“Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China: Boomerang, Backfire or Spectacle?”

In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Chapter 9 Manufacturing Dissent in Transnational China: Boomerang, Backfire, or Spectacle? Patricia M. Thornton In November 2004, The Epoch Times, an overseas Chinese newspaper with close links to the outlawed spiritual group commonly known as the Falun Gong, published a series of editorials on its website entitled “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party” “in order to fully expose how this largest cult in history has embodied the wickedness of all times and places.” Addressing “those who are still deceived by the Chinese Communist Party” [CCP], the Editorial Board aimed to convince its readers to “purge its poison from their spirits, extricate their minds from its evil control, free themselves from the shackles of terror, and abandon for good all illusions about it.” Beginning in December, The Epoch Times and its affiliates distributed the Nine Commentaries to an estimated 2.3 million email users in mainland China, where its website is blocked, and created a public forum on the internet in which individuals could renounce their membership in the Party and its affiliated organizations.1 According to The Epoch Times, to date, over fifteen million people have participated in the movement to denounce the Party; one report found that most of the resignations posted during the first five months of the campaign were effected via on-line proxy services, and therefore presumably originated on the Chinese mainland.2 1 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. One of the earliest names to appear on the list was that of Meng Weizai, a former high-ranking Propaganda Department official. In an explanatory statement that accompanied his resignation, Meng purportedly declared that since becoming a Falun Gong practitioner, he had been repeatedly harassed by Chinese authorities. Announcing "I must make a choice between the Communist Party and my life. Now for myself, I declare that I am leaving the Communist Party to live as a Chinese with a clean conscience," he urged others to follow his example. Two days later, on December 8, 2004, he allegedly issued a “final declaration” reconfirming his resignation, adding that, due to threats he received from public security agents, he would remain silent for the foreseeable future. The following day, the state-run Xinhua News Agency released a “solemn declaration” authorized by Meng in which he expressed shock over the reports of his resignation. In a videotaped statement before a group of Chinese reporters, Meng described himself as a loyal member who joined the Party on the front lines of the Korean battlefield in 1953, following in the footsteps of his father, a revolutionary martyr killed during the War of Resistance against Japan. Dismissing the news of his resignation as “pure fabrication” and “malicious rumor mongering,” Meng affirmed “I, Meng Weizai, was a CCP member, am a CCP member and will be a CCP member until I die. I will never betray the great Chinese Communist Party!”3 Surprisingly, Meng’s declaration had no discernable impact on the building media frenzy. One day later, three overseas Chinese websites published yet another statement purportedly authored by Meng in which he lambasted the Xinhua document as a blatant forgery, and vowed that he would “never pay homage to the evil Karl Marx.”4 Ignoring 2 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Meng’s earlier videotaped denial before the Chinese press, one Voice of America reporter commented that since Meng had not responded personally to the allegations, the outside world would never know the truth of the matter.5 During a December 21 forum at the National Press Club hosted by The Epoch Times, Opinion Editor Stephen Gregory claimed that the Party leadership was nothing less than “panicked” by the resignation movement, and feared a “chain reaction…a meltdown that can’t be controlled.”6 Veteran dissident Liu Xiaobo remarked to The South China Morning Post that whether Meng had quit the Party could be easily verified in a country with freedom of speech. The real problem for the Party, Liu observed, was that the official media had declared cyberspace an ideological battleground, and had no choice but to lock horns with overseas websites over the matter.7 During the New Year holiday, several overseas Chinese websites posted yet another essay ostensibly penned by Meng in which he claimed that fifty high-ranking cadres had joined him in the movement to “renounce the Party in order to save the nation.” An investigation launched by the Hong Kong-based Phoenix Weekly (Fenghuang zhoukan) in January 2005 quickly determined that the fifty names had been lifted from a petition circulated ten years before by the “Left Coalition of Writers” condemning the release of Li Zhisui’s The Secret Life of Chairman Mao, several of whom had since passed away. The reappearance of their names on the resignation list was, in the words of the Phoenix Weekly reporter, “laughable.”8 Xinhua has since ceased commenting on the matter, but The Epoch Times and its affiliated organizations maintain a running count of the resignations on their websites, and regularly mark important milestones by organizing rallies and other events to publicize the success of their 3 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. campaign.9 In a candid March 2005 message to conservative blogger Daniel W. Drezner, The Epoch Times editor Stephen Gregory hoped “[t]o avoid the suspicion [he was] attempting to hype a story” by openly acknowledging that the resignations included the names of many who were not actual Party members, anonymous resignations, and even posthumous renunciations posted by the surviving family members of Party members. Nevertheless, despite these significant caveats, Gregory trumpeted the renunciation movement as “the most important story in China today, and no one outside The Epoch Times is covering [it].”10 The murky case of Meng Weizai sheds light on two prominent developments in the study of popular contention in recent years: transnational protest movements and the internet. The increasing horizontal integration of forces — nation-states, government officials and non-state actors of various kinds — and vertical links between local, national and international levels of recent decades have created new opportunity structures in which transnational activism has become not only more frequent, but also more sustained.11 At the same time, the spread and development of the internet has facilitated transnational political action by reducing the cost and increasing the effectiveness of communication both within and across national borders, thereby triggering rapid and dramatic shifts in the scale of contention in a manner not possible previously.12 In the Chinese case, the spread of the worldwide web alongside the suppression of new quasi-religious groups has given rise to a new organizational form that I refer to as “cybersects,”13 which continue to serve as nodes of transnational political contention, both on- and off-line. These groups, banned by mainland authorities during the late 1990s, originally turned to the web as a tool for connecting exiled leaders 4 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. with rank and file membership on the Chinese mainland during the initial phases of repression. However, as the crackdown stretched into a broader ideological campaign against “heretical superstitious groups and practices,” the banned groups that were most successful in making the leap to cyberspace evolved into far-flung multinational conglomerates incorporating media enterprises, public relations firms, and commercial operations beneath a loose umbrella of shifting entrepreneurial, political, and spiritual interests. Courting the support of foreign governments, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and the international media, these cybersects have continued to apply external pressure on the Chinese government, hoping to generate what Keck and Sikkink have termed “boomerangs” of transnational support, 14 albeit with varying degrees of success. As the Meng Weizai incident demonstrates, such groups and their affiliates sometimes succeed in provoking a public response from Chinese authorities. On the other hand, as the Meng Weizai incident also suggests, on occasion, such activities can and do backfire, weakening the credibility of not only movement activists,15 but also potentially tarnishing the reputations of the NGOs, TANs and other actors that champion their causes. I propose that behind these two potential outcomes — “boomerang” and “backfire” — lay a more fundamental insight into the highly competitive dynamics shaping contemporary transnational activism. The arsenal of aggressively promotional strategies pursued by banned Chinese cybersects has long included not only the cultivation of the press, both domestic and foreign, but the creation of new media as well. The largest transnational cybersects are closely associated not only with traditional newspapers or newsletters that can be counted upon to report stories supportive of their 5 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. agendas, but also own controlling interests in independent television and radio stations, the programming of which can be beamed (although not without difficulty) directly into mainland China. By engineering protest spectacles and staging high-profile events that are effectively framed, promoted and spun by their own media outlets, these banned cybersects are attempting to go beyond the “marketing of rebellion”16 to international NGOs and supporters, and are, in some instances, virtually “manufacturing dissent”— mobilizing not only their loyal members, but also their privately owned media companies to pursue their aims and delegitimize their opponents. Although underground presses and dissident media are by no means new phenomena, particularly in hard authoritarian regimes, the pattern I describe differs from earlier incarnations in form as well as intent. Historically, alternative or underground media primarily operated within national borders, serving as a vehicle for the expression of repressed voices and counterhegemonic views in the face of severe political repression. For example, Soviet samizdat (literally, “self-publication”) originated as a mechanism for the reproduction and circulation of banned literary materials, an attempt to give public voice to the rich and varied texts that fell outside the state’s monopoly on publishing. As messages became increasingly political in the 1960s and 1970s, samizdat writers continued to maintain that their critiques were both legal and justifiable within the Soviet tradition,17 not unlike the “rightful resistance” O’Brien and Li have found in contemporary rural China.18 By contrast, today’s Chinese cybersects deploy media strategies that transcend the “venue shopping” and “information politics” practiced by similar groups, insofar as they blend seemingly objective news with promotional messages as a strategy of legitimation. 