January 22, 2005

Laurent Fievet/AFP/Getty Images

Members of the Falun Gong stage a sit-in protest of the ongoing persecution of the group in Mainland China outside the Hong Kong Art Center, November 15, 2004. The CCP has begun another propaganda campaign defaming Falun Gong to divert attention from Zhao Ziyang's death.

The death of China's previous General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang, is bothersome to the Communist dictatorship and has driven the Party to take pains to deal with the situation. It is employing Internet police to quickly remove postings mentioning Zhao, then, prohibiting people from publicly mourning Zhao's death, while at the same time also getting ready to "crack-down on anti-revolutionaries."

It is obvious that the one-party dictatorship has "learned lessons" from the May-fourth and the 1989 student movements, and has constantly "enhanced their power of political control." These measures, however, are apparently not sufficient for the party bosses, because the great contributions made by the General Secretary as well as the Communist reign of terror are still topics that people talk about. So just as expected, the Chinese Communist Party is starting a new propaganda campaign and is sparing no effort to defame Falun Gong. It is replaying their old hoax of the "Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident" to place "exposing and denouncing Falun Gong" in the national spotlight.

By playing this political game, the Party expects to divert the nation's attention from Zhao's death and any after-effects. It is merely using its usual trick: whenever the Party feels its political power is threatened, it tries to incite "anti-Taiwan-independence" sentiment among its nationals to divert people's attention. This tactic has been quite effective in the past. But, it was ineffectual when the Party dished out an "anti-secession law." So the Party had to find a different scapegoat and so "Falun Gong," an issue that has been unfailingly used for this purpose, was put in the spotlight again.

An examination of each of the inland "gateway commercial websites" will show that all of these websites are merely concubines of the Chinese Communist Party. I just read an article from Sina news that said: "Chinese and foreign reporters conducted a follow-up interview with the Falun Gong participants of Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident." When I clicked on the link, a tremendous number of reports about Falun Gong jumped onto the screen. Among them were articles published a year ago, and the recently cooked-up ones to alleviate the "Ziyang" crisis. The articles were "reports" about the "actors" who were trained by the Chinese Communist party to play Falun Gong "victims." In addition, each one of these articles quoted the "actors" as saying, "Thanks to the government for helping me break away from Falun Gong."

However, the Party did not stop there. To add credibility to the reports, it allowed reporters from Hong Kong and the United States to join the interviews. We, however, did not see any questions from the foreign reporters, or responses from the "victims." After the GDP, the biggest political capital the Chinese Communist party can use is the lies about Falun Gong. The third day after Ziyang passed away, reports began to surface that would "expose and denounce Falun Gong." This is the position that the two leaders, Hu and Wen, have chosen after Ziyang's death. As for those who still hope the fifth generation of the Communist dictatorship will restore justice for Ziyang, we wonder how they feel about the possibility now.

Ziyang passed away just as the spring festival is drawing near. The timing is unfortunate for the Communist dictatorship. Currently, an increase in train fare has been condemned across the country. If the government continues to remain silent about Ziyang's death, it may cause even more civil resentment. Yet, the issue of raising the train fare is, after all, different from that of Falun Gong, because the dictatorship can still use "Falun Gong" as its pretext to win a "breathing spell" while raising the train fare is plainly taking money out of people's pockets.

As unrest was getting out of hand, a section chief was sent to try to convince the public that raising the fare was necessary. Unfortunately, he told people that raising the fare was caused by market forces, rather than "looting a burning house," adding that air fares would also be going up soon.

The Communist dictatorship must have forgotten a fact: The train service is used largely by laborers who are at the bottom of Chinese society. Air service is mostly for more socially well-off people. For these laborers, raising the train fare is undoubtedly like "hitting a person when he is down." Isn't it another way to exploit them? The excuse of letting the market force regulate itself is one that only the party bosses would use. What is the true nature of the "market force regulation" under the Communist dictatorship? It is nothing but lowering tremendous manufacturing costs by using cheap labor. The same is true of the railway industry, which is still a monopoly held by the Communist Party. The monopoly however, doesn't make a profit. It can only make money during peak traffic seasons such as during the spring festival and other public holidays, and at other times by providing inferior service and equipment to save transportation costs.

The social problems under the Communist dictatorship are innumerable. For every day the dictatorship continues, the burden on people's shoulders gets heavier.

Source http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-1-22/25942.html