Analysis of the Chinese Communist Party's Strategy of Producing Slander and Propaganda in a Sealed Off Environment

At the end of December 2004, the Xinhua News Agency, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictatorship, launched a slanderous attack on articles published on the Chinese version of the Falun Gong website Clearwisdom.net describing the torture of practitioner Liao Yuanhua in Fanjiatai Prison.

No matter how skillful Jiang Zemin's group and the CCP have become in fabricating propaganda, when they produce new lies, people always have the same feeling: "Here it comes again." This is not only because of the stereotypical expressions used in the lies, but also because they fabricate lies in a sealed off environment, which is of the same nature as the lies themselves. The sealed off environment has been an important guarantee of safety for Jiang's group and the CCP in creating falsehoods and this has been most thoroughly demonstrated in their slandering and framing of Falun Gong for the past few years.

1. The sealed off production environment

All persons involved in creating lies--from the program producer, reporter, broadcaster to those directly concerned, from interviewees to their family members-- all are under the control of the CCP for their personal safety, their life, work, education and their future, and their only hope is to cooperate with the CCP. This is the essential feature of the sealed off environment

Cooking up slanderous news for Jiang's group and the CCP is regarded as a political task that is pressed down from level to level, and the people involved are all forced to make a choice between their conscience and their future personal benefits. Since the persecution of Falun Gong began, in order to attack Falun Gong the media has created a variety of characters and portrayed them as "committing suicide" or "killing people," etc. The general population has no access to these people; even if they could be contacted, what would you expect them to say when they and their families are all under the grip of the CCP?

In fact, the CCP does not even deny the existence of torture under its control. China's Justice Department made an appeal in 2004 calling for those concerned to investigate and deal with human rights violation cases due to inquisition by torture. Chen Yunsheng, a PhD degree supervisor at the Institute of Law, China's Academy of Social Sciences, after many years of investigation, acknowledges in his book Towards Human Rights and Ruling by Law - Anti-torture Analysis, that torture in China exists, and is often used as a means of extorting confessions. He further points out that the 13 severe forms of torture include brutal beating, hanging up and beating, cuffing hands behind the back, burning with a hot iron, electric shocking, half squatting, "dog biting", burning with cigarettes, kicking, poking private parts with a wooden stick, false execution by shooting, force-feeding human excrement and urine, and humiliation.

Labeled as the "No. 1 enemy" of Jiang's group and the CCP, Falun Gong practitioners are routinely subjected to brutal tortures in prison for upholding their beliefs. Apart from torture, Jiang's group and the CCP also adopt the policy of implication, wherein they force Falun Gong practitioners' work units and their family members as well as all other sectors of society to exert pressure on the practitioners. What credibility does news have when it is cooked up in such a sealed off environment?

2. Sealed off environment for public opinion

Jiang's group and the CCP suppress all dissenting voices, depriving the other side of any chance to speak by blocking the Internet, strictly searching for sites producing materials that clarify the truth about Falun Gong, and handing out heavy sentences to those who tap into the TV system to broadcast the truth. They regard all those who are involved in such activities as "major cases" that must be dealt with ruthlessly.

Since July of 1999 when Jiang's group started the persecution of Falun Gong, the Jiang group and the CCP's lifeline in continuing the persecution has depended on tightly blocking the truth about Falun Gong. Overseas Falun Gong websites are blocked, emails are filtered and personal letters intercepted and withheld. Falun Gong television programs and radio signals are interfered with and material production sites in Mainland China that produce Falun Gong related flyers are key targets of the CCP's attack. Falun Gong practitioners are not allowed to appeal or distribute truth-clarifying materials. Jiang's group and the CCP have exhausted their tactics in stopping Falun Gong practitioners from spreading the truth to people. Left with no other alternative, Falun Gong practitioners had to tap into the TV system to help the Chinese people get to know the truth. Jiang's group was furious and went so far as to order the police to "kill them without pardon." Under such orders, a number of people involved in the tapping were killed and the rest were sentenced to long terms in prison.

