ABSTRACT
This chapter will analyse a commentary that was published in the People’s Daily during the Chinese government’s campaign against the quasi-spiritual qigong group Falun Gong.1 Following on from the analysis of the Beijing Spring in Chapter 3, the campaign against this group was undertaken in response to the next major incidence of instability in the People’s Republic of China. Indeed, this incident, which took the form of a demonstration held by Falun Gong on 25 April 1999 outside Zhongnanhai, was described by the government as the ‘most serious political incident since 1989’ (Beijing Xinhua Domestic Service 1999a).2 The result of this demonstration was that, after a three-month time lag, the government decided to outlaw the group and, in so doing, launched what Wong describes as ‘a well-orchestrated nation-wide crackdown, one that China … [had] not seen since the Tiananmen Incident’ (1999: 8). In light of this, the aim of this chapter is to analyse a commentary that was published in the initial stages of this crackdown in order to better understand how the discourse of stability was employed to legitimate the government’s suppression of Falun Gong. In contrast to Chapter 3, this chapter will only analyse a single article. This
is because there has been little variation in the usage of stability throughout the anti-Falun Gong campaign and, unlike in the previous chapter, there is little explanatory value to be gained from analysing more than one article. As such, the article that will be analysed is representative of how stability has been used in the campaign. In addition, the selected article is a ‘staff commentator’ article (benbao pinglunyuan) rather than the editorials (shelun) that were analysed in the previous chapter. Although editorials do represent the most authoritative type of commentary, commentator articles are also used to express the views of the leadership. Indeed, Wu notes that, ‘[s]ince the late 1970s, staff commentator articles … have flourished, partially as a replacement for editorials’ (1994: 197).3 Furthermore, given that the usage of stability in the commentary was consistent with editorials which were published on Falun Gong at the time, I feel that this commentary is sufficiently authoritative to be the subject of my analysis.
