking ring.

Twitter has suspended his account, @kwokmiles, which had more than half a million followers. His media sites ask for donations through his Rule of Law Foundation, but a visit to the site Wednesday showed that the donate button for PayPal has been disabled.

Princeton Junction resident and law professor Teng Biao. Source: Twitter.

Teng Biao is no stranger to retaliation by Guo Wengui. Over the past few years, he has been a vocal critic of both Donald Trump and Guo Wengui. An internationally recognized human rights activist and lawyer who earned his doctorate in law from Peking University and fled China with his family in 2014, he co-founded the Open Constitution Initiative and was the president and founder of China Against the Death Penalty. He is currently a professor at Hunter College and has taught at Yale Law SchooI, Harvard Law School, New York University, and the Institute for Advanced Study.

In February of 2018, Guo Wengui filed a lawsuit against Teng Biao in the U.S. District Court in Trenton, alleging that Teng Biao defamed him in a 2017 article that was critical of Guo Wengui, and in social media posts. Even though Teng Biao himself is a dissident, the lawsuit claimed that he was paid by the Chinese government to defame Guo Wengui. In court documents, Teng Biao said he only cited factual information and information reported in major media outlets. The case was dismissed by Judge Michael Shipp in September, with the judge citing a lack of jurisdiction in the case.

Planet Princeton attempted to reach out to Guo Wengui for comment about the lawsuit and the protests but did not receive a response to emails sent to him at his online media outlets or foundation email address.

In an interview with Planet Princeton on Tuesday, Teng Biao said the protest are retaliation against him and other dissidents. The protests defy logic, he said, given that the people who are targets are in fact dissidents who had to flee China. “He dispatched these mobs to harass me and others. It’s ridiculous how these people have been brainwashed,” he said. “Because of my human rights work in China, I was kidnapped, detained, and tortured, and now I live in New Jersey in exile.”

Teng Biao said some of the people who believe Guo Wengui’s propaganda are also angry at him because he has been critical of Donald Trump. Many dissidents support Donald Trump because of his tough talk on China and believe he will be the “strong man” they have been waiting for who will take down the Chinese Communist Party.

“I’m the dissident of dissidents because I am critical of Trump,” Teng Biao said. “Donald Trump doesn’t care about human rights or democracy in China. He is a threat to American constitutional democracy — that’s the major reason I oppose him. Those people hope Trump can help overthrow the Chinese government. That, of course, is wishful thinking. Donald Trump didn’t do that and is not willing to do that.”

Teng Biao pointed out that Trump made remarks in favor of dictators and called Xi Jinping, president of China, the greatest leader in Chinese history. Trump called the democracy movements in China and Hong Kong “riots”, and told the Chinese government to keep building concentration camps for millions of Uighur Muslims.

“His remarks and behavior conflict with human rights,” Teng Biao said.

Footage of the protesters in Princeton Junction on Tuesday.