Dear Reader,
My name is John Tang, and I’m the founder and CEO of The Epoch Times. I didn’t set out to publish a newspaper. In 1993, I had no money, but I had something even better. As a young doctoral candidate from China, I had arrived in the United States and discovered what it meant to be free.
I found living in America to be a life-changing experience. For the first time, I could speak freely, but I was saddened to think of people in my home country who would face grave repercussions for simply speaking out about their own government. I felt a calling to do something.
And so in the year 2000, The Epoch Times was born with the purpose of telling the world about the destructiveness of socialism and communism, and specifically, to expose the disinformation and human rights violations of the Chinese Communist Party and how it works to infiltrate other cultures.
From this humble beginning arose a great mission: to create a news source that would bring back the great American legacy of traditional journalism. As a media dedicated to truth, we pledged to report the news factually, honestly, and completely, without a political agenda. Today, we publish in 21 languages across 35 countries—always reporting the facts and upholding the best of what makes us human.
The past 20 years haven’t been easy. In communist China, it’s not uncommon for reporters who criticize the government to simply disappear. In Hong Kong, thugs have started a fire in our printing plant and smashed our presses with sledgehammers, in separate incidents. One of our Hong Kong reporters was recently attacked by another thug wielding a baseball bat. In America, some of our competitors in the mainstream media have attempted to smear us time and again. None of this has stopped us from striving to report the news precisely as it happened, unembellished by our own opinions. In fact, the more we are attacked for reporting truthfully, the stronger we become.
The Epoch Times is a media on a journey to bring traditional journalism back to America, where it is sorely needed, and to a world that is desperate for truth. We have set our goals high, and we know that we can’t accomplish this great mission without you. On behalf of our reporters, writers, editors, and researchers around the world, I invite you to join us on this journey.
In Truth and Tradition,
John Tang