March 9, 2001

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice got an earful from a group of three Chinese diplomats who came calling on her at the White House complex.

The three diplomats, former Ambassadors Zhu Chizhen, Li Daoyu and Zhang Wentu, were expected to hold discussions with Miss Rice on a variety of U.S.-China topics: arms sales to Taiwan, China's human rights record and U.S. missile defense plans.

Instead, one of the diplomats pulled out a prepared speech and harangued Miss Rice for some 20 minutes about the Chinese religious group Falun Gong, which China's [party's name omitted] government regards as its greatest internal threat.

Behind the Chinese presentation is China's belief that the CIA is backing the group, a position rejected as ridiculous by U.S. officials.

Falun Gong is a Chinese meditation, exercise group that is target No. 1 of the Beijing authorities. Its [practitioners] have been imprisoned and its [contact persons] tortured because of their activism.

Miss Rice, we are told, was angered by the Chinese diplomats' tirade and quickly ended the meeting after the 20-minute reading.

The ambassadors are part of a major propaganda campaign now under way by Beijing to influence the new Bush administration before it can get its national security team up and running.

http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200139211815.htm