6 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Much of their reportage aims to build a record of public recognition and certification for movement elites and their allies,19 and to discredit perceived opponents, skillfully synthesizing traditional “news” items and partisan advocacy to legitimate and magnify the scope and importance of movement activities. In so doing, today’s cybersects are effectively conjoining the “internet to mass media” and “mass media to internet” trajectories described by Guobin Yang (chapter 7), creating a self-perpetuating news cycle in cyberspace. Movement-allied media outlets like The Epoch Times help to launch and publicize protests, and then report favorably upon the significance of event outcomes, amplifying the effect of dissident activities in the echo chamber of the global media. Like the “cyberboosterism” of small state actors, which blends propaganda, statistical information and promotional material on webpages designed to stimulate public interest and attract investment,20 the success of these engineered media spectacles hinges on the ability of movement elites to conflate the actual with the virtual in a manner favorable to movement goals. In the oft-cited Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Herman and Chomsky postulate that the imbrication of the modern mass media with socioeconomic elites in ownership, management and advertising effectively delimits its ability to serve as an independent voice in democratic capitalist societies. According to their “propaganda model,” the modern mass media promotes, suppresses, legitimizes and endorses information in a manner that serves dominant elites and is ideologically serviceable to corporate and state interests, effectively “manufacturing” or “engineering” popular consent for particular courses of action that favor elite interests.21 Similarly, by providing alternative media friendly to dissident voices, the media-savvy movement 7 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. entrepreneurs behind China’s transnational cybersects frame a unique blend of selective news coverage, promotional material and scathing political critiques with the aim of building popular support for their cause, and delegitimizing Chinese authorities, using tactics in many ways similar to those deployed against them in the state-controlled Chinese press. Transnational Networks and the Internet Whereas the key features of transnational activism — diffusion of social movements across borders, international mobilization, and the borrowing of modular forms and frames for collective action — are not new, the process of globalization as manifested in increasing volume and speed of flows across borders has greatly facilitated transnational contention.22 Recent advances in communications technologies like the internet provide important resources for the new generation of transnational activists by virtually guaranteeing social movements a relatively inexpensive, rapid, and reliable means of international communication. Clearly, as Diani observes, the internet can transform “sets of geographically dispersed aggrieved individuals into a densely connected aggrieved population”23 more capable of launching and sustaining coordinated collective action. Some have argued that the internet cannot merely be seen as a tool of communication, but that it must be analyzed as a form of social organization in its own right. The internet, according to Castells, is not “simply a technology: it is a communication media, and it is the material infrastructure of a given organizational form: the network.” Supported by a rapidly expanding technological infrastructure that supports 8 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. interactive media, older, hierarchical and bureaucratic forms are being rapidly replaced and outpaced by more heterarchical, and collaborative forms. “Networks constitute the new social morphology of our societies.”24 Others celebrate the network as a new/old organizational form that hearkens back to a time “before simple human relationships became obscured by hierarchy and bureaucracy;” at the same time, these new networks manifest a utility that make it possible for them to “leap forward” into the future “with globe-encompassing capability that subsumes the enduring aspects of authority and bureaucracy.”25 According to Keck and Sikkink, for activists and citizens living and operating in repressive contexts, networks may prove an invaluable resource for pressing claims against otherwise unresponsive state agents: domestic groups can activate networks, and thereby “bypass their state and directly search out international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from outside.” These “international contacts can amplify the demands of domestic groups, pry open space for new issues, and then echo back their demands into the domestic arena,” creating a “boomerang effect” that ultimately forces change back home. Insofar as “information binds network members together and is essential for network effectiveness,” 26 recent advances in communication technologies — cell phones, fax machines, and the internet — have contributed greatly to the efficiency of transnational advocacy networks in pressing claims. Access to the internet proved invaluable to the leaders and members of host of banned quasi-spiritual groups during the crackdown against “evil heretical sects” launched by Chinese government during the 1990s. A string of arrests, investigations, and critical articles published in the state-run press prompted the leaders of several popular qigong sects to flee the mainland. However, the concurrent development and 9 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. spread of the internet inside China gave the beleaguered groups a virtual forum within which to maintain contact. Exiled leaders continued to issue statements, directives and to provide frequent counsel to their followers; rank-and-file practitioners shared their experiences, and received and offered support to others on-line. Over time, what began as loose aggregations of websites maintained by pockets of practitioners evolved into an increasingly centralized and highly polished web presence policed and managed by public relations professionals based overseas. Increasingly relying upon the web for text distribution, recruitment and information-sharing, the most successful of these banned groups became cybersects: dispersed small gatherings of practitioners that seek to remain anonymous domestically, while maintaining links to a global network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and a common devotion to a leader. Overseas chapters provide funding and support; domestic cells occasionally distribute tracts, participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members within and across national borders construct viable virtual communities that interweave spiritual faith and political practice via email, on-line chat rooms, and web-based message boards.27 The accessibility of new information technologies both inside and outside the PRC in the 1990s proved key in overcoming the bifurcation between clandestine pockets of domestic practitioners and a web of support groups based overseas, and made possible this new organizational form. A second factor that proved central to the ability of some of these sects to survive a crackdown was the considerable material resources at their disposal. After the Chinese state erected further barriers to the registration of new social organizations in the wake of the 1989 student demonstrations, the popular qigong sects that emerged in the 1990s had 10 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. few options but to incorporate on the mainland as profit-making or non-profit business enterprises. The skillful marketing and media manipulation strategies these spiritual entreprenuers developed in China’s highly competitive qigong market during those years have served them well. 28 Like the “sacred companies” or “marketed social movements” that emerged in other contexts,29 the organizational hybridity of well-endowed syncretic sects proved highly adaptable to the demands of both virtual and transnational environments. With the resources and wherewithal to lobby representatives of foreign governments, transnational Chinese cybersects have emerged as savvy players within the larger network of overseas Chinese dissidents, and in the halls of power of Western democracies. Over time, the three banned groups that were most successful in making the leap to cyberspace — Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin, Zhonghua Yansheng Yizhi Gong (hereafter, Zhong Gong), and Falun Dafa, the group more commonly referred to as Falun Gong — honed their media strategies, hiring public relations firms, media consultants and lobbyists to polish and package their message. These three cybersects are closely associated with media outlets that broadcast their respective agendas, and also own controlling interests in independent television and