Falun Gong propaganda blitz ends

South China Morning Post, August 25, 1999
By Jasper Becker

The massive media campaign against Falun Gong has ended.

Monday was the last day of a month-long intensive effort in which the press and television were saturated with opinion pieces and reports decrying the US-based leader of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi.

A commentary by China Daily boasted that the "Falun Gong cult has been thoroughly debunked in China".

"A weeks-long massive media offensive against Falun Gong has deprived Li of his last ideological strongholds and put a naked Li and his cult under unprecedented scrutiny," it said.

An editorial in Monday's People's Daily said the cult had spread its tentacles within the Communist Party and "turned officials into cult members in order to obtain state secrets".

Separately, the Beijing Morning Post reported that another sect leader, Hu Wanlin in Shaanxi province, had been formally charged with "providing unauthorised medical services".

He had set up a hospital in Shaanxi and attracted patients, promising to cure them with qi gong powers. After several patients died, police began investigations.

The editor of International Qigong Daily Ke Yunlu, as well as the director of Shangqiu city health bureau, were also being probed for promoting Hu's health treatment.