Revenge of the Forbidden City: Effectiveness of the Anti-Falungong Campaign in China, 1999-2005

James Tong speaks on the Chinese government's anti-Falungong campaign.

Falungong was outlawed in China ten years ago in July, 1999. The official ban was accompanied by a nation-wide campaign to arrest its national and local leaders, dissolving its

assemblies, and attempts to convert its practitioners.  A relentless propaganda campaign was waged in radio and television, while a book series of 120 anti-Falungong titles was published.  Analyzing arrest records, conversion rates of its leaders and practitioners, reception rates of anti-Falungong television programs, circulation numbers and best-book awards received by the Anti-Falungong series, the presentation attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the Anti-Falungong Campaign.

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James Tong works in Comparative Politics, specializing in Chinese Politics and political violence at UCLA. His publications on China include studies of peasant revolts from the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Century, the 1989 Democracy Movement, and Intergovernmental fiscal relations. His current research interests are civil society, gender and political participation, agency problems and control in China, and the Asian financial crisis. His Stanford University book on Disorder Under Heaven was nominated for the Association of Asian Studies’ Joseph Levenson Best Book Award in Pre-Twentieth Chinese Studies. It contains research that won the American Political Science Association's Gabriel Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics. Professor Tong has engaged in collaborative research projects with investigators from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing University, People's University, Academia Sinica (Taipei), National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, Chinese University of Hong Kong.