Editing Falun Gong (section)

===Media campaign===
The Chinese government's campaign against Falun Gong was driven by large-scale propaganda through television, newspapers, radio and internet.<ref name=Tong2009/><ref name="Leung"/> The propaganda campaign focused on allegations that Falun Gong jeopardized social stability, was deceiving and dangerous, was [[anti-science]] and threatened progress, and argued that Falun Gong's moral philosophy was incompatible with a Marxist social ethic.<ref name=Ownbyfuture/>

China scholars Daniel Wright and Joseph Fewsmith stated that for several months after Falun Gong was outlawed, China Central Television's evening news contained little but anti-Falun Gong rhetoric, and that the government operation was "a study in all-out demonization".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fewsmith |first1=Joseph |first2=Daniel B. |last2=Wright |title=The promise of the Revolution: stories of fulfilment and struggle in China |year=2003 |publisher=Rowman and Littlefield |page=156}}</ref> Falun Gong was compared to "a rat crossing the street that everyone shouts out to squash" by ''Beijing Daily'';<ref>{{cite news |work=Associated Press |title='Enemies of people' warned |date=23 January 2001}}</ref>{{verify inline|reason=Could not find a web source for this. AP News is not a print publication – as a news agency AP articles are mostly published in other outlets|date=May 2025}} other officials said it would be a "long-term, complex and serious" struggle to "eradicate" Falun Gong.<ref>{{cite news |last=Plafker |first=Ted |title=Falun Gong Stays Locked In Struggle With Beijing |work=The Washington Post |date=26 April 2000}}</ref>

State propaganda initially used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism.<ref name="Lu2004">{{cite book |last=Lu |first=Xing |title=Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: the impact on Chinese thought, culture, and communication |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |year=2004}}</ref> For example, the ''People's Daily'' asserted on 27 July 1999, that the fight against Falun Gong "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism". Other editorials declared that Falun Gong's "idealism and theism" are "absolutely contradictory to the fundamental theories and principles of Marxism", and that the {{" '}}truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by [Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve." Suppressing Falun Gong was presented as a necessary step to maintaining the "vanguard role" of the CCP in Chinese society.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Chen |first=Chiung Hwang |title=Framing Falun Gong: Xinhua News Agency's Coverage of the New Religious Movement in China |journal=Asian Journal of Communication |volume=15 |issue=1 |year=2005 |pages=16–36}}</ref>

Despite Party efforts, initial charges leveled against Falun Gong failed to elicit widespread popular support for the persecution of the group. In the months following July 1999, the rhetoric in the state-run press escalated to include charges that Falun Gong was colluding with foreign, "anti-China" forces. In October 1999, three months after the persecution began, the ''[[People's Daily]]'' newspaper claimed Falun Gong as a {{lang|zh-Latn|xiejiao}} ({{lang|zh|邪教}}).<ref name=chan2004/><ref name="irons2003">{{Cite journal |last=Irons |first=Edward |date=2003 |title=Falun Gong and the Sectarian Religion Paradigm |journal=Nova Religio |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=244–262 |df=dmy-all|doi=10.1525/nr.2003.6.2.244 }}</ref> A direct translation of that term is "heretical teaching", but during the anti-Falun Gong propaganda campaign was rendered as "evil cult" in English.<ref name="Amnesty">{{Cite web
| date=23 March 2000
|title=China: The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called 'heretical organizations'|url=https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/011/2000/en/|access-date=2023-02-10|website=Amnesty International|language=en|archive-date=29 July 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210729225340/https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ASA17/011/2000/en/|url-status=live}}</ref> According to a ''Washington Post'' report, it was Jiang Zemin who issued the order to label Falun Gong a "cult".<ref name=":4" /> In Mainland China, the term {{lang|zh-Latn|xiejiao}} has been used to target religious organizations that do not submit to Communist Party authority.{{sfn|Chang|2004|p={{page needed|date=May 2025}}}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |publisher=Freedom House |url=http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/Analysis_of_China_Docs_1_to_7.pdf |title=Report Analyzing Seven Secret Chinese Government Documents |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120402165033/http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/Analysis_of_China_Docs_1_to_7.pdf |archive-date=2 April 2012 |date=11 February 2002}}</ref>

