Ahh..yes..the age old Chicom bag of tricks. When all else fails, lets try the ol' nationalism rally. Well, fortunately times are changing and China is not the closed society that it once was and more & more people have access to information and education from the outside world and as this continues the Chicom methods of taking focus off of their internal failures by rallying nationalism will not continue to work forever. Its amazing how many Chinese nationals that I associate with at school who came here with the Idea that Capitalism was evil and that the American hedonists were the greatest threat to China and her people. After living here for some time and being able to educate themselves with the truth about the outside world (especially the west) they no longer the contempt for America that they once held before they came here.
BINGO! Though I think this was the plan that they have been using from the beginning. Chinese priorites are to get the economy running well in the WTO and some sort of 'controlled' political reform. The popularity of the Falung Gong reflects the disparity between economic and (non) political reform. The only reason that they have 'influence' is because they are the only 'group' floating in the vacuum of political reform.
The 4th generation of leaders will soon step into the breech. It will be interesting to see if they succeed and in my opinion they will. As far as I can see, I believe that the average 'Chinese' understand that economic prosperity is a fundamentalvery interest as huge political uphevals will threaten this and their existence down to the roots. The alternate is the India model - grinding poverty in a democracy.
I could, of course, be horribly wrong ;)
VRN