radio stations within the “global diasporic Chinese mediasphere.”30 Suma Ching Hai International, the corporate entity behind Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin, has been affiliated with World Peace Media, Oceans of Love Entertainment, Supreme Master Television, and several cable television series; Zhong Gong is associated with the International Zhonggong Headquarters, Inc., the Alliance Against Persecution, and the Tianhua Cultural Studies Center; the New Yorkbased Falun Dafa Information Center, established in 1999, has close organizational links 11 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. to various media units staffed largely by Falun Gong practitioners, including The Epoch Times, New Tang Dynasty Television, World Falun Dafa Radio, Sound of Hope Radio, and several others. These media companies produce informational and promotional materials designed to raise international awareness of the repression suffered by practitioners in China, undermine the negative propaganda circulated by the state-run Chinese press, and provide information about their beliefs and practices to the wider public. Yet their careful cultivation of a “boomerang” effect, “which curves around local state indifference and repression to put foreign pressure on local policy elites,”31 comes, not infrequently, at a cost: the bids of these banned sects for transnational support have resulted in increased domestic and international scrutiny of their internal affairs and public relations tactics, and have occasionally produced a backlash of negative media attention for both the networks and their supporters. In contrast to the transformative backfire generated by repression, which can produce a “take-off” in popular mobilization,32 backlash undermines the credibility of movement organizers and their capacity to influence established media, politicians, and the public at large. Although the efforts of movement organizers to court media attention have been well-documented in the literature on social movements, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the potential for promotional activities to rebound against dissident groups. As the three cases below demonstrate, if new digital media has increased access for repressed groups to transnational audiences, it has also made their organizations, beliefs, and tactics more vulnerable to surveillance, and, occasionally, public exposure by reporters, investigators, or anonymous legions of fact-checking digerati: in all three of these cases, the hoped-for 12 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. boomerangs of support missed their mark, and backfired, to varying degrees, in the form of negative media attention for the sects and their supporters. Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin The “Supreme Master Ching Hai World Society” (Qinghai Wushang Shijie Hui) was established in Taiwan 1986 as a religious society with Buddhist leanings, associated with the “Center for Meditation on the Immeasurable Light” (Wuliang Guang Jingzuo Zhongxin). Supreme Master, or Suma Ching Hai, the female spiritual leader of the movement, was born in 1950 in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, but left at age 22 to study in England, eventually becoming an interpreter for the Red Cross. Following a brief marriage, she later moved to India to devote herself to the study of Sant Mat Buddhism, and then Surat Shabd Yoga under Thakar Singh, before entering a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, where she remained for nearly a year. Her recognition as a spiritual leader came suddenly in 1982, when she tried to buy a copy of the Hindu sacred work the Bhagavad-Gita from a small shop along the Ganges. The shopkeepers denied having copies in stock, but she continued to insist she had seen it there. An extensive search uncovered a copy of the volume locked away in a sealed box; word quickly spread that Ching Hai had an unusually well-developed third eye. The following year, she left India for Taiwan, and began to teach Sound Current Yoga to small groups of students. In 1986, she founded the Immeasurable Light Meditation Center and the “Way of Sound Contemplation” (Quan Yin) in Miaoli. Two years later, following a dispute with the local Buddhist society in Malaysia on the eve of a speaking engagement, she publicly disavowed any formal connection with established Buddhism 13 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. and adopted the distinctly secular appearance that she maintains today.33 Her highly syncretic message and set of practices designed to help followers “discover” and “awaken the Divine Presence within,” involves vegetarianism, daily meditation on the Inner Light and Sound, and the observation of “Five Precepts” — injunctions against taking the lives of sentient beings, lying, stealing, sexual misconduct, and the use of intoxicants.34 Quan Yin was introduced on the Chinese mainland in 1992, where it is commonly known as Guanyin Famen, and quietly spread for several years. In July of 1996, two years before the onset of a campaign to stamp out “heretical sects,” authorities in Sichuan’s Jiangyou City discovered a list of several thousand practitioners in seven different provinces that included many party members and some high-ranking cadres. Following an investigation into the sect, its beliefs, and activities, party authorities concluded that the organization was fundamentally anti-communist and labeled it a "reactionary religious organization." By July of 1999, when the ban against such groups was promulgated into law, Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin claimed an estimated 500,000 followers in twenty provinces and cities.35 There is limited, anecdotal evidence that some mainland chapters have been successful in maintaining their links to the their leader despite the ban. In 1998, nearly two years after the group was branded an “evil heretical sect,” a group of “fellow initiates” visited Shanxi to distribute flood relief in the aftermath of a disaster; a May 2000 “dharma meeting” presided over by the Supreme Master in Hong Kong’s Elisabeth Stadium attracted three thousand followers, including several hundred from Fujian, Guangdong, Hunan and elsewhere on the mainland.36 Eighteen months later, at a 2000 retreat in Youngdong, Korea, the Supreme Master greeted a group of Chinese disciples 14 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. “who had longed very much to see Her,” and comforted them by acknowledging the hardships they had endured.37 Upon returning to the mainland, at least one member of the party claimed to have been met by group of over a hundred local practitioners in rural Hebei eager to hear his account of the retreat.38 According to recent association news posted on the group’s website, Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin initiates on the Chinese mainland received informational flyers “designed by Master personally” and distributed them locally as recently as early 2006.39 The group’s reliance on the internet to communicate across national boundaries is one key to its survival. The sect currently maintains versions of its site in at least seventeen different languages, but the main pages — and the sites with the most content — remain those in English, traditional Chinese, and Vietnamese. The websites offer inhouse news magazines, RealAudio and downloadable MP3 versions of radio broadcasts, and online WindowsMedia versions of Supreme Master Television programming for those without access to cable stations. Seminars and lectures can be downloaded in Chinese in MP3 format, viewed on-line, or even downloaded as podcasts, which cannot be filtered for objectionable content.40 Much of the media produced by Suma Ching Hai International is heavily selfreferential and promotional, and aims to build a public record of recognition for group activities. In December 1998, the association organized a concert to benefit several prominent children’s foundations in the United States: highlights of the event were captured in a coffee-table book, One World of Peace Through Music. Like Falun Gong’s Li Hongzhi, Supreme Master Ching Hai has had local authorities in the United States, Taiwan, and elsewhere declare particular dates "Supreme Master Ching Hai Day." The 15 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. website displays letters of appreciation she has received for her charitable contributions and works, including one purporting to be from the “China Communist City Council of Chifeng and City Government of Chifeng” thanking her for her flood relief efforts in Shanxi Province in 1998.41 The source of the vast financial assets supporting the group’s charitable efforts as well as its media empire is a mystery. Like other syncretic qigong sects that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, the organization adopted the structure of a business enterprise early on; in the wake of growing repression, some chapters may have continued to operate more openly as commercial organizations, concealing their relationship with the World Society. In January 2002, the State Security Defense Section of Wuhan reported that the manager of the Wuhan Zhongzhi Electric Testing Equipment Company used the company as a cover to “use business to support heresies” associated with Guanyin Famen/Quan Yin. The enterprise allegedly supported thirty practitioners and sect members who masqueraded as employees and business associates. Following an eight month-long investigation, the manager of the enterprise was charged with using the company’s offices and buildings as “retreat sites,” organizing “initiations” and “screenings” to recruit members, and illegally printing and distributing more than 6,000 copies of “heretical texts.”42 He allegedly also established a “secret stronghold” in Hubei and set up branch companies in seven cities including Guangzhou, Shenyang, and Chengdu. When apprehended, the manager had in his possession 1,410 “heretical publications” describing the “Quanyin Method,” 290 audio-visual products, nine mimeograph machines, and a large