[[Ian Johnson (writer)|Ian Johnson]] argued that applying the 'cult' label to Falun Gong effectively "cloaked the government's crackdown with the legitimacy of the West's anticult movement". He wrote that Falun Gong does not satisfy common definitions of a cult: "its members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the world's end is imminent and do not give significant amounts of money to the organisation{{nbsp}}... it does not advocate violence and is at heart an apolitical, inward-oriented discipline, one aimed at cleansing oneself spiritually and improving one's health."<ref name="wildgrass"/>{{rp|224}} David Ownby similarly wrote that "the entire issue of the supposed cultic nature of Falun Gong was a red herring from the beginning, cleverly exploited by the Chinese state to blunt the appeal of Falun Gong".<ref name=Ownbyfuture/> According to John Powers and Meg Y. M. Lee, because the Falun Gong was categorized in the popular perception as an "apolitical, qigong exercise club", it was not seen as a threat to the government. The most critical strategy in the Falun Gong suppression campaign, therefore, was to convince people to reclassify the Falun Gong into a number of "negatively charged religious labels",<ref name="powerslee">{{cite book |last1=Powers |first1=John |first2=Meg Y. M. |last2=Lee |chapter=Dueling Media: Symbolic Conflict in China's Falun Gong Suppression Campaign |title=Chinese Conflict Management and Resolution |editor1-first=Guo-Ming |editor1-last=Chen |editor2-first=Ringo |editor2-last=Ma |year=2001 |publisher=Greenwood}}</ref> like "evil cult", "sect", or "superstition". The group's silent protests were reclassified as creating "social disturbances". In this process of relabelling, the government was attempting to tap into a "deep reservoir of negative feelings related to the historical role of quasi-religious cults as a destabilising force in Chinese political history".<ref name=powerslee/>

A turning point in the propaganda campaign came on the eve of [[Chinese New Year]] on 23 January 2001, when [[Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident|five people attempted to set themselves ablaze]] on Tiananmen Square. The official Chinese press agency, [[Xinhua News Agency]], and other state media asserted that the [[Self-immolation|self-immolators]] were practitioners, though the Falun Dafa Information Center disputed this,<ref name="FDI_PressRelease">{{Cite web |url=http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2001/jan/23/vsf012301_3.html |title=Press Statement |date=23 January 2001 |publisher=Clearwisdom |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070310213800/http://www.clearwisdom.net/eng/2001/jan/23/vsf012301_3.html |archive-date=10 March 2007 |access-date=9 February 2007 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> on the grounds that the movement's teachings explicitly forbid suicide and killing,<ref name="wildgrass" />{{rp|224}}<ref name="FDI_PressRelease" /> further alleging that the event was "a cruel (but clever) piece of stunt-work".<ref name="brady08">{{cite book |first=Anne-Marie |last=Brady |author-link=Anne-Marie Brady |title=Marketing dictatorship: propaganda and thought work in contemporary China |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2008}}{{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=May 2024}}</ref> The incident received international news coverage, and video footage of the burnings were broadcast later inside China by [[China Central Television]] (CCTV). The broadcasts showed images of a 12-year-old girl, Liu Siying, burning, and interviews with the other participants in which they stated a belief that self-immolation would lead them to paradise.<ref name="FDI_PressRelease"/><ref name="oneway">{{Cite news |title=One-Way Trip to the End in Beijing |last=Pan |first=Philip P. |date=5 February 2001 |work=International Herald Tribune}}</ref> But one of the CNN producers on the scene did not even see a child there. Falun Gong sources and other commentators pointed out that the main participants' account of the incident and other aspects of the participants' behavior were inconsistent with Falun Gong's teachings.<ref name="WOIPFG2">{{Cite web |url=http://www.zhuichaguoji.org/en/node/54 |title=New Evidence Confirms Alleged Falun Gong 'Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation' Was a State Conspiracy |date=August 2004 |publisher=World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130325173957/http://www.zhuichaguoji.org/en/node/54 |archive-date=2013-03-25 |access-date=22 July 2013}}</ref> Media Channel and the International Education Development (IED) agree that the supposed self-immolation incident was staged by CCP to "prove" that Falun Gong brainwashes its followers to commit suicide and has therefore to be banned as a threat to the nation. IED's statement at the 53rd UN session describes China's violent assault on Falun Gong practitioners as [[state terrorism]] and that the self-immolation "was staged by the government". ''[[Washington Post]]'' journalist Phillip Pan wrote that the two self-immolators who died were not actually Falun Gong practitioners.<ref name="oneway"/> On 21 March 2001, Liu Siying suddenly died after appearing very lively and being deemed ready to leave the hospital to go home. ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' reported that prior to the self-immolation incident, many Chinese had felt that Falun Gong posed no real threat, and that the state's crackdown had gone too far. After the event, however, the mainland Chinese media campaign against Falun Gong gained significant traction.<ref name="breakingpoint">{{cite magazine |last=Forney |first=Matthew |date=25 June 2001 |url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,165163,00.html |title=The Breaking Point |magazine=Time |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013111614/http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,165163,00.html |archive-date=13 October 2007}}</ref> As public sympathy for Falun Gong declined, the government began sanctioning "systematic use of violence" against the group.<ref name=":10">{{cite news |first1=Philip |last1=Pan |first2=John |last2=Pomfret |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/08/05/torture-is-breaking-falun-gong/ea6c5341-c7a7-47c9-9674-053049b7323d/ |title=Torture is Breaking Falun Gong |work=The Washington Post |date=5 August 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191005165937/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/08/05/torture-is-breaking-falun-gong/ea6c5341-c7a7-47c9-9674-053049b7323d/|archive-date=5 October 2019}}</ref>

