9. Revelations from Recent Campaigns

At the time the preceding parts of this book were being revised and updated, almost three years after its initial conclusion, China was just nearing the climax of two more communication campaigns—national celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, and Beijing’s bid for year 2008 Olympics. In addition, several other campaigns had occurred between the completion of the three foregoing cases and the writing of this up-to-date epilogue. These included the national effort to fight floods in parts of China in summer 1998, the condemnation of NATO for its bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in May 1999, which claimed the lives of three Chinese journalists and injured a number of others at the Embassy, the subsequent combat against Taiwanese leader’s clamour for the independence of Taiwan under the pretext of his “theory of two nations”, the battle against a religious cult called Falun Gong that had misled thousands of its members to tragic ends, the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of PRC, and the national heat of propaganda promoting the development of Western China’s inland provinces/regions following the call from the state government.