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Two Tales of Propaganda – Two Tragic Lies Thrust Upon the People of China (Photos)

October 15, 2011 |   By Feiming

(Clearwisdom.net) The CCP media excel when it comes to fabricating lies. In China, there is a well-known piece of propaganda regarding the “average grain output of 10,000 jin per mu.” In English, that roughly translates as an “average grain yield of 1,700 pounds per acre.” The true average yield was far, far less.

Some fifty years ago, in the summer of 1958, the CCP media indulged in an unbridled campaign of lies about grain yields in various places in China. On June 8, 1958, the People’s Daily stated that in Weixing Cooperative, Suiping County, Henan Province, five mu yielded 2,105 jin each. On June 16, the Xinhua News Agency boasted that the per mu yield of wheat grown in the Wang Mingjin experiment field at the Xingguang Cooperative in Gucheng County, Hubei Province reached 4,353 jin. On June 23, People’s Daily took another step further, saying that the per mu yield of wheat grown in Xianfeng Cooperative’s experiment field in Gucheng County, Hubei Province reached 4,689 jin.

Next, the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency competed with each other in telling lies that were getting bigger and bigger, breaking one record after another. On July 12, the People’s Daily reported per mu yield of 7,320 jin, which was soon overwhelmed by 9,195 jin reported by Xinhua News Agency. On July 31, the People’s Daily reported that the per mu yield had at long last reached 10,000 jin, lying that the per mu yield of early rice grown under the leadership of Gan Yinfang at the Chunguang Cooperative in Yingcheng County, Hubei Province reached 10,597 jin. On August 13, Xinhua News Agency, unwilling to lag behind, told lies that the “No. 1 Field Under Heaven” appeared in No. 1 Xijianyuan Cooperative in Macheng, Hubei Province, with early rice per mu yield as high as 36,900 jin. On September 5, the People’s Daily produced another lie, saying the per mu yield of middle-season rice of 1.73 mu in Lian County, Guangdong Province, reached 60,437 jin.

In the lie-telling competition between the People’s Daily and Xinhua News Agency, two photos left deep impressions on people’s minds. One photo showed that the rice was so dense that a young girl could sit on top, and the rice remained upright. According to the CCP media report, “it was like sitting on a comfy sofa.”

Some readers may say that these lies were told in a different era, as if things had significantly improved in the intervening years. But the fact is, the CCP has never stopped fabricating lies.

In the last dozen or so years of the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP’s lie telling has reached a new peak. In the summer of 1999, the CCP filled it's multitude of newspapers, TV and radio stations to roll all kinds of lies to defame and slander Falun Gong 24 hours a day; propaganda just as intense as that seen during the dark days of communist China's “Great Leap Forward” and the “Cultural Revolution.”

On January 23, 2001, the CCP concocted the “self-immolation” tragedy at Tiananmen Square and broadcast all manner of lies about it in state-run media (newspapers, television, radio, you name it) in attempts to demonize Falun Gong and stir up public hatred of Falun Gong, and to thereby somehow even “justify” the persecution in the minds of the public. This enabled party mandarins to further intensify the scope and severity of the persecution.


A CCTV image about the hoax of “self-immolation.” After the alleged “self-immolator” Wang Jindong set himself on fire, the green plastic soda bottle filled with gasoline between his legs remained intact. The police behind him waited for him to finish yelling something (later believed to be a script) before throwing a fire blanket over his head. Self-immolation is usually a sudden and unexpected action, and yet the CCTV was able to shoot close-up footage and record the shouting of slogans.

The most effective piece of propaganda was the video shown by CCTV. Yet numerous loopholes in the video on the “self-immolation” have been pointed out. One of them is the image showing Wang Jindong where the green plastic soda bottle remained intact between his legs after he set himself on fire. The CCP media said the bottle contained gasoline. How could it be possible that the bottle did not burn?

In the CCTV video, the police officer behind Wang Jindong was holding a fire blanket that was hanging loosely in his hand. The officer appeared to wait until Wang Jindong finished yelling some weird statement implicating Falun Gong before throwing the blanket over Wang’s head. These and many more inconsistencies confirm to many familiar with the situation that the whole thing was concocted by the Party as an elaborate but effective propaganda stunt.

A Washington Post reporter went to hometown of Liu Chunling, one of the self-immolators, shortly afterward to dig deper into the story. Her neighbors said they had never seen Liu Chunling practicing Falun Gong. Liu was in fact not a Falun Gong practitioner as the propaganda painted her to be. Her neighbors also said that Liu sometimes hit her foster mother and made a living by providing escort services in a night club.

Falun Gong requires practitioners to cultivate their character according to the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. The information the Post reporter uncovered only serves to further discredit the official story and confirm the likelihood it was staged.

In Mainland China, the entire media is used as the mouthpiece of the CCP to spread lies to deceive people. The CCP forbids people to run their own newspapers and tries to block Internet access to prevent people from learning the facts, depriving people of their right to know. Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China risk their lives to make and distribute truth-clarification flyers; they are exercising their basic rights to freedom of belief and speech and also safeguard the people’s right to know.

The lies told by the CCP have been extremely harmful. Their claim of “10,000 jin per mu yield” set the tone for the so-called “Great Leap Forward,” a time when literally tens of millions of Chinese people died from starvation as a direct result of CCP mismanagement of China's agricultural resources.

Similarly, after the self-immolation stunt to frame Falun Gong, the CCP intensified persecution of Falun Gong. A large number of practitioners suffered torture in prisons, labor camps and brainwashing centers, and many lost their lives as a result of torture. Furthermore, the self-immolation hoax stirred up much hatred among the people against Falun Gong. Falun Gong upholds the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and teaches people to lay emphasis on becoming better people. The CCP has misled people; in effect they have been destroying social mores in China. At the same time, the regime's corrupt officials take the lead in social degeneration and corruption in China, and in the end all of China's people are victims. Falun Gong practitioners take great risks in clarifying the facts. Exactly the opposite of the CCP, Falun Gong practitioners are reversing the downward slide of morality, and their efforts could well save the future of the Chinese nation.