The web-magazine "Democracy Newsletter" published a report on the 22nd of November in 2004, in which the reporter recalled, "As usual, I turned on the TV after a walk, and I was shocked to see a scene [clarifying] the 'Tiananmen self-immolation' on a Beijing TV channel. By instinct, I knew that Falun Gong practitioners had once again successfully tapped into the TV system. The program went on for two to three minutes before it was abruptly cut off. However, the impact from these few minutes was unprecedented and beyond description."

This is the power of truth. Why is the CCP so frightened of the truth being spread and known to people? The reason is that the persecution of Falun Gong is completely based on lies, and to the CCP, the truth is the equivalent of atomic bombs exploding in their faces.

3. Sealed off brainwashing environment

With regard to the brainwashing by Jiang's group and the CCP, on the one hand it targets the public at large. In addition to the unscrupulous spread of lies through the mass media, the party and the youth league also arrange slanderous TV programs, speeches, exhibitions and forums at schools, government departments and various sectors in China as well among overseas Chinese social groups. During such activities, people are forced to write their understandings, to participate in political activities and declare their stance. On the other hand, it targets victims of the persecution. They abduct the victims to "study-classes" and "reform-classes" and force them to read slanderous materials, and at the same time, organize people specially assigned to attack the victims. The victims are deprived of sleep for long periods of time and as a result, they become confused and their thinking is disordered. They are confused about truth and falsehood and are brainwashed under high pressure. If they refuse to be brainwashed they will be tortured, fined and sentenced to forced labor or imprisonment. Even their family members are harassed and are allowed no peace.

Some of the people who are "Reformed" by the brainwashing are arranged by the CCP to go to the sealed off environment to produce "news", which is then transmitted to the masses via newspapers and TV in the sealed off environment for public opinion. These lies thus become the product of the brainwashing and continue to poison the minds of others.

4. Sealed off environment for thought

As for the people, under the circumstances where they have no way of knowing the truth, they are fed with lies and hatred year-in and year-out, and over a long period of time, form a certain mindset whether they trust or distrust the CCP; they become close-minded and reject the desire to learn the truth.

Some people claim that they believe neither the CCP nor Falun Gong, but when they talk about Falun Gong, their mind is full of lies made up by the CCP. This is because the lies of the CCP permeate all the mass media and people have become accustomed to finding out information from such media (the only media available to them.) Therefore, when the CCP slanders Falun Gong, people still consume the lies, even while thinking that they will not be influenced by the deceitful media. This close-minded way of thinking has allowed people to be influenced by the slanderous propaganda of the CCP for the last few years .Yet they still do not think that they are "being interfered" with, and when they receive a few e-mails clarifying the truth or watch a few minutes of programs that tapped into the TV systems, they find it very hard to accept.

Since the onset of economic reforms, people feel that they now have a lot more freedom and a lot more contact and correspondence with the outside world. The CCP also reports some negative news in society from time to time. This gives people the false impression that the media has become "objective" and "fair." Consequently, people become more likely to believe the slanderous propaganda of the CCP against a particular group or an incident. In reality, Jiang's group and the CCP tightly filter what people are allowed to know and what they aren't allowed to know. They work out how to report negative news so that it can be used by the CCP for their own interest and how to report sudden incidents along the same line as Xinhua News Agency, etc. However, outwardly, they create a "relaxed" false image so the people cannot feel the adverse situation of the group being persecuted. The targeted group of the CCP's attack thus becomes isolated and their situation becomes even worse. The so-called "open information" in Mainland China is in fact completely closed, and it is under the total control of the CCP behind the scenes. This is precisely the evilness of the artifice of the CCP in cooking up lies.

Any small opening in this sealed off system will be a fatal blow to the lies of the Jiang group and the CCP. Such an opening is provided by the numerous anti-torture exhibits held overseas that are based on information and personal experiences of Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China. These exhibits have powerfully exposed the human rights abuses by Jiang's group and the CCP in their persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.