False and Fiery Propaganda in China
CCP Stages "Self Immolation" drama in Tienanmen SquareChina was bewildered one morning in late 1971 when it awoke to find that Lin Biao, Chairman Maos trusted successor, had actually been a political swindler, an intriguer, and a man with foreign connections all along.
The Chinese press later said that he had masterminded a scheme to assassinate Mao, but that it had been thwarted, whereupon he tried to escape to the Soviet Union. On the way, they said, his plane crashed. Photos were circulated but could never be verified. All of Lins revolutionary slogans were dropped, rallies were organized, songs were sung, and Party newspapers went to great lengths explaining why the plot of the renegade and traitor had somehow not been uncovered earlier.
No one will ever know what really happened to Lin Biaoit is believed that Mao saw him as a threat and had him liquidatedbut his case is one of many in a history of political stunts enabled by a controlled media environment and relentless propagandizing. Lins story is also an important object lesson in the enigmatic and often deadly world of the Chinese communist propaganda campaign, a form of mass persuasion that persists to this day.
Fast forward 30 years. Its Jan. 31, 2001, a week after Chinese New Years Eve, the biggest occasion in the country. Families are still together, everyone is at home, and after dinner many tune in to the national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), to watch the investigative news program Focus. On this day, in fact, flyers had been distributed around residential buildings urging people to tune in.
Hundreds of millions of viewers were again bewildered to be told that what they thought was a peaceful qigong practiceFalun Gong [also known as Falun Dafa]was actually an evil religion that engaged in acts of self-immolation. The authorities aired a 20-minute-long documentary that had been one week in production, of! suppose d Falun Gong practitioners who had set themselves alight on Jan. 23.
There were numerous and obvious holes in the story: From the logicalif self-immolation were a part of Falun Gong teachings, why was this the first time? To the nonsensicalhow did the number of self-immolators jump from five in the original reports, to seven a week later? To the practicalPhilip Pan of the Washington Post proved at least two participants were not Falun Gong practitioners; the supposed self-immolators were wearing fire-protective clothing; the police quickly rushed to the scene with fire extinguishers, not normally on hand on Tiananmen Square, and others.
But these minor problems did not stop the authorities from pushing forward with their plans.
And their plans were ambitious. The ensuing media campaign put the one against Lin Biao to shame. In the days following the incident there were three, four, and five articles in every issue of the 24-page mouthpiece newspaper Peoples Daily. In the first 18 months of the persecution of Falun Gong that began on July 20, 1999, 966 articles exposing and criticizing Falun Gong were published in the Peoples Daily. In 2001, 530 more were to follow.
Falun Gong, a popular Chinese spiritual practice, was banned and persecuted in China in 1999, in a campaign led by Jiang Zeminbut unlike in previous mass political movements, this one had trouble properly capturing the imagination of an increasingly disinterested public. The immolation changed all that.
And it wasnt limited to Peoples Daily. In researching this article before the 10th anniversary of the largest act of political theater in modern Chinese history, The Epoch Times scoured electronic databases and found that propaganda about the immolation appeared not only in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals, but in national and provincial yearbooks, economic reports, business magazines, hygiene reports, chemistry ar! ticles, retiree publications, elementary school textbooks, teacher training manuals, and just about every corner of the printed word in China during 2001 and in the years following.
The most effective message, however, was communicated through television broadcasts. Specifically, the Party made images of a 12-year-old girls apparently burnt body the centerpiece of the campaign to discredit Falun Gong. Many were convinced. The authenticity of the images was thrown into question, however, when just days after the apparent burning, and having supposedly undergone a tracheotomy, she was filmed singing, which ought to have been impossible. Chinese audiences were not exposed to these contradictions, however.
Peter Zheng, a Falun Gong practitioner now living in Illinois, was in Wuhu City in Anhui Province at the time. They broadcast every day, basically every channel, for a week, speaking conservatively, Zheng said. Other programming stopped, they used this as an excuse. Apart from the immolation they would report other anti-Falun Gong news, confession statements, reports, investigations, murder cases, analysis from all sorts of angles of the [Chinese Communist Party] CCPs reports, all these things.
After the initial saturation of the airwaves the volume of reports diminished, but CCTV continued a steady drumbeat of reports about the immolations and attacking Falun Gong.
In March 2002, NTD Television broadcast the award-winning documentary False Fire analyzing the inconsistencies in the immolations story, and after that Chinas state-run media quieted down according to Sun Yanjun, who was an associate professor of psychology at Capital Normal University at the time.
In China, vigorous outward propagandizing of the Party line always goes along with the repression of alternate voices. In the ca! se of th e immolation, no independent investigation was allowed, no independent access to or cross-examination of the alleged victims, and no critical analysis in any domestic media. Western media reports often simply repeated what official Chinese media said.
Falun Gong practitioners attempt to present an alternative narrative of the incident, by hacking a television satellite and broadcasting a documentary, ended in the capture and murder of six people, including the young radiologist Liu Haibo, who had an electric baton forced into his rectum and was electrocuted to death, as recounted in Ethan Gutmanns detailed mini-history report published in the Weekly Standard.