In February 2001, the month following the Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident, Jiang Zemin convened a rare Central Work Conference to stress the importance of continuity in the anti-Falun Gong campaign and unite senior party officials behind the effort.<ref name=Dangerous/> Under Jiang's leadership, the crackdown on Falun Gong became part of the Chinese political ethos of "upholding stability"—much the same rhetoric employed by the party during 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Jiang's message was echoed at the 2001 National People's Congress, where the Falun Gong's eradication was tied to China's economic progress.<ref name=Dangerous/> Though less prominent on the national agenda, the persecution of Falun Gong has carried on after Jiang was retired; successive, high-level "strike hard" campaigns against Falun Gong were initiated in both 2008 and 2009. In 2010, a three-year campaign was launched to renew attempts at the coercive "transformation" of Falun Gong practitioners.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Communist Party Calls for Increased Efforts To 'Transform' Falun Gong Practitioners as Part of Three-Year Campaign | author= Congressional-Executive Commission on China|url=https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/communist-party-calls-for-increased-efforts-to-transform-falun-gong|access-date=2023-02-10|archive-date=5 April 2018
| date= 22 March 2011
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180405214722/https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/communist-party-calls-for-increased-efforts-to-transform-falun-gong|url-status=live}}</ref>

====In the education system====
Anti-Falun Gong propaganda efforts have also permeated the Chinese education system. Following Jiang Zemin's 1999 ban of Falun Gong, then-Minister of Education Chen Zhili launched an active campaign to promote the Party's line on Falun Gong within all levels of academic institutions, including graduate schools, universities and colleges, middle schools, primary schools, and kindergartens. Her efforts included a "Cultural Revolution-like pledge" in Chinese schools that required faculty members, staff, and students to publicly denounce Falun Gong. Teachers who did not comply with Chen's program were dismissed or detained; uncooperative students were refused academic advancement, expelled from school, or sent to "transformation" camps to alter their thinking.<ref name="specialtribunal.org">[http://www.specialtribunal.org/downloads/WOIPFG_MinistryOfEducation_Part1.pdf "Chinese Ministry of Education Participating in Persecution of Falun Gong: Investigative Report"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040927053846/http://www.specialtribunal.org/downloads/WOIPFG_MinistryOfEducation_Part1.pdf |date=27 September 2004 }}. 16 March 2004. Retrieved 17 November 2011.</ref> Chen also worked to spread the anti-Falun Gong academic propaganda movement overseas, using domestic educational funding to donate aid to foreign institutions, encouraging them to oppose Falun Gong.<ref name="specialtribunal.org"/>