Falun Dafa News (Austria): A country choked by propaganda

The board of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced at the end of last year that it had issued nine new digital channels to TV stations of the People’s Republic of China. Some of the Canadian media, along with various members of Parliament openly disagreed with the CRTC’s decision because the same stations, which are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are known to spread slander and hate propaganda against Falun Gong as well as other groups persecuted by the regime.

The media in the People’s Republic of China have always been a mere propaganda organ for the CCP. However, the CCP has now taken this to new heights. One type of essential media outlets, such as the “Central Chinese Television” (CCTV) or the “People’s Daily” are openly lead and directed by the Party. A second type is subject to a sort of dual management, where a certain government office of an official institute serves as a figurehead, in order to conceal that the Party is really pulling the strings. All other media outlets are strictly censored by state agencies that are in turn supervised by Party officials. They successfully intercept access to undesirable Internet websites (especially those containing keywords like “Falun Gong”, “Tibet”, or “democratic movement”. This is sometimes done with the help of Microsoft or Google. This enormous effort serves solely to legitimise the CCP and its machinations in the eyes of their own people.

It is also the reason why the brutal persecution of Falun Gong has been able to continue unabated for almost seven years. The systematic brainwashing through the media, the constant indoctrination with the same, stereotypical slander creates the necessary acceptance amongst the population. We will only mention the staged ‘self-immolation’ on Tiananmen Square, which was turned into a recurring propaganda theme to demonise Falun Gong in China. It is the same approach that was used during the Third Reich leading up to the holocaust, and by Milosevic during the Balkan wars in order to justify his ethnic cleansing.

However, this approach has other, far-reaching ramifications: very little news ever get out of China without first having been censored by the official state news agency Xinhua, making it difficult for the Western media to get an objective impression about events in China. Thus, the so-called ‘self-immolation’ was initially accepted in the absence of more accurate information. “Currently, there are more than ten million Chinese nationals living overseas and Chinese students who study abroad” said the Xinhua controlled “think tank for efficient propaganda abroad”. “Foreigners learn about China mainly through Chinese residing abroad. For this reason, Chinese citizens abroad are our main tool to build bridges and to rapidly spread propaganda.” “The main target of our propaganda abroad have to be the middle and upper classes of other nations, including politicians, businessmen and intellectuals because they are the ones controlling the political as well as economical powers, they influence politics and public opinion. In particular, we should become friends with the foreign media moguls. We should maintain good relations with them and spread our propaganda with their help.”