quantity of unnamed “heretical objects.”43 16 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Although it is unlikely that such clandestine business activities in the PRC are capable of generating significant wealth, the entrepreneurial orientation of the sect and its leader are apparent on the sect’s main website, which links prominently to “The Celestial Shop,” as well as the sect’s publishing company. Items available for purchase through the website include a line of Celestial apparel and Celestial jewelry designed by the Master, and an assortment of other items that included, as of September 2006, “Supreme Kitchen Fortune Cookies: Food for the Soul,” and a line of table lamps in six different designs (Enlightenment, Love, Vitality, Perfection, Heavenly Rain and Cooling). In the past, she is rumored to have sold her used sweat socks for $1,100 to one happy disciple, who defended the purchase by saying, “'when the Master leaves the physical world, at least I will have her socks.''44 The organization’s extensive financial dealings became embroiled in political scandal following the Supreme Master’s apparent attempt to seek transnational support. In 1995, with the political climate in China already shifting against new syncretic sects, the Suma Ching Hai International organization redoubled its efforts to mobilize resources across the globe. In one effort that backfired, the Supreme Master began encouraging her followers to “do all they could” to support then-U.S. President Clinton, who was facing legal challenges stemming from the Whitewater investigation. During a 1995 lecture tour, the Supreme Master ostensibly solicited checks and money orders totaling over $880,000. Arkansas businessman and longtime friend of Bill Clinton, Charles Yah Lin Trie, who had visited the sect’s main temple in central Taiwan and was initiated into the group, personally delivered the funds to the executive director of the Presidential Legal Defense Fund. However, the donations were refused when it was discovered that the bulk of them 17 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. were made in sequentially numbered postal money orders, in the names of sect followers who apparently lacked the financial resources to make such sizable donations.45 Investigators quickly determined that the handwriting on the checks and money orders was the same, and that the nominal donors were reimbursed by Ng Lapseng, a tycoon from Macao and business partner of Charlie Trie.46 Instead of the desired boomerang of transnational support, these activities resulted in an extensive investigation and a Congressional subpoena, as well as welter of negative press about the Supreme Master and her financial dealings. Hailed by the Western press as the “Immaterial Girl: Part Buddha, Part Madonna” for her flamboyant dress, the “Buddhist Martha…[a] merchandizing mystic from Taiwan,” and “God, Inc.,” Suma Ching Hai quickly became the object of an intense media frenzy. 47 In the end, the backfire reverberated for well over a year, and deepened popular suspicions regarding the questionable fund-raising practices of the Clinton administration. The Supreme Master’s disastrous attempt to garner transnational support for herself and her followers culminated in a campaign finance scandal involving individuals with links to organized crime in Asia and at least one Chinese official who channeled large sums of money to the Democratic National Committee.48 International Zhong Gong Headquarters, Inc. One the most popular syncretic qigong sects of the 1980s and 1990s, Zhong Gong was established in 1988 by Zhang Hongbao, a former commander of a local militia and local-level Party cadre from rural Heilongjiang who returned to school to study economic management in Beijing. Upon completing his studies, Zhang established the Haidian 18 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Qigong Science Research Institute, and a Chinese-American joint venture enterprise, the Beijing International Qigong Service Company, and began to publicly promote what he called Zhonghua Yangsheng Yizhi Gong (Zhong Gong), or the “Practice of Life Preservation and Wisdom Accretion.” His two organizations formed the foundation of what eventually became an impressive set of interlocked enterprises, the engine of which was a qigong practice. In the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Zhang retreated to a remote base area in Sichuan, where he reorganized his followers as employees of a sprawling web of private enterprises owned by a parent firm, the Qilin Group. When a Beijing daily reported that his Beijing-based International Qigong Service Enterprise had been shut down pending an investigation into possible criminal activities, Zhang retained the team of lawyers who had defended Mao’s widow during the the Gang of Four trial, and wrested a public apology from the paper. A string of unsuccessful legal actions against the government lasting five years followed, during which Zhang nonetheless managed to elude arrest.49 Overtly political and distinctly entrepreneurial, the Zhong Gong grew from Zhang’s assertion that the realms of thought and matter existed in dialectical tension. Zhang's proposed that "the power of thought" (yinianli) has a quantifiable material existence that, properly tapped, is capable of transforming common yang realm matter.50 At its height, Zhang Hongbao’s enterprise group administered a diversified network of entities including: over three thousand schools and nearly a hundred thousand training offices; Taiweike, a health products company that marketed mineral water, yoga clothing, meditation cushions and textbooks; eight resorts, with hotels, stores, car rental 19 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. businesses, restaurants, and on-site security services; six travel agencies; a scientific research institute with several affiliated hospitals; and a set of specialized educational institutions that included the Chongqing International Life Science Technology University, Traditional Chinese Culture University, a medical school and associated elementary, junior and senior high schools.51 One January 2000 report estimated that Zhong Gong-linked enterprises employed four hundred thousand people in all.52 In response to the July 1999 ban on “heretical sects,” Zhang Hongbao launched the "Action 99-8" campaign, encouraging his followers to distribute texts accusing Jiang Zemin of pursuing "stability above all" in order to perpetuate his own power at all costs. Shortly thereafter, Zhang and an associate escaped to Thailand, and then traveled on to Guam, where both applied for political asylum in the United States. Attempting to garner transnational support and international media attention, Zhang launched a hunger strike from a detention center in Guam, and won the backing of several overseas Chinese dissident organizations, including the Free China Movement, the Chinese Democracy Party, and the Joint Conference of Chinese Overseas Democracy Movement.53 After being granted political asylum, Zhang and his associate used two million dollars from Zhong Gong-affiliated enterprises to establish "The Chinese Anti-Political Persecution Alliance," vowing to push for the release of political dissidents from mainland Chinese jails. On March 3, 2003, the Alliance composed a letter of appeal addressed to 9th National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference calling for an end to political persecution in China; on the same date, International Zhong Gong Headquarters submitted a petition to the same two bodies demanding the immediate release of all detained Zhong Gong practitioners, and the return of all 20 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. confiscated properties to International Zhong Gong Headquarters, with an estimated value of 800 million RMB (US$ 96.6 million). The earliest Zhong Gong websites appeared in 2000, and initially served either as electronic bulletin boards frequented largely by movement representatives, or as repositories for the writings of Zhang Hongbao. Following the founding of the “AntiPolitical Persecution Alliance,” however, the website content diversified, including more information about overseas Chinese dissident networks and activities, and linking to human rights groups. In November 2002, Zhang announced the formation of the China Shadow Government, based in Washington, DC, “an enterprising group engaged in political culture” that proposed “to run a political operation as a business administration.”54 By 2004, the group’s main website offered mirroring sites in six different languages. Recent information posted on the group’s current website details a complex legal and financial struggle within the Zhong Gong organization that originated, in part, from the transfer of $1.5 million from the “Anti-Political Persecution Alliance” by a former associate of Zhang. Zhang was further beset by criminal charges filed by his housekeeper, who accused him of beating her and locking her in a room because he believed she was mismanaging workers who were completing construction on his Pasadena home.55 By 2003, the group’s chief website was increasingly dominated by news of Zhang’s mounting legal troubles and the deterioration of his personal relationship with his former associate. Facing more than twenty separate lawsuits, in April Zhang Hongbao again dipped into Zhong Gong funds to form the China Federation Foundation with dissident Peng Ming at the helm. However, their attempt to mobilize the broader 21 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. community of overseas dissidents backfired when Peng Ming described the China Federation Foundation to an Associated Press reporter as an organization that “seeks the forceful overthrow of China's communist government and establishment of a democracy.”56 Peng’s remarks provoked a bitter split in the overseas Chinese dissident community in North America, prompting members of the China Support Network to publicly denounce Peng as a “stray extremist,” and the new China Federation Foundation a “discredited splinter group that is without a reputation or a track record.”57 This clash plunged Zhang Hongbao and his associates into a new wave of cross claims and countersuits involving various members of the Anti-Persecution Alliance, the China Federation Foundation, and the Free China Movement.58 A year later, Peng Ming was arrested by Myanmar police, extradited and tried in the PRC for having established and operated a terrorist training base, and for organizing kidnappings in Wuhan, Changsha and Beijing beginning to fund his operations. