In Revenge of the Forbidden City, political scientist James Tong analyzes the suppression of the Falungong in China in order to pose questions about the strength and cohesion of China's Party-State in the reform era. His general conclusion is that the Party-State has retained much of the capacity built up during the Maoist totalitarian period, despite the relative liberalization and decentralization which have accompanied market reforms over the past three decades.

This is a very nuts-and-bolts book, based largely on official sources published in the People's Republic (government publications, newspapers, gazetteers). In the introduction, Tong provides a theoretical framework focused on the evolution of state capacity in post-socialist regimes, and discusses “power dependency theory,” “market transition theory,” and “market-preserving federalism theory,” (pp. 14–17) but these frameworks serve only as a point of departure for his study, which has little theoretical ambition. Instead, Tong's goal is to examine in great detail the organizational history of the Chinese Party-State's campaign against the Falungong, particularly the earliest period of this campaign, beginning in the late spring of 1999 and continuing through the summer and fall of the same year. Tong is extremely meticulous in his data collection, his goal being to evaluate the conception and execution of the campaign at every level. Thus he compares central documents with local documents, and Party documents with newspaper coverage and gazetteers, searching for evidence of possible resistance to or recasting of the message of central authorities by local agents.

The result is impressive, and surely constitutes the most detailed portrait of the anti-Falungong campaign we will ever have from an objective observer. Chapter Two, “Preparing for the Crackdown,” traces President Jiang Zemin's reaction to the surprise Falungong demonstration outside of Party headquarters at Zhongnanhai on April 25, 1999 (which he saw as the most serious challenge to Party rule since the student demonstrations in 1989), illustrating the skill employed by the Party in rapidly putting together the pieces of the machine of suppression, all the while insisting to the larger public that they were doing no such thing. Chapter Three, “Law Enforcement Operations after the Crackdown,” examines the mobilization of public security and other control mechanisms so as to shut down the Falungong—whose membership at this point numbered in the tens of millions, according to some sources—in a very short period. Chapter Four, “The Anti-Falungong News Media Campaign,” follows the crafting of the anti-Falungong propaganda campaign, which blanketed virtually all media outlets over the course of the summer and fall, an especially impressive feat since central Party-State authorities had paid almost no attention to Falungong prior to the April 25 demonstration. Chapter Five, “Curing the Patient—Conversion Programs,” recounts the multi-faceted efforts to convince Falungong practitioners—particularly but not exclusively leaders—to recant their beliefs. In this chapter, Tong helpfully compares Chinese official and Falungong accounts, which emphasize violence and torture, and does not discount Falungong sources. Chapters Six and Seven, “Organizational Structure of the Falungong Campaign,” and “Party Meetings Announcing the Ban,” are, to Tong, the core of his work, as they illustrate the Party-led, centralized nature of the campaign against the Falungong, suggesting that capacities built up during the Maoist era continue to function in post-Mao conditions. In Chapter Eight, “Evaluation of the Anti-Falungong Campaign,” Tong steps back from his study of the campaign itself and looks at the broader public reception, examining the ratings of anti-Falungong television programs and sales of anti-Falungong publications, and concluding that the general public did not embrace the campaign, but rather tolerated it as best they could.

Tong's overall conclusion is that China's Party-State was indeed able to mount an impressive public security and propaganda campaign against the Falungong, and that this campaign secured the compliance of most political actors within the system, as well as the public at large, even if many Falungong practitioners failed to knuckle under. At the same time, given that China's media market is less unitary than it was under Mao, many Chinese, although surely aware of the campaign, chose to watch or read something other than the endless anti-Falungong propaganda.

I find Tong's work to be convincing, if somewhat narrowly focused. It is unfair and unkind to berate a scholar for the book he did not write, but there is a long list of subjects which are not addressed in this volume. We learn little about the Falungong, although Tong's cursory discussion of the group is thoroughly competent. We learn little about the reason for the Party-State's extreme reaction to the Falungong, except that the group dared to demonstrate outside Party headquarters, and that a good number of Party members were also Falungong practitioners. Tong mentions civil society on a number of occasions, but we learn relatively little about state-society relations in the reform era. I was surprised that Tong did not cite Kang Xiaoguang's Falungong shijian quan toushi [The full story of the Falungong incident] (2000), in which Kang, a prominent PRC intellectual, offers a trenchant discussion of China's need to develop a more organic civil society, beginning with a more enlightened policy on the management of religion. True, Kang does not address elite politics or the mechanics of the anti-Falungong campaign as such, but his broader reflections might have been useful to Tong. Similarly, I would have appreciated a more nuanced discussion of political relations between central and local authorities. Although some local actors may have been dismayed by the anti-Falungong campaign, for most, compliance must surely have been a no-brainer, as there was little upside to resisting the campaign. At the same time, Tong does not address broader issues of the effect of the Falungong campaign on compliance: are we to believe that because central authorities cracked the whip on the Falungong, local officials toed the line on other issues like corruption or environmental concerns? Finally, Tong says relatively little about the conflict between central authorities and Falungong groups outside China or about Falungong efforts to fight back after the initial months of the campaign. Indeed, the uninformed reader of this volume might be surprised to learn that the campaign—and resistance to the campaign—continue to this day.

More broadly, Tong does not directly address the question of the opportunity costs of the hugely expensive state campaign against the Falungong. A recurring comment I have heard in the hundreds of conversations I have had over the years with Chinese about the Falungong is the following: “I guess we needed to do something about the Falungong, but did we need to do all that?” In the eyes of many Chinese—including many Party members and government officials—the campaign was indeed impressive, but also over the top and more than a little scary—the image of an aging NFL linebacker overdosing on steroids comes to mind. One cannot help but wonder if the Chinese Party-State's triumph over the Falungong was not at some level a pyrrhic victory, even if the campaign illustrated that there is a lot of life left in the Party-State.