CCP Targets Shen Yun Globally With Bomb Threats, Diplomatic Pressure

After more than a decade of using diplomatic intimidation, Beijing is now primarily sending bomb and mass shooting threats to scare theaters and lawmakers.

On Feb. 3, the Zénith de Dijon theater in France received an alarming email. “I placed multiple bombs in the theater,” the sender claimed.

The email demanded that an upcoming show by the New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts be canceled or else the theater would be “blown into rubble.”

Some 80 minutes before the show was scheduled to start, the theater was evacuated and inspected by police. No bombs were found. The performance proceeded, albeit with a delay.

Incidents of this kind have become a recurring nightmare for the performing arts company. Over the past year, it has faced dozens of such threats—all of which have proven to be false.

The company has no doubt as to the origin of the threats: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Several experts consulted by The Epoch Times agreed.

The CCP has become notorious for exerting diplomatic pressure to sabotage Shen Yun shows; for the past 15 years, it has pressured local theaters and officials around the world to cancel contracts already signed and shows already scheduled. In a 2024 report, the Falun Dafa Information Center documented more than 130 incidents of interference by Chinese officials or their proxies targeting Shen Yun across 38 countries. Those efforts, however, have mostly failed, giving way to more brazen threats.

Beijing has directed its ire at Shen Yun because of the company’s dazzling dance and musical performances that present traditional Chinese culture free of communist influence, under the tagline “China before communism.”

The company was started by practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline that includes meditative exercises and teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The CCP marked the practice for elimination in 1999 after learning that more people had begun learning Falun Gong than there were members of the Party itself.

For the past 25 years, Falun Gong practitioners have faced brutal persecution involving imprisonment, torture, and even forced organ harvesting in China. Incessant harassment by the regime’s henchmen has extended to American soil.

The CCP sees Shen Yun as undermining its ideological grip on China and the image it presents to the world, which in turn threatens its grip on power at home and its ambitions for dominance overseas, multiple experts told The Epoch Times.

A Chinese soldier stands guard in Beijing on April 23, 2013. Andy Wong/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Graphic Threats

The CCP’s campaign against Shen Yun has been escalating over the past year, with threats of bombings and mass shootings targeting the company’s personnel and headquarters, theaters where it’s scheduled to perform, and even U.S. lawmakers who have voiced support for Falun Gong.

The threats have become increasingly graphic and specific. In January, one threat claimed that the sender had made a “large number of incendiary bombs” using alcohol and glass bottles and would use them to set ablaze Shen Yun’s training studios in upstate New York, located at a site called Dragon Springs.

The sender claimed he would set buildings and cars on fire and slash anybody trying to stop him. He would also “attack congressmen who support Falun Gong,” the email claimed.

Two more threats were sent last week, according to emails The Epoch Times reviewed.

“We do not rule out attacking congressional members who support Falun Gong,” one said.

“Bombs will be installed and detonated at or near these congressional members’ residences or in their vehicles!”

The U.S. Capitol Police and the FBI were informed of the threats.

Another message threatened mass casualties at Dragon Springs.

Around the same time, more threats were sent to theaters hosting Shen Yun in France and England.

Shen Yun dancers perform on stage during a show. Courtesy of Shen Yun

More than 20 such false threats have been sent over the past year, including to theaters hosting Shen Yun in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Taiwan, according to detailed information, including copies of emails, obtained by The Epoch Times.

No acts of violence have yet materialized following these threats.

Some of the senders have tried to impersonate Chinese dissidents or even Taiwanese government officials, including Taiwan’s vice president, Hsiao Bi-khim.

The first documented threats were sent in March 2024 to Dragon Springs as well as several theaters in the United States and Taiwan.

The emails’ metadata, obtained by The Epoch Times, made it look as if some of the threats came from multiple legitimate accounts at the Taiwan Ministry of Justice. The culprit thus had to either have gained access to the accounts, such as through hacking, or spoofed them to create the appearance that the emails came from the ministry, several cybersecurity experts told The Epoch Times.

Screenshots of email threats received by Shen Yun, in which the sender is impersonating a Chinese dissident (Top L), another sender saying “we do not rule out attacking congressional members who support Falun Gong” (Top R), and another one claiming that he had made a “large number of incendiary bombs” near the Shen Yun campus in New York (Bottom). Falun Dafa Information Center

“This would be way too much trouble for an individual who just has a problem with Shen Yun,” said Casey Fleming, cybersecurity expert and CEO of Black Ops Partners.

Examining the metadata with his team, he concluded that the CCP was the most likely culprit.

“On the surface, you have to look at who’s got the most to gain, who’s got the biggest beef, and that’s the CCP, most likely,” he said.

Gary Miliefsky, a cybersecurity specialist and one of the founding members of the Department of Homeland Security, voiced a similar sentiment.

