Over a hundred people gathered in front of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on Friday, united by a message: “Chinese consul, immediately stop interfering with Shen Yun and U.S. government officials.” The Chinese consul’s recent actions, they say, amount to compromising U.S. sovereignty.
They were protesting a letter written by Chinese Consul General Mr. Gao Zhansheng to a Seattle City Council member, urging the Councilor to not support the Seattle production of the classical Chinese dance company, Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Shen Yun has as its mission the revival of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, much of which was attacked and destroyed over decades of communist rule in China.
The councilor made the letter available to the Seattle Shen Yun performance organizers as well as The Epoch Times. In the letter, the Chinese consul urges the council member to not attend the performance, or support it in any way.
“In its performances, Shen Yun has included dances that depict the Chinese regime’s ongoing persecution of Falun Gong, the traditional Chinese meditation discipline—one of the last bastions of traditional Chinese culture remaining in China today,” says the media advisory of the San Francisco Falun Buddha Study Association, which hosted the event.
Ms. Anna Wang, the Association’s representative, enumerated portions of a long history of persecutory endeavors by the Chinese Communist Party against Falun Gong practitioners in the U.S.
“We must send a strong message to the Chinese authorities, that interfering with U.S. government affairs on U.S. soil is totally unacceptable behavior. We must not allow a foreign communist regime to tell U.S. officials what they can and cannot see or do, in our country,” the group said.
Students of Falun Gong, who have been persecuted in China since 1999 when then-dictator Jiang Zemin began the assault on an estimated 70-100 million practitioners, were not the only ones offended by the letter.
Judge Quentin L. Kopp, former San Francisco Board of Supervisors member and California State Senator, now retired from the bench, commented on the incident:
“All Americans are insulted by the tactic of the Chinese Consul General in San Francisco, which obviously reflects orders from the People’s Republic of China. It’s not only an indignity to the persons responsible for producing the wonderful performances of Shen Yun, which was a lovely new experience for my wife and me, but it’s improper conduct towards all Americans, and merits action by the U.S. Department of State,” he said. “The U.S. Department of State should send a letter of admonition to the Foreign Ministry of the PRC.”