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.59 On July 31, 2006, while scouting locations for a new base area in Arizona, Zhang Hongbao was killed when his car was struck by a tractor trailer. An official announcement appeared on the website exactly one month later. Within days, a coalition of his organizations announced the formation of a committee to investigate “the truth of the accident:” but other central players in the overseas democracy movement wondered whether Zhang’s death might trigger a backlash of fractious squabbles within the activist community over Zhang’s assets and legacy.60 A September 7 Epoch Times article suggested that Zhang, who once served as a senior consultant to the Chinese military, may have been murdered by party agents for disclosing Chinese military secrets.61 22 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Falun Dafa Li Hongzhi, a former trumpet player in the People’s Liberation Army and cadre at a cereals processing factory in Changchun began his involvement with the qigong movement as a follower of Li Weidong’s Chanmi Gong in 1988. He then studied Yu Guangshen’s Jiugong Bagua Gong, a qigong practice similar to the one Li subsequently introduced to the public in 1992.62 Word of the practice began to spread, first in Changchun and outlying areas; the following year, Li and a handful of disciples attended the second Oriental Health Expo in Beijing, where they offered on-the-spot diagnosis and treatment. Li later recounted that his treatments proved so effective that the Falun Gong booth was soon swamped with people. The organizer of the event described Li Hongzhi as "the most popular qigong master" at the Expo, and bestowed the highest honor of the event, the "Advancing Marginal Sciences Award," on Falun Gong.63 By 1996, Falun Gong claimed millions of followers throughout mainland China. Like other qigong sects of the 1980s and 90s, Falun Gong was initially tolerated and even sanctioned by Chinese authorities, and maintained linkages with various state and Party connected organizations and enterprises. Li’s Beijing-based Falun Dafa Research Society registered with the China Qigong Research Society. Initially, beneath the umbrella of the research society, “main stations” were found on the provincial, region, and municipal levels, with subordinate guidance stations established at the county level and in urban districts within cities. At the lowest level, practice sites and study groups were established in groups of villages in rural areas and housing and work units in cities. This organizational structure was not dissimilar to those of other large, nationwide 23 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. qigong sects, like Zhong Gong; however, early on in its institutional history, Falun Gong organizations channeled considerable administrative and material resources toward public relations and media management. The Beijing headquarters supervised a translation committee, a material service committee that managed document distribution, and various liaison personnel who responded to questions concerning doctrinal and practical meditation techniques. The main stations located in Beijing and Shanghai also had three functional committees that oversaw doctrine and method, logistics and operations, and propaganda. The earliest main station, established in Changchun by Li Hongzhi himself, was organized into two divisions and one office in late 1993. The duties of the Changchun General Office included liaising with outside organizations, disseminating directives from the main station committee, and receiving, managing and distributing Falun Gong publications and paraphernalia.64 Clearly, in sheer economic terms, Falun Gong was enormously successful in mainland China. Li’s magnus opus, Zhuan Falun (Turn the Dharma Wheel), became a runaway bestseller by 1996. Official Chinese sources maintain that from 1992 to 1994, Li Hongzhi personally collected at least 1.78 million yuan in seminar fees; however, Falun Gong activists hasten to point out that the China Qigong Scientific Research Society and their local branches that hosted the training seminars received 40 per cent of the admission receipts.65 When Chinese authorities banned Falun Gong publications in 1996, sales continued underground through agents purportedly authorized by Li himself. For example, between the imposition of the 1996 ban and April 1999, the director of Falun Gong’s Wuhan chapter purportedly sold millions of Falun Gong books and audiovisual 24 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. products, as well as tens of thousands of exercise accessories, badges, pictures, posters, and banners, with sales totaling an estimated US$11 million.66 This financial success — much of which enriched individuals and groups outside of the sect, as well as those within — afforded considerable leverage to Falun Gong activists intent on protecting the groups’ reputation. As is well-known, between April 1998 and mid-1999, Falun Gong practitioners initiated more than 300 protests, frequently involving more than a thousand participants, over negative media representation, with strategies ranging from exercising in front of news organizations to harassing editors and reporters, by phone or personally in their places of work or homes.67 Not infrequently, these tactics worked: when He Zuoxiu, a member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences and Falun Gong’s chief critic in Beijing, sought to publish an article entitled "I Do Not Approve of Teenagers Practicing Qigong,” the only venue he could find was a popular science journal affiliated with Tianjin Normal University.68 Nevertheless, in the week that followed, literally thousands of practitioners descended upon the offices both of the publication and the Tianjin municipal government, leading to a spate of arrests. Before the Tianjin incident had been resolved, over than ten thousand Falun Gong activists gathered before Zhongnanhai, the gated residential compound of the Beijing elite, shortly before dawn on April 25, 1999. The demonstration, the largest such public gathering since the June 4th crackdown, continued for thirteen hours and led the authorities to initiate more serious measures to contain and then eliminate the group.69 Foreign media reported the April 25th demonstration and smaller, scattered protests that followed the July 1999 ban on “evil heretical sects,” but coverage dwindled afterwards. Falun Gong practitioners and activists have engaged in a variety of activities 25 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. designed to keep the group’s name and plight in the international media. In response to “media fatigue,” activists have taken to staging news conferences and protest spectacles in major US cities. In addition, practitioners in the United States have pursued Chinese officials, for example, filing civil actions against former Beijing Mayor Liu Qi and Deputy Governor of Liaoning Xia Deren seeking compensation for violations of international law,70 and publicly confronted Chinese officials visiting overseas, as when Epoch Times reporter Wang Wenyi heckled President Hu Jintao for three minutes during a 2006 White House appearance. Other recent attempts to garner media attention have included an unsuccessful letter-writing campaign to have Li Hongzhi nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and numerous efforts to have local authorities in the United States declare "Falun Dafa" or "Li Hongzhi" days. Such activities have resulted in some media coverage, and has kept Falun Gong on the edges of the public radar screen in the West. However, due to the difficulty of obtaining regular access to foreign media, but also motivated by concerns that Chinese authorities have been extending their control over Chinese language media outlets abroad,71 the Falun Dafa organization has established its own web of media outlets. These include World Falun Dafa Radio, shortwave radio programming launched in July 2001 that is capable of reaching central and northern China, and Fang Guangming TV, a television station also established in 2001 that broadcasts by satellite from Los Angeles. In February of the following year, Falun Gong supporters established New York-based New Tang Dynasty Television which broadcasts via satellite twenty-four hours a day. In March 2004, New Tang began beaming unencrypted programming via two new satellites into Asia and Europe. Relying on members across the globe to serve as unsalaried producers and stringers, both outlets 26 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. feature stories related to Falun Gong activities worldwide, as well as news, music, and other types of programming. In February of 2002, Falun Gong activists hacked into the television cables serving the northeastern city of Anshan, and managed to broadcast for several minutes; a few weeks later, activists in Changchun apparently hacked into that city's cable network and broadcast nearly twenty minutes of video footage from a Fang Guangming documentary that casts doubt on official Chinese accounts of a selfimmolation incident.72 New York–based Epoch Times was established in August 2000; the newspaper’s website (www.epochtimes.com) and the Epoch Times group of newspapers quickly became one of the most popular Chinese-language news websites available, and with its free local editions in more than thirty states, one of the largest overseas Chinese news outlets in the world. Local franchises choose content from The Epoch Times website, which offers coverage of Falun Gong-related activities