Chinese Communist Party full of praise for the ABC’s Falun Gong investigation
A new three-part attack on the spiritual movement known as Falun Gong is earning plenty of criticism - except from the Chinese Communist Party, which is using it for propaganda, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
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It’s one thing to joke about the leftward bias at the ABC.
But it’s quite another thing again when the ABC’s coverage tilts so far in pursuit of its quarry that it actually wins praise from the Chinese Communist Party for its efforts.
Most Australians would be at least vaguely familiar with Falun Gong, either from their regular meditation and exercise sessions which are a feature of life in many suburban parks, or their silent protests against the group’s brutal repression in mainland China — repression that has included arbitrary detention, forced labour, and even organ harvesting.
But according to a three-part Foreign Correspondent-Background Briefing joint effort, Falun Gong is something far more troubling — a dangerous cult that kills its adherents by insisting they refuse to take medicine and which also supposedly lends its support to the ABC’s Public Enemy No. 1, Donald Trump.
Which, coincidentally, lines up pretty closely with Beijing propaganda says about Falun Gong.
The first episode, which aired last week, was the usual ABC fare — lavishly produced with correspondents Eric Campbell and Hagar Cohen interviewing subjects around the globe, complete with the usual sinister backing track to ensure you know just who the baddies are.
Yet what viewers found out was, well, not a lot.
A teacher at a Falun Gong dance academy once called the daughter of a practitioner fat.
NIMBY neighbours of the Falun Gong compound in a tranquil part of upstate New York don’t like what these newcomers with their funny beliefs are up to, and spend their days tromping through the woods trying to catch them getting up to no good.
(Readers can imagine how sympathetic a hearing the angry suburban neighbours of, say, an Islamic mosque and religious retreat complex would get from the national broadcaster).
The family of a woman who died in hospital blames her Falun Gong beliefs for her refusing treatment that might have saved her life — though Falun Gong adherents deny that their teachings are anti-medicine.
Viewers also learned that Falun Gong teaches — like plenty of other faiths — that there is a reward in the next life for finding the right path in this one, and believes in heterosexual marriage.
Oh, and Falun Gong is, through its media arm, working hard to get Trump re-elected to reward him for his tough anti-China stance.
But while this might have seemed like fairly thin gruel to most viewers, it was apparently exactly what they wanted to hear in Beijing.
The report did such a good job of trashing Falun Gong that the ABC won praise from a number of Chinese news outlets — including an official “anti-cult” website of the Chinese Communist Party — even before the first episode hit screens in Australia.
In an article published shortly after the trailer for the series was released, the official “anti-cult” website of China’s State Council, www.chinafxj.cn, published a glowing pre-review of the series, congratulating the ABC for coming to the party with its anticipated broadside against Falun Gong.
“On July 1999, China began its public crackdown on the Falun Gong evil cult, warning the world about its evil nature,” the website thundered, adding, “It took 21 years for Australia’s national media to confront and expose the serious mental and health damage caused by the Falun Gong evil cult to its citizens for the first time.”
A few days later, China’s Guancha — or Observer — likewise cheered on the ABC, writing: “What’s worth noting is that this is the first time that the Australian state media has confronted and exposed the Falun Gong cult organisation”.
The Guancha report also trumpeted the ABC’s look at Falun Gong’s politics: “The ABC points out … that in order to help get Trump re-elected, Falun Gong has undertaken a series of secret operations … they had no hesitation to spend millions of dollars on propaganda to beatify Trump and vigorously promote their radical anti-China policy in order to please the current US government.”
I spoke with Dr Lucy Zhao, who started practising Falun Gong 20 years ago when she was doing her PhD in Canada and today is the President of the Falun Dafa Association, who told me that this report sets a worrying precedent.
According to her, it’s almost certain that the Chinese Communist Party will use the ABC reports to justify a further crackdown on Falun Gong practitioners in China, who have been the subject of an official suppression campaign since 1999 when the party decided it was a threat to their rule.
“We’ve already seen this happen after the first report and we will see more of it after episodes two and three”, Zhao told me.
More concerning, it’s clear from the number of Chinese media reports that, according to Zhao, “the Chinese government is really informed about (the ABC series) and are using it to further their suppression of Falun Gong in China.”
Locally as well, Zhao reports that there has been an increase in “hate speech” against Falun Gong, with at least one local meditation group being abused in a park by a passer-by who shouted, “why don’t you take medicine?” at them.
She says that while the documentary was clearly in the works for months, it was only after an ABC crew was spotted filming Falun Gong exercises in a park that the organisation knew something was up, and asked to participate.
After sending a seven-page letter to the ABC detailing their concerns about the expose and detailing the practice’s belief, Zhao was finally interviewed a few days before the program went to air — and, tellingly, was the only subject interrupted by the interviewer.
It’s not surprising, perhaps, that the ABC would challenge a belief system that doesn’t endorse sexual liberalism and which has a large number of followers — Zhao says the group takes no official stance — who support Trump because of his tough stance against Beijing.
But it is a bigger worry when the line of the ABC so closely matches that of the CCP.
As Zhao says: “Why is it taxpayer money is being spent on something not in our national interest?”