“If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it looks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” he said via email. “I don’t want to get involved in international politics, but it’s obvious the source is not in Taiwan.”

The latest threats have seemingly come from a computer in France, though, according to Fleming, the origin could easily have been spoofed.

Ying Chen, a vice president of Shen Yun, said that over the past 18 years, “the Chinese regime has tried every trick in the book to silence us, malign us, and sabotage us.”

“They failed, and these new terrorist tactics will also fail. We remain committed to showing the world the beauty and spiritual depth of China before communism, and continuing to inspire millions around the world,” Chen told The Epoch Times in a statement.

Personal Toll

Levi Browde, director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, recalled how such an email directly impacted him in August 2024.

“You will meet God,” stated the email, which then proceeded to threaten the lives of his family and other people who work for the nonprofit that tracks the persecution of Falun Gong.

“It did make me rethink the layers of security I have to my home and the protocols I have for getting to and from my house,” he told The Epoch Times.

He can think of only one progenitor behind the threats.

“All the messages are in Chinese,” he said. “There’s one entity on earth that wants to wipe out Falun Gong, and that’s the CCP.”

Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, in Chicago on March 15, 2024. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Diplomatic Pressure

The CCP’s almost two decades of trying to disrupt Shen Yun shows through diplomatic pressure have been largely unsuccessful. But not entirely.

The South Korean government has repeatedly caved to CCP pressure and canceled Shen Yun’s performances. In one case, a sold-out show was canceled, leading the company to sue the theater.

The CCP also managed to get shows canceled in Russia, Denmark, Ukraine, Moldova, Thailand, Ecuador, Greece, and Spain.

In many more cases, however, countries and theaters have resisted the pressure.

In 2014, the Chinese Embassy in Berlin attempted unsuccessfully to force a theater manager to cancel Shen Yun’s performances at the Stage Theater at Potsdamer Platz.

In 2015, officials from the Chinese Consulate in Chicago met with a manager at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis, Missouri, and demanded that the venue cancel Shen Yun’s shows, under threat of harm to U.S.–China relations.

Both managers refused.

Shen Yun has earned acclaim, not just for artistic finesse, but also the uplifting message its shows convey.

“This is something truly extraordinary,” said Italian Sen. Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata, the country’s former foreign minister, at a welcome reception he recently hosted for Shen Yun with other Italian lawmakers.

“Shen Yun is the bearer of a universal message of harmony, respect, and above all freedom.”

Broader Campaign

The CCP has escalated its overseas campaign against Falun Gong since 2022, when leader Xi Jinping personally instructed top officials to suppress Falun Gong globally and leverage mechanisms with no visible ties to Beijing. Those methods include using social media influencers and U.S. media outlets to sway public opinion against entities associated with Falun Gong, The Epoch Times learned in December 2024.

Over the past six months, The New York Times has run 10 hit pieces on Shen Yun and on Falun Gong more broadly.

One lead author of the articles, reporter Nicole Hong, said in an interview with the paper that she and her co-author started pursuing the topic after a “tipster” approached them with information on the alleged “inner workings” of Shen Yun and introduced them to a former performer.

Some sources for the article were also supplied by a Chinese American YouTuber who has been identified by at least three CCP whistleblowers as being used by the CCP as a vehicle in its smear campaign against Falun Gong.

The man, who is known to federal authorities, has made threatening comments toward Shen Yun personnel. In 2023, the FBI issued a warning to law enforcement that he was “potentially armed and dangerous” and “confirmed in the area” near the Dragon Springs campus.

(Left) Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 15, 2025. (Right) Marco Rubio, nominee for Secretary of State, testifies on Capitol Hill on Jan. 15, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

He was subsequently arrested and charged with illegal firearms possession.

One of the main sources for the New York Times’ articles, a former Shen Yun performer, also filed a labor lawsuit against the company last year.

In addition to the media smear campaign and the threats of extreme violence, Shen Yun has faced a series of defective environmental lawsuits—all of them dismissed—as well as incessant trolling on social media by what appears to be automated and deceptive accounts.

Two Chinese agents were sentenced last year for trying to bribe an IRS agent into launching a bogus investigation of Shen Yun.

“They’re under relentless, nonstop pressure,” said Nicholas Eftimiades, a veteran of the CIA, State Department, and Defense Intelligence Agency and an expert on CCP overseas operations.

“It is a multiple-level front that they, as Falun Gong, face against China. It is warfare on multiple levels,” he told The Epoch Times.

The federal government and lawmakers are aware of the Chinese overseas influence campaign.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in his confirmation hearing, described the Chinese regime as “the most potent and dangerous, near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.”

Newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, when asked at her Senate nomination hearing about Chinese sleeper cells infiltrating the United States, said that it’s a “very real threat to our country.”

“We have to do everything we can to protect our country,” she said on Jan. 15.