and events, and add local material. While both New Tang and The Epoch Times publicly deny being Falun Gong-related media, tax records reveal that top Falun Gong spokesmen serve as either directors or as chairmen of the board.73 Nonetheless, corporate director of the English-language edition of The Epoch Times Levi Browde recently said that characterizations of such media organizations as mere mouthpieces of Falun Gong are not merely inaccurate, but assist the party in preventing reporters from attending events to which they have been invited.74 Yet incidents like the April 2006 heckling of Hu Jintao, by an Epoch Times reporter who was issued a one-day press pass, casts doubt on such claims. An Epoch Times spokesperson described the reporter as a medical doctor "very overstressed” by her work on a series of articles related to organ harvesting.75 The tirade succeeded in raising 27 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. the media profile of a story that The Epoch Times had begun reporting the month before, that of the alleged existence of a concentration camp for Falun Gong practitioners that routinely harvested and sold the organs of inmates. Shortly after a former Chinese journalist working for a television station in Japan proclaimed the camp’s existence, Falun Gong representatives pressed US State Department officials to investigate. Two teams of American officials visited the facility on two occasions, once unannounced, but “found no evidence” that the site was anything other than “a normal public hospital.”76 Amnesty International and United Nations officials have also been asked to investigate. A eight week-long investigation conducted by two prominent Canadian officials who were not granted visas to enter China concluded that the allegations were most likely true.77 However, veteran dissident Harry Wu, who spent 15 years gathering evidence on the harvesting of organs from executed Chinese prisoners, publicly expressed his suspicions that the claims had been fabricated, based on the testimony of only two witnesses, neither of whom was reliable.78 Wu has since released an essay detailing his experiences investigating the Falun Gong death camp claims in which he describes being threatened by senior Falun Gong representatives, who counseled him to keep his reservations to himself.79 Rather than heed this advice, Wu shared his concerns in writing with a member of the US Congress, whose staff leaked the letter to high-ranking Falun Gong representatives in the United States. Shortly thereafter, Falun Gong-related media outlets, including Secret China and The Epoch Times began a coordinated smear campaign against Harry Wu, publishing accusations that he was a “butcher,” a "Chinese Communist senior-level spy," and that Wu had “betrayed his conscience and the 28 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. conscience of the Chinese people” in order to secure his own release from a Chinese prison in 1995.80 In May 2006, outspoken dissident and former Beijing University journalism professor Jiao Guobiao published an essay in the overseas Chinese Apple Daily (Pingguo Ribao) entitled “Breaking through the Mainland Internet Blockade,” in which he lauded the unbalanced and highly partisan journalistic tactics of Falun Gong-related media like Radio Free Asia. Arguing that there is no attempt at balance on the mainland, Jiao proposed that even if Falun Gong outlets published only negative information highly critical of the party, the weight of their attacks could never begin to counterbalance the positive propaganda the party publishes about itself. To a Radio Free Asia reporter who claimed that the Falun Gong media were viewed with contempt by the Washington press corps because of lack of balance, Jiao retorted that the Washington press corps was comprised of “dogmatists” and "pedants who don't understand China” or the principle of journalistic “balance:” “What the mainland Chinese public lacks is negative information about mainland China. . . . Balance does not mean that all media entity have to achieve a God-like balance, but that the media can balance the principles of freedom, equality and legality together. . . . Balance is the result of the collective imbalances of all.”81 Conclusion: Boomerang, Backfire or Spectacle? The widespread availability of new technologies like the internet have transformed contentious claim-making, not only by reducing costs and increasing the reliability of communications across geographical and temporal barriers, but also by spawning new organizational forms. The web-based digital tools that enable internet 29 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. users to access text, audio, visual, and other forms of information in an encompassing, interactive environment have forged transnational communities that share quasi-spiritual practices and common political agendas. The transnational cybersects described in the preceding pages began as syncretic qigong sects targeted for elimination, but now participate to varying degrees in complex digital ecologies that incorporate the Internet, websites, electronic bulletin boards, email and SMS messaging, all of which offer participants to communicate in entirely new ways. At the core of these advances in recombinant communication technology is a new dynamic that Bach and Stark have called “link, search and interact” that permits users to “link social structures (who knows who) and knowledge networks (who knows what).”82 The new associations formed through the vehicle of interactive digital media has brought together pockets of underground qigong practitioners with their exiled leaders and new chapters formed abroad, and linked shared grievances to those of other overseas Chinese dissidents in a manner that would not have been possible only a few decades ago. The role of the internet and other new communication technologies in shifting the scale of these collective grievances cannot be understated. Underground practitioners within China share information about the extent and nature of repression with those based abroad; overseas supporters provide funding, lobby NGOs and other transnational activists, and actively court international media attention in hopes of triggering a “boomerang” effect that could effect domestic reforms. However, beneath the impressive façade of elaborately designed webpages, rousing political manifestoes and vast webrings, lurks the troubling question of how to assess the operational strength and credibility of network linkages forged in virtual 30 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. environments. If the internet is capable of providing resource-poor groups and actors a virtual soapbox from which to trumpet their respective causes, it is equally capable of spinning vast webs that are more virtual than real, an endless parade of “dot-causes”83 that deploy “credibility enhancing tactics” 84 in a competitive struggle for the media spotlight. The brave new world of “global civil society,” as Bob notes, is a “Darwinian arena in which the successful prosper but the weak wither.”85 The most successful cybersects, as I have shown, have evolved into multinational conglomerates that incorporate media enterprises, public relations firms and commercial operations beneath an umbrella of shifting entrepreneurial and spiritual interests; yet, as the case studies also demonstrate, along with the partisan news reports and promotional information they provide, these transnational media machines have navigated — sometimes poorly — a narrow course between “marketing” their local “rebellions” and becoming subject to the dissecting lens of the mass media and the general public. All too often, rather than triggering “boomerangs” of transnational support, their promotional strategies have backfired, bringing a hail of negative press, inflaming internecine rivalries and inviting charges of misrepresentation from the very audiences they seek to cultivate. In such incidents, the negative fallout has threatened to affect not only core members, but also transnational dissident networks, NGO activists, and politicians who have lent their support. Potentially more disturbing is the insight that these media machines, originally designed to communicate movement goals both within and outside the movement, are equally capable of engineering spectacles of protest, manufacturing virtual dissent that amplifies the impact of extremist views held by relatively small constituencies, and 31 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. spinning vast conspiracy theories. As Stewart has noted: "The Internet was made for conspiracy theory: it is a conspiracy theory: one thing leads to another, always another link leading you deeper into no thing and no place."86 Nor are such phenomena restricted to Chinese cybersects: alternative digitally-based media has emerged as one of the defining reportorial hallmarks of popular contention in the information age. In March 2002, the Italian branch of the alternative media outlet Indymedia organized a “Reclaim Your Media” march co-sponsored by Radio Onda Rossa. The demonstration’s placards bore the slogan: “Don’t hate the media! Become the media!’”87 In an era in which all subjects of struggle also strive to become subjects of information, it becomes increasingly difficult to divine the boundaries between the representation of dissent from actual measurable popular support. The advent of the information age has been accompanied by an explosion of “manufactured dissent” in a variety of forms, including the creation and sponsorship of faux “grassroots” campaigns by government and corporate actors seeking to protect their interests,88 the formation of pseudo-consumer rights groups by powerful lobbyists acting on behalf of well-heeled clients,89 and the establishment of fake international NGOs with invented histories of conferences, reports and proposals.90 The ease with which the internet permits users to fashion virtual identities has given rise to a host of collective disinformation strategies, including “astroturfing” (efforts by a small group