Producer of Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation Video Died Young

In 2001, a TV producer with the Chinese regime’s state media made a now-debunked propaganda film on Tiananmen Square, one purportedly showing Falun Gong practitioners immolating themselves. He died an early death in 2008.
Producer of Tiananmen Square Self-Immolation Video Died Young
1/26/2011
Updated:
9/29/2015
[youtube]X1CIOwon5Fg[/youtube] CCP Stages “Self Immolation” drama in Tienanmen Square- Part 1The TV producer Chen Mang took an amoral view of his job. He once said in 2001 at a symposium in California, “News does not have any elements of truth.” He also said, “Whoever feeds me, I will work for him wholeheartedly.”

Chen Mang, formerly known as Chen Xiaobing, worked wholeheartedly for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the time he joined CCTV as a reporter. He achieved his greatest professional success in 2001, when he produced a propaganda film on the Tiananmen Square self-immolations. This film has played a key role in the persecution of Falun Gong.

The film was an elaborate hoax. It purported to show five Falun Gong practitioners immolating themselves on Tiananmen Square on Jan. 23, 2001.

In March 2002, NTD TV broadcast the documentary film False Fire, which analyzed the CCTV film produced by Chen. False Fire showed numerous discrepancies in the CCTV account that demonstrated that the self-immolations were staged.

False Fire showed in slow motion how Chen’s cameras had caught Liu Chunling—whom Chen’s film claimed had died due to the immolation—apparently being killed by a blow to the head delivered by a policeman.

The NTD documentary cited a report by the Washington Post to the effect that no one in Liu Chunling’s hometown had ever seen her or her daughter, who also played a key role in Chen’s documentary, practice Falun Gong.

False Fire also showed how an immolator who was represented as having been engulfed in flames had a plastic sprite bottle said to be filled with gasoline between his legs—yet the bottle was not melted and did not explode. And it showed many other problems with Chen’s account.

The TV-viewing public in China, however, did not have the benefit of the NTD analysis, and Chen’s documentary had a powerful effect.

Falun Gong is an ancient spiritual practice that involves performing five meditative exercises and living according to the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Mr. Li Hongzhi began teaching Falun Gong to the public in China in 1999, and it rapidly became very popular. By early 1999, several Western news outlets said that 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong.

China’s then-paramount leader Jiang Zemin, frightened by the large number of people who had taken up this practice, ordered that it be “eradicated.” Falun Gong was banned on July 20, 1999.

But the persecution of Falun Gong was not enthusiastically embraced by either the people of China or its security forces. Falun Gong practitioners were 1 in every 12 people in China, and the initial attempts by China’s state-run media to demonize Falun Gong practitioners were not very successful.

Chen’s film changed that situation. The Chinese people quickly began to look at Falun Gong differently. The rate of detention of practitioners and the death rate of practitioners from abuse shot up. Jiang’s policy of persecution had been given new life.

After Chen produced the film of the Tiananmen self-immolations, he was promoted. In October 2001, he became director of “Oriental Horizon,” a popular CCTV news magazine program.

In China, there is an ancient belief that those who do good receive good in return, and those who do evil are punished.

Chen died at the age of 47 on Dec. 23, 2008, in Beijing Cancer Hospital. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2008, which spread to his liver. The cancer caused him extreme pain, and he died in misery. Intense pain had so distorted his features that he no longer looked like himself when he died.

Chen’s hospital-ward mate was Luo Jing, a famous CCTV news anchor. Luo Jing was a typical CCP mouthpiece. After the June 4 massacre, Luo helped to cover up the CCP’s killing of students. Many false allegations against Falun Gong were also broadcast by him.

Luo Jing had lymphoma, which was almost fully cured after treatment. However, after he determined to resume his job as a mouthpiece for the CCP, his illness worsened, and his mouth was filled with ulcers. The pain from the ulcers made it very difficult for him to eat or drink. In order to take medicine, he first had to rinse his mouth with anesthetic.

Hospital staff gossiped that Luo Jing was getting paid back for all the lies that had come out of his mouth.

Chen was given as honorable a burial as the CCP can provide. His ashes were stored in the exclusive Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, which is usually reserved for the highest-ranking CCP officials. Sources say he was accorded this honor because of his exceptional contribution to the persecution of Falun Gong.

Even former premier of China Zhao Ziyang and a former lieutenant general of the People’s Liberation Army, Li Zuopeng, were not allowed to be buried in Babaoshan.

Recently, many individuals who have promoted the Chinese Communist Party, both in China and in the West, have come upon bad luck. This article is one in a series describing such cases.

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