Next: Persecution Becomes Accepted
The Chinese press later said that he had masterminded a scheme to assassinate Mao, but that it had been thwarted, whereupon he tried to escape to the Soviet Union. On the way, they said, his plane crashed. Photos were circulated but could never be verified. All of Lins revolutionary slogans were dropped, rallies were organized, songs were sung, and Party newspapers went to great lengths explaining why the plot of the renegade and traitor had somehow not been uncovered earlier.
No one will ever know what really happened to Lin Biaoit is believed that Mao saw him as a threat and had him liquidatedbut his case is one of many in a history of political stunts enabled by a controlled media environment and relentless propagandizing. Lins story is also an important object lesson in the enigmatic and often deadly world of the Chinese communist propaganda campaign, a form of mass persuasion that persists to this day.
Focus TV Program
Fast forward 30 years. Its Jan. 31, 2001, a week after Chinese New Years Eve, the biggest occasion in the country. Families are still together, everyone is at home, and after dinner many tune in to the national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), to watch the investigative news program Focus. On this day, in fact, flyers had been distributed around residential buildings urging people to tune in.
Hundreds of millions of viewers were again bewildered to be told that what they thought was a peaceful qigong practiceFalun Gong [also known as Falun Dafa]was actually an evil religion that engaged in acts of self-immolation. The authorities aired a 20-minute-long documentary that had been one week in production, of! suppose d Falun Gong practitioners who had set themselves alight on Jan. 23.
There were numerous and obvious holes in the story: From the logicalif self-immolation were a part of Falun Gong teachings, why was this the first time? To the nonsensicalhow did the number of self-immolators jump from five in the original reports, to seven a week later? To the practicalPhilip Pan of the Washington Post proved at least two participants were not Falun Gong practitioners; the supposed self-immolators were wearing fire-protective clothing; the police quickly rushed to the scene with fire extinguishers, not normally on hand on Tiananmen Square, and others.
Media Onslaught
But these minor problems did not stop the authorities from pushing forward with their plans.
And their plans were ambitious. The ensuing media campaign put the one against Lin Biao to shame. In the days following the incident there were three, four, and five articles in every issue of the 24-page mouthpiece newspaper Peoples Daily. In the first 18 months of the persecution of Falun Gong that began on July 20, 1999, 966 articles exposing and criticizing Falun Gong were published in the Peoples Daily. In 2001, 530 more were to follow.
Falun Gong, a popular Chinese spiritual practice, was banned and persecuted in China in 1999, in a campaign led by Jiang Zeminbut unlike in previous mass political movements, this one had trouble properly capturing the imagination of an increasingly disinterested public. The immolation changed all that.
And it wasnt limited to Peoples Daily. In researching this article before the 10th anniversary of the largest act of political theater in modern Chinese history, The Epoch Times scoured electronic databases and found that propaganda about the immolation appeared not only in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals, but in national and provincial yearbooks, economic reports, business magazines, hygiene reports, chemistry ar! ticles, retiree publications, elementary school textbooks, teacher training manuals, and just about every corner of the printed word in China during 2001 and in the years following.
The most effective message, however, was communicated through television broadcasts. Specifically, the Party made images of a 12-year-old girls apparently burnt body the centerpiece of the campaign to discredit Falun Gong. Many were convinced. The authenticity of the images was thrown into question, however, when just days after the apparent burning, and having supposedly undergone a tracheotomy, she was filmed singing, which ought to have been impossible. Chinese audiences were not exposed to these contradictions, however.
Peter Zheng, a Falun Gong practitioner now living in Illinois, was in Wuhu City in Anhui Province at the time. They broadcast every day, basically every channel, for a week, speaking conservatively, Zheng said. Other programming stopped, they used this as an excuse. Apart from the immolation they would report other anti-Falun Gong news, confession statements, reports, investigations, murder cases, analysis from all sorts of angles of the [Chinese Communist Party] CCPs reports, all these things.
After the initial saturation of the airwaves the volume of reports diminished, but CCTV continued a steady drumbeat of reports about the immolations and attacking Falun Gong.
In March 2002, NTD Television broadcast the award-winning documentary False Fire analyzing the inconsistencies in the immolations story, and after that Chinas state-run media quieted down according to Sun Yanjun, who was an associate professor of psychology at Capital Normal University at the time.
In China, vigorous outward propagandizing of the Party line always goes along with the repression of alternate voices. In the ca! se of th e immolation, no independent investigation was allowed, no independent access to or cross-examination of the alleged victims, and no critical analysis in any domestic media. Western media reports often simply repeated what official Chinese media said.
Falun Gong practitioners attempt to present an alternative narrative of the incident, by hacking a television satellite and broadcasting a documentary, ended in the capture and murder of six people, including the young radiologist Liu Haibo, who had an electric baton forced into his rectum and was electrocuted to death, as recounted in Ethan Gutmanns detailed mini-history report published in the Weekly Standard.
Next: Persecution Becomes Accepted
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