China May be Losing Ground to Separatists

by Antoaneta Bezlova

Beijing residents have gotten used to the reoccurrence of these campaigns, much like they have got used to the return of steamy hot weather in the summer. Yet this year, the propaganda machinery blitz seems to have surpassed everyone's expectations.

For nearly a month now, the Communist Party's commissars have been fighting on three front lines.

In a relentless crusade against Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that was outlawed in July, they are trying to demonize its leader and founder, the U.S.-based Li Hongzhi, who they say threatens to throw the country into social chaos.

Meanwhile, Taiwan's president Lee Teng-hui has been singled out as enemy number one because of his recent call for special "state-to-state" ties between China and Taiwan. These remarks have been described by the Party as another "effort to split the motherland."

Every day the Liberation Army Daily, the flagship of the Chinese army, fires strident assaults on Lee and pledges to crush any separatist attempts.

The third propaganda battle has been going on longer than the first two, but it is missing their political venom.

"It is the 50th anniversary which makes the propaganda people work so hard,"' said one post office clerk, referring to the birthday of Communist China on October 1, a celebration being prepared with much fanfare by the Party.

"It shows they don't want any demonstrations or corruption scandals ahead of the anniversary," adds a social researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

But if the intensity of the campaigns fever is an indication for the durable power of Communist propaganda in China, it also reveals how vulnerable the Party has become over the years of its half-a-century autocratic rule.

On Aug. 23, the state media declared victory over the "last ideological strongholds" of Falun Gong after "weeks-long massive offense." Announced the 'China Daily:' "As skeletons tumble out of his dark closet, the once widely believed Li Hongzhi and his Falun Gong cult have been thoroughly debunked in China."

But many Beijingers think of the propaganda blitz as a failure rather than a triumph.

"People just got enough of their lectures," confessed a university teacher. "It has become so boring and omnipresent like the buzz of a fly."

Since the government announced the ban on the meditative and spiritual movement on Jul 22, the public has been relentlessly educated about what officials call the evil, superstition and the fraud of its exiled leader Li.

In China, Falun Gong has been compared to infamous cults like the Aum Shinri Kyo in Japan and the Branch Davidians in Texas, in the United States.

"The Party doesn't want to admit the only crime of Falun Gong they care about is the demonstrations on April 25 outside Zhongnanhai," said a cab driver who gave his name like Huang.

"It scared them out of their wits."

That day, 10,000 members surrounded Zhongnanhai, home of top Communist Party leaders, to demand official recognition for their movement, in the biggest public protest in Beijing since the student-led movement for democracy in 1989.

The protest reportedly enraged Party chief Jiang Zemin, who appeared to have had no prior knowledge of the demonstration, and provoked him to order a probe into the movement which three months later resulted in its official banning.

If this week marks the end of a month-long defamation of Falun Gong, 'The Three Stresses' campaign against corruption is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. And there is a hefty reason behind it.

"The Three Stresses" campaign, initiated personally by Jiang, might have helped auditors to uncover the rot. But whether it would help the Party to halt the spread of disease of corruption, remains to be seen.

Four years ago Jiang warned that corruption was a virus that threatened to destroy the whole Party.

But if there is a propaganda-orchestrated campaign that strikes the desired note with Beijing folk, then it is the anti-Taiwan drive.

Chinese leaders have viewed Taiwan as a breakaway province since the Nationalist forces retreated to the island in 1949 after being defeated by the Communist armies of Mao Zedong. They have made clear they will not tolerate what they regard as a lurch toward independence represented by Lee's recent remarks.

Last week, China Business Times declared the war with Taiwan was "imminent" while other state media had said the mainland could conquer the island in four to five days. And what about Taiwan's advanced military weaponry?

"Taiwan is too small to come and fight China," asserted Xiao Jun who sells China Business Times on the street. "Newspapers say our army is much stronger even without their American guns and I think it is true."