of activists or actors to convey the impression that a particular agenda is supported by a grassroots movement),91 “sockpuppeting” (the activation of multiple separate user accounts by an existing registered member of a virtual community) and, even, “wikiturfing” (the practice of posting a Wikipedia entry for a particular organization, catch-phrase, or activity to suggest that it 32 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. has already attained a level of broad recognition). The deployment of these and similar tactics in online activism confounds the efforts of even the most astute observers of contentious politics to discern the differences between genuine and manufactured forms of dissent, and mainstream and marginal activism. Yet this problem, too, is not entirely new to the study of social movements. As Tilly has noted, the image of a social movement as a permanent and stable group with a collective commitment to a unitary political agenda has always been an exercise in “mystification.” “In real social movements, involvement ebbs and flows, coalitions form and dissolve, fictitious organizations loom up and fade away, would-be leaders compete for recognition as the representatives of unorganized constituencies, leaders make deals with police and politicians.” Movement leaders and entrepreneurs generally “seek to control and disguise” internal divisions and shifting levels of popular support for their particular agendas. The dilemma this poses for students of social movements, Tilly observes, is whether to “follow the interest, the population, the belief, or the program” to understand and evaluate a trajectory of contention. By way of solution, he proposes a renewed focus on patterns of sustained interaction between claimants “acting in the name of a defined interest to make repeated broad demands” on those in positions of power, and to pay close attention to shifts in patterns over time.92 As the cases of these three Chinese cybersects have demonstrated, more often than not, the internet proves an uncannily effective medium for making such claims appear credible, by seeming to linking broad coalitions of actors behind a virtual united front, and amplifying the impact that smaller and marginal groups have on the political 33 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. process. The opening up of the internet as a field for contentious interaction certainly affords new opportunities for mobilization, particularly for more marginal groups like the three discussed in this chapter. For these groups, cyberspace offers new possibilities for framing and pressing transnational collective claims in the face of repression at home, but, because of the heterarchical participation it inspires, does so at enhanced risk of scrutiny by movement activists, mainstream participants, and erstwhile transnational supporters. Virtual reality therefore provides fertile new ground for testing theories and of contentious politics, but not one entirely unrelated to the problems and dynamics that shape earlier forms of mobilization. I gratefully acknowledge Kevin O'Brien, Sidney Tarrow, and the other conference participants, for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1 The website is located at (http://www.tuidang.epochtimes.com); the technological means to circumvent China’s domestic firewall was provided by DynaWeb (Dongtai Wangluo) and Ultrareach Internet (Wujie Wangluo), two US-based software companies hired by Epoch Times to make their proxy services available to Chinese users. 2 See Dynamic Internet Technology, “Report on Internet Circumvention Technologies and Renunciations from the Chinese Communist Party” (June 2005), available at http://www.dit-inc.us/report/9p200505/9preport.php. On its website, Dynaweb lists Epoch Times as one of its clients, along with the Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Human Rights in China. 34 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 3 Han Fudong, “Jingwai wangzhan zaoyao Meng Weizai tuidang zhenxiang” [The real story of the overseas website fabricating rumors of Meng Weizai’s resignation from the Party], Fenghuang Zhoukan (Hong Kong), Feb. 28, 2005, accessed July 5, 2007 at www.phoenixtv.com/phoenixtv/72931714371944448/20050228/510382.shtml. 4 Nailene Chou Wiest, “Bitter Battle Over Cadre's Loyalties Waged in Cyberspace” South China Morning Post, December 14, 2004, p. 8. 5 Hai Tao, “Zhenjia Meng Weizai tuidang fengbo he hubo jingwai” [The overseas tempest and contradictory reports concerning the true and false resignation of Meng Weizai], Voice of America broadcast (Hong Kong) (December 12, 2004). 6 ‘The Jiuping – The Epoch Times New Years’ Gift to the People of China,” Epoch Times, December 24, 2004, accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/4-1224/25193.html. 7 Nailene Chou Wiest, “Bitter Battle,” p. 8. 8 Han Fudong, “Jia Meng Weizai.” 9 Yi Ping, “Washington D.C. Rally Celebrates 12 Million CCP Resignations,” Epoch Times, July 26, 2006 (accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-726/44283.html); Brian Marple, “Hundreds Rally to Commemorate 5,000,000 Quitting Communism in China,” Epoch Times, October 16, 2005 (accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-10-16/33401.html); Ye Shuxing, “One Thousand March in Support of 4 Million Withdrawals from the CCP,” Epoch Time, September 1, 2005 (accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-9-1/31843.html) 10 Daniel W. Drezner, “Can 200,000 Chinese Ex-Communists Be Wrong?” (March 15, 2005) accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001940.html. 35 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 11 Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 12 W. Lance Bennett, “Communicating Global Activism: Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Networked Politics,” Information, Communication & Society 6:2 (2003): 143–168. 13 Patricia M. Thornton, “The New Cybersects: Resistance and Repression in the Reform era, “ in Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance (second edition), Elizabeth Perry and Mark Selden, eds. (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 147-170. 14 Margaret E. Keck and Karen Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 15 On the role of credibility in establishing frame resonance, see Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000), pp. 619-21. 16 Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 17 Serguei Alex Oushakine, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13:2 (2001), pp. 191–214. 18 Kevin J. O’Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 19 On the processes of “certification” and “decertification,” see Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), particularly Chapters 5 and 7. 20 Stanley D. Brunn and Charles D. Cottle, “Small States and Cyberboosterism,” Geographical Review 18:2 (April 1997), pp. 240-58. 36 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 21 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon, [1988] 2002). 22 Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism, pp. 3-5. 23 Mario Diani, “Social Movement Networks: Virtual and Real,” in Culture and Politics in the Information Age: A New Politics, Frank Webster, ed. (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 117–28. 24 Manuel Castells, The Rise of Network Society (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 469. 25 Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps, “Creating Another America: the Power and Joy of Networking,” in People-Centered Development: Contributions toward Theory and Planning Framework, David Corten and Rudi Klaus, eds. (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian, 1984), pp. 294, 296. 26 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, pp. 12-13, 18. 27 Thornton, “The New Cybersects,” pp. 148-49. 28 He Hanhun, “Xiejiao de zhidu jingjixue fenxi” [An economic analysis of the heretical sect system], Kexue yu wushenlun [Science and atheism] 15:6 (2003); Lu Yunfeng “Entrepreneurial Logics and the Evolution of Falun Gong,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44:2 (2005), pp. 173-185. 29 N. J. Demerath III, Peter Dobkin Hall, Terry Schmitt and Rhys H. Williams, eds. Sacred Companies: Organizational Aspect s of Religion and Religious Aspects of Organizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Hank Johnston, “The Marketed Social Movement: A Case Study of the Rapid Growth of TM,” Pacific Sociological Review 23:3 (July 1980), pp. 333-354. 37 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 30 See Sun Wanning, “Media and the Chinese Diaspora: Community, Consumption, and Transnational Imagination,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 1:1 (May 2005), pp. 65–83. 31 Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, p. 200. 32 David Hess and Brian Martin, “Repression, Backfire and the Theory of Transformative Events,” Mobilization 11:2 (2006), pp. 249-267. 33 Ting Jen-chieh, Shehui fenhua yu zongjiao zhidu yanbian: dangdai Taiwan xinxing zongjiao xianxiang de shehuixue kaocha [Social differentiation and the evolution of religious systems: a sociological investigation of the phenomenon of new religions in contemporary Taiwan] (Taibei: Lianjing, 2004): 313-16, 386; Howard Chua-eoan and Donald Shapiro, “The Buddhist Martha,” Time 197:3 (January 20, 1997). 34 The Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association, “The Quan Yin Method Frequently Asked Questions,” last modified May 29, 1998, accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.godsdirectcontact.org/eng/faq.txt. 35 Research Directorate, Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (Ottawa) Response to Information Request report, “China: Meditation Practice Called "Kuan Yin Famen", CHN36385.E8 February 2001, accessed from http://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/research/rir/; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, “Human rights sources say China begins suppression of Buddhist Sect,” September 9, 2000, available via Lexis-Nexis. 