August 26, 1999	atimes.com

China Propaganda buzzes like a fly in Beijing By Antoaneta Bezlova BEIJING - During 50 years of communist rule the Chinese capital has seen many heavy-handed political campaigns come and go. Beijing residents have grown used to the recurrence of these campaigns. Yet this year, the propaganda blitz has surpassed everyone's expectations. For nearly a month now, the Communist Party's commissars have been fighting on three fronts. 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 US-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'' relations 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, flagship newspaper of the Chinese army, fires strident barrages at Lee and pledges to crush any separatist attempts. The third propaganda battle has been going on longer than the other two, but it is lacking their political venom. For months now, Beijing's civil servants have been attending lengthy indoctrination sessions called San Jiang, or ''The Three Stresses'', in which they are asked to denounce pervasive corruption amid party ranks and, as President Jiang Zemin put it, ''talk more about politics''. ''It is the 50th anniversary which makes the propaganda people work so hard,'' says one post office clerk, referring to the birthday of Communist China on October 1, a celebration being prepared with much fanfare by the party. Adds a social researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ''It shows they don't want any demonstrations or corruption scandals ahead of the anniversary.'' But if the intensity of the campaigns is an indication of the durable power of propaganda in China, it also reveals how vulnerable the party has become during its half a century of autocratic rule. On August 23, the state media declared victory over the ''last ideological strongholds'' of Falun Gong after a ''weeks-long massive offense''. Announced the China Daily newspaper: ''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 see the propaganda blitz as a failure rather than a triumph. ''People just had enough of their lectures,'' confesses 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 Falun Gong movement on July 22, the public has been relentlessly educated about what officials call the evil, superstition and fraud of leader Li. '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. ''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. It was 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 resulted in its official banning. If this week marks the end of the month-long defamation of Falun Gong, The Three Stresses campaign against corruption is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. And there is a compelling reason behind it. Last week, Auditor-General Li Jianhua shocked the public by announcing that 117.4 billion yuan ($14 billion) of government funds had been misused in the first half of 1999. The amount is equal to a quarter of the central government's revenue, and seven times the fraud the auditor-general admitted to finding in all of 1998. The Three Stresses campaign, initiated personally by Jiang, might have helped auditors to uncover the rot. But whether it will help the party to halt the spread of corruption remains to be seen. (Inter Press Service)

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