Several CCP media attacked a movement that in Canada, in connection with a mysterious murder, had come under suspicion of being a CCP front.
by Zhao Zhangyong
Last week, Chinese netizens and readers discovered that a spiritual movement was being attacked simultaneously as a xie jiao by a good dozen of Chinese media, with “victims” telling their horrific stories to national TV networks. When this happens, we now know that the ground is being prepared for a police crackdown and the de facto inclusion of the movement in the list of the xie jiao, “heterodox teachings” whose propagation is a crime punished with heavy jail sentences. Yet, in this case the story may be more complicated than usual.
The movement is now called Spiritual Growth (心灵成长) in China, but is known internationally as Create Abundance, and also operates in Canada as Golden Touch. Its founder, Zhang Xinyue, whose real name is Zhang Dali, was born on May 22, 1974, in Jilin city, Jilin Province. She explored several human potential movements active in China, most of them descending more or less directly from the now defunct American organization Lifespring, and by 1999 she had started developing her own coaching technique. In 2008, she founded Create Abundance, which offered workshops in several Chinese provinces.
Compared with Legacy, which is now also being investigated after on August 14 a businesswoman died during one of its trainings, Create Abundance uses a more religious language. The creation of happiness and economic prosperity is sought by removing the after-effects of negative experiences of the past, which is similar to Legacy and many other groups, but Create Abundance promises to achieve this aim through a work on the etheric body, cosmic energy, and the chakras. In their courses, incense is burned, and you can see religious paraphernalia and hear talks about reincarnation. Bitter Winter was told by some who had attended the expensive courses that at one stage participants also learned that Zhang Xinyue is a divine incarnation and has created the synthesis of all the main world’s religions.
Create Abundance was incorporated and duly registered in 2015 as the Beijing Abundance Foundation, despite the fact that Zhang’s niece had just been arrested and accused of trying to smuggle jewelry for her aunt without paying the customs duty (members claim these were trumped-up charges). For several years, Create Abundance was popular among the wealthy, and apparently in good terms with the CCP.
Then, in 2017–18, there were two contradictory developments. On the one hand, in Shanxi province the police cracked down on the local branch of Creating Abundance, claiming that the group was a xie jiao and that a pyramid scheme was at work where Zhang Xinyue, now living in Canada, received huge fees from international mentors or tutors, who in turn franchised local tutors who charged exorbitant money for the courses. On February 24, 2018, the Intermediate People’s Court in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, sentenced to jail terms several mentors of Creating Abundance in the area, which led to negative media publicity and the change of name in China into Spiritual Growth.
Yet, at the same time, as it later emerged, the Canadian branch, Create Abundance International, incorporated in 2014 in British Columbia and with a center in Salt Spring Island, was being investigated for being a possible front for Chinese propaganda and espionage activities, after local residents had told the police that they had seen Chinese men and woman in military outfits with rifles marching and singing in the early morning. Some of the residents had taken pictures. “It was as if China’s People’s Liberation Army had occupied our island,” one resident said. Others asked on social media why the Canadian government had allowed the Chinese military to train on Salt Spring Island. Subsequent investigations revealed that Create Abundance had ties with several groups connected with the United Front and with Chinese propaganda operations in Canada.
Worse was to come. On June 17, 2020, a 41-year-old Chinese woman called Bo Fan called her brother from outside the gate of a luxurious mansion in Surrey, British Columbia, where Zhang Xinyue was rumored to spend time with the Create Abundance elite. When the brother arrived and took her to the hospital, it was too late. She died of multiple injuries and, since it appeared she had been badly beaten, the hospital called the police. After one year, the case of Bo Fan is still unsolved, and the police is extremely cautious in connecting it with Create Abundance. Yet, witnesses told the police and the media that Bo Fan was working for the movement.
So, what is Create Abundance? Another unoffensive spiritual movement the CCP is persecuting, or part of a United Front espionage operation in the West (not only in Canada, considering that the group has centers or organizes initiatives in the U.S. and Europe as well)? In fact, it can be both. One possibility is that Create Abundance was tolerated and even protected in China as long as it agreed to work for the United Front in Canada and perhaps in other countries. We are not suggesting that Create Abundance was established by the CCP as a front. Most probably, it was born as just another Chinese spiritual movement. When it became internationally successful, its founder Zhang Xinyue might have been blackmailed, as the strange episode of the arrest of her niece may indicate, and compelled to work for the United Front.
At one stage, Create Abundance was burned by its excessive visibility, including its early morning military training in Salt Spring Island. When it started being investigated by the Canadian authorities, its usefulness to the CCP came to an end. The crackdown in Shanxi might have been just a warning, but after the Bo Fan case, although nobody was incriminated, Create Abundance became a liability for the United Front and the CCP. The coordinated media attacks last week were a sign that the CCP wants to get rid of the movement.
All this sounds like a spy story, but it is the kind of story the CCP and the United Front easily get involved in. It shows once again how the relationship between the CCP and the groups it labels xie jiao is much more complicated that many may at first sight believe.