36 BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, “China-Banned Buddhist Group Holds Hong Kong Rally” (May 06, 2000), available via LexisNexis. 37 From the Supreme Master Ching Hai Ocean of Love Tour: Experience the Divine. “Believe That You are Really Great!,” accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.godsdirectcontact.org/lovetour/29-Sr11.htm. 38 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 38 “An Old Farmer’s Auspicious Retreat,” accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.godsdirectcontact.org/eng/news/148/mw2.htm. 39 “Information on Vegetarianism is Welcome in Mainland China,” accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.godsdirectcontact.org/incoming/pub/enews185/. 40 Steve Friess, “The Internet: Podcast Dissidents,” Newsweek 148: 15 (October 9, 2006), p. 10. 41 “A Dedication of Love: Report from mainland China,” accessed July 5, 2007 at http://godsdirectcontact.us/sm21/enews/www/101/m-20.htm. 42 The texts in question were “Dada and Lala,” “A New Noah’s Ark,” and “Biography of Babaji.” 43 Wuhan Gongan Nianjian (Wuhan Public Security Yearbook), 2003, pp. 93-94. 44 “Cash and the Campaign: Clinton Faces a Tide of Revelations about his Political Fund- raising,” Maclean's (Toronto Edition) 110 (January 13, 1997), pp. 32-34. 45 Carey Goldberg, “In the Eye of a Political Storm, a Peaceful Ashram,” New York Times (December 19, 1996), p. 14. 46 Donald J. Liddick, Jr., “Campaign Fund-raising Abuses and Money Laundering in Recent U.S. Elections: Criminal Networks in Action,” Crime, Law and Social Change 34 (2000), pp. 129-32. 47 William Clairborne, “Behind Clinton Fund Donations, Sect With a Flamboyant Leader,” Washington Post (December 19, 1995): A6; Miranda Ewell, “’Messiah’ Sent Thousands to Clinton; Sect Gains Unfavorable Attention,” Times-Picayune (December 22, 1996): A24; Gordon Young, “God, Inc.: Inner Peace Isn’t the Only Thing Supreme Master Ching Hai is Selling Bay Area Disciples,” SF Weekly (May 22, 1996); Rafer 39 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Guzman, “Immaterial Girl: Part Buddha, Part Madonna, Supreme Master Ching Hai Promises Immediate Enlightenment to San Jose's Asian immigrants,” San Jose Mercury (March 28- April 3, 1996). 48 Liddick, “Campaign Fund-raising,” pp. 129-32. 49 Yin Xin, "'Zhong Gong' de fazhan he renxing fankang" [The development and tenacious resistance of Zhong Gong], Qianshao [Outpost] (October 2000): 35-36. 50 Thornton, “The New Cybersects,” pp. 147-70. 51 See “Road of Enterprise: Brief Introduction about Tianhua (Kilin) Group,” at http://www.speakout.com/forum_view.asp?Forum=China&MID=82261&mMID=82261, accessed July 5, 2007; Chen Zong, "Zhong Gong bei dacheng xiejiao canzhao pohuai" (China Gong is attacked as a heretical sect and destroyed), Qianshao [Outpost] (June 2000), p. 32. 52 AFP Report, “HK Group Says China About To Ban Zhonggong Group,” (31 Jan 2000), Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS-CHI-2000-0205. 53 US Newswire, "'Campaign to Free Master Zhang Hongbao' to Hold Press Conference Dec. 20," (December 19, 2000), accessed via Lexis-Nexis. 54 Executive Office of CSG, “The First Public Announcement by China Shadow Government” (8/9/2003), accessed July 5, 2007, http://www.worldchinese.com/Eng/DispNews.asp?ID=8899. 55 Marshall Allen, “Zhang Preliminary Hearing Begins,” Pasadena Star-News (December 9, 2003), available via Lexis-Nexis. 56 Associated Press wire report, “China Detains American, New Zealander Belonging to Exiled Dissident Group,” (May 26, 2003) available via Lexis-Nexis. 40 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 57 China Support Network, “CSN declares no confidence in Peng Ming,” (May 29, 2003), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://chinasupport.net/site.htm?page=news64. 58 John Kusumi, “Zhang Hongbao, Qi Gong Master, Chinese Dissident, and Lightning Rod for Controversy Dies at Age 52,” China Support Network (Sept. 10, 2006), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://chinasupport.net/site.htm?page=buzz09100601. 59 “Dissident Accused of Terrorism Jailed for Life,” South China Morning Post (October 14, 2005), p. 5. 60 John Kusumi, “Zhang Hongbao.” 61 See Wen Hua, “Possibly Murdered Qigong Master Disclosed CCP Military Secrets,” Epoch Times (September 7, 2006), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-9-7/45723.html. 62 Zhang, Weiqing and GongQiao. Falun Gong Chuangshiren Li Hongzhi Pingzhuan [A Biography of Li Hongzhi, Founder of Falun Gong] (Taipei: Business Weekly Press, 1999), p. 53. 63 Lu Yunfeng, “Entrepreneurial Logics,” p. 175. 64 James Tong, “An Organizational Analysis of the Falun Gong: Structure, Communications, Financing,” China Quarterly 171 (September 2002), pp. 636-60. 65 Ibid., p. 651. 66 Yuezhi Zhao, “Falun Gong, Identity, and the Struggle over Meaning Inside and Outside China,” in Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked Society, Nick Couldry and James Curran, eds. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), p. 213. 41 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 67 "The Battle Between the Chinese Government and the Falun Gong," Chinese Law and Government 32:5 (September-October 1999), pp. 87-90. 68 Yuezhi Zhao, “Falun Gong,” pp. 209-224. 69 Agence-France Presse, “Largest Demonstration Since Tiananmen in Beijing," Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-CHI-1999-0425). 70 For detailed analysis of these two cases, see Mark J. Leavy, “Discrediting Human Rights Abuse as an ‘Act of State’: a Case Study on the Repression of the Falun Gong in China and Commentary on International Human Rights Law in US Courts,” Rutgers Law Journal 35 (2004), pp. 749-842. 71 Mei Duzhi, “How China’s Government is Attempting to Control Chinese Media in America,” China Brief 1:10 (Nov. 21, 2001), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=17&&issue_id=638. Mei Duzhi is affiliated with several Falun Gong organizations. 72 John Leicester, "TV Hijackings, Email Attacks: China's Government, Falun Gong Battle for a Hazy Concept — Truth," The Associated Press On-Line (April 13, 2002); available through LexisNexis. Yuezhi Zhao, “Falun Gong.” 73 Susan V. Lawrence, “Falun Gong Uses Free Speech as a Sword,” Far Eastern Economic Review 167:15 (April 15, 2004), pp. 26-29. 74 Vanessa Hua, “Dissident Media Linked to Falun Gong: Chinese Language Print, Broadcast Outlets in U.S. are Making Waves,” San Francisco Chronicle (December 18, 2005), p. A34. 75 Karlyn Barker and Lena H. Sun, “Falun Gong Activist Defiant After Arrest,” Washington Post (April 22, 2006), p. A5. 42 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 76 “U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alleged Concentration Camp in China — Repression of Falun Gong, Reports of Organ Harvesting Still Worry Officials,” Washington File (April 16, 2006); Mike Steketee, “The Price is Rights,” The Australian (April 1, 2006). 77 Jim Bronskill, “China Accused of Organ Harvest: Falun Gong Prisoners Targeted, Report Says,” The Gazette (Montreal) (July 7, 2006), p. A10. 78 Paul Mooney, “Activist Harry Wu Challenges Organ Harvesting Claims; Scale of Conspiracy Alleged by Falun Gong 'Impossible,'” South China Morning Post (August 9, 2006), p. 7. 79 Wu Hongda [Harry Wu], “Wo duiyu Falun Gong meiti baogao Sujiatun jizhongying wenti de renzhi ji qi jingli” [My knowledge of the problem of Falun Gong media reports regarding Sujiatun concentration camp and other experiences] Guancha [Observe] (July 18, 2006), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.observechina.net/info/artshow.asp?ID=39862. 80 Zhang Yu and Zhen Baihe, “Organ Harvesting Exists — There Is No Doubt,” Epoch Times (September 27, 2006), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-9-27/46418.html . 81 Jiao Guobiao, “Tupo dalu de wangluo fengsuo” [Break through the mainland’s internet blockade] Pingguo Ribao [Apple Daily] (May 8, 2006), accessed July 5, 2007 at http://www.ncn.org/asp/zwginfo/daKAY.asp?ID=68602&ad=5/8/2006. 82 Jonathan Bach and David Stark, “Link, Search, Interact. The Co-evolution of NGOs and Interactive Technology,” Theory, Culture & Society 21:3 (2004), pp. 101-11. 83 John D. Clark and Nuno Themudo, “The Age of Protest: Internet-based ‘Dot Causes’ and the Anti-Globalization’ Movement,” in John D. Clark, ed., Globalizing Civic 43 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. Engagement: Civil Society and Transnational Action (London: Earthscan, 2003), pp. 109–26. 84 Clifford Bob, The Marketing of Rebellion, p. 8. 85 Calvert W. Jones, “Online Impression Management: Case Studies of Activist Web sites and Their Credibility Enhancing Tactics During the Kosovo Crisis.” Presented at the University of Oxford, Oxford Internet Institute, Conference on "Safety and Security in a Networked World," September 8-10, 2005. 86 Emphasis added. Kathleen Stewart, "Conspiracy Theory's Worlds," Paranoia Within Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 18. 87 John Downing, Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage 2001), p. 278. 88 On a Microsoft-funded letter-writing campaign that included letters by citizens who were deceased, see Simon English, “Back from the Grave to Boost Microsoft Case,” Daily Telegraph (London), (August 24, 2001), p. 35. 89 On a purported alliance of consumer advocacy groups that was in fact heavily funded by Verizon Communications and AT&T, see Dionne Searcey, “Consumer Groups Tied to Industry; Some Advocacy Lobbyists For Cable Users Are Backed By Telecoms, Report Says,” Wall Street Journal (March 28, 2006), p. B4. 90 For a Moldovan example, see “Disinformation; Old and New Information Tricks,” Economist (August 5, 2006), accessed via LexisNexis. 91 Thomas P. Lyon and John W. Maxwell, “Astroturf: Group Lobbying and Corporate Strategy,” Journal of Economics and Management Strategy 13:4 (Winter 2004): 561-597. 44 In Kevin J. O’Brien, ed. Popular Protest in China (Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 179-204. 92 Charles Tilly, “Social Movements and National Politics,” in State-Making and Social Movement, Charles Bright and Sandra Harding, eds. (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1984), pp. 311-13. 45