CCP’s Cultural Genocide Aimed at Falun Gong, Shen Yun: Part 2

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

Commentary

This is the second part of a two-part series that examines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) multi-decade persecution of the Falun Gong and Shen Yun Performing Arts Company. The first part can be read here. 

The CCP’s goal is to crush the spirits of the Chinese people, to remove all vestiges of pre-communist-era traditions from Chinese society that have been arbitrarily determined to threaten the CCP’s totalitarian rule, and to psychologically condition Chinese citizens to reject any independent thoughts, ideologies, and philosophies that the CCP does not approve. Toward that end, the Falun Gong and Shen Yun are squarely in the CCP’s sights.

Since the communists swept to power in China in 1949, the CCP has been relentless in its efforts to condition Chinese citizens through thought control and physical methods directed at specific minorities. In addition to Falun Gong practitioners, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities face continual CCP-sponsored cultural genocide and constant pressure to assimilate into communist orthodoxy at the expense of traditions that predated the Communist Party by hundreds if not thousands of years. The communists seek to create a “new Chinese man” that is docile and subservient to the CCP.

CCP Fears Falun Gong

Founded in 1992 by Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong is “rooted in Buddhist tradition” and “consists of two main components: self-improvement through the study of teachings, and gentle exercises and meditation,” according to Falundafa.org.

“Its teachings encourage learners to let go of unhealthy attachments as they strive to attune their lives to the underlying qualities of the universe: Truth, Compassion, and Forbearance,” reads the website’s description of the practice.

Falun Gong features meditation and gentle exercises, drawing similarities to yoga and tai chi, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

“In traditional Chinese culture, the process of perfecting and refining mind and body is called ‘cultivation.’ Our modern language uses the word qigong to describe it,” the Center states on its website.

It points out that “What differentiates Falun Gong from other forms of qigong is its emphasis on one’s morality, character, and the cultivation of virtue.”

Qigong is also an element of traditional Chinese medicine developed thousands of years ago that involves integrating physical and psychological exercises focused on mind, body, and spirit that aim to improve a person’s overall health and well-being.

“People who practice Falun Dafa often find it to be life-changing,” according to Falundafa.org. “Many experience dramatic health benefits as well as newfound energy, mental clarity, and stress relief.”

No wonder the Chinese flocked to the practice, having endured decades of the CCP’s arbitrary purges, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution!

The number of Falun Gong practitioners in China exploded into the 1990s, with some estimates reaching 100 million by the decade’s end. The CCP, under the late Jiang Zemin, perceived Falun Gong as a direct threat to its one-party rule since the Party could not directly control the practice. In July 1999, the CCP banned Falun Gong and initiated a propaganda and persecution campaign to eradicate the group, which continues to this very day.

It’s important to note that before the brutal persecution began, Falun Gong received official recognition. For example, in 1993, China’s Ministry of Public Security’s official newspaper, The People’s Public Security News, commended Mr. Li for his efforts “in safeguarding social order and security, and in promoting rectitude in society,” according to Falun Dafa Information Center.

An official from China’s National Sports Commission told U.S. News & World Report that Falun Dafa “can save each person 1,000 yuan in annual medical fees,“ adding, ”If 100 million people are practicing it, that’s 100 billion yuan saved per year in medical fees,” the Center reported.

Despite receiving accolades from Chinese officials, it was the persistent paranoia of the communists themselves that arbitrarily turned Falun Gong practitioners into pariahs to be hunted down, persecuted, and forced to give up the practice—read more about the persecution in the first part of this series.

CCP Focuses on Shen Yun

The Shen Yun Performing Arts Company was founded in 2006 by a group of elite Chinese artists in New York. The company says that many of its artists “escaped persecution in China at the hands of a totalitarian regime that is at war with past traditions, religion, and its own history.”

“Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture, the same heritage of five millennia that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spent a century destroying,” according to Shen Yun’s official website.

“Shen Yun’s founders knew that this revival could only be launched in a free society.”

Anyone who has attended a Shen Yun (which translates to “divine beings dancing”) performance will understand the psychologically mesmerizing impact of the choreography, music, the many variants of colorful traditional costumes, visual effects, and graceful movements of the dancers interwoven to convey stories/vignettes evocative of the wonders of pre-CCP Chinese culture. It’s no wonder that Xi and his minions are going all out to try to discredit and destroy Shen Yun!

Shen Yun has is a dance company, and yet the Chinese regime is orchestrating a multi-dimensional whole-of-government campaign against a group of dancers and musicians (!) that it perceives to be a dire threat to the CCP. This is not what civilized counties do, especially one that continually crows about its adherence to human rights principles. This is crazy!

But it is also the communist way.

Consider a few of the actions taken by the CCP against Shen Yun.

CCP Steps Up Persecution Campaign

In 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping implemented a secret whole-of-government strategy that empowered the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission to coordinate all domestic and international legal enforcement to specifically target the Falun Gong and Shen Yun, according to insider sources obtained by The Epoch Times.

This effort involves coordinated psychological and information warfare by Chinese agents, influence peddlers, and others managed by the United Front Work Department and the Ministry of State Security aimed at undermining the credibility of the Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

According to a January report by Vision Times, which cited information from the Falun Dafa Information Center, “more than 130 incidents of harassment, sabotage, disinformation, and physical attacks have been perpetrated by Chinese officials or their proxies against Shen Yun in 38 countries—including in the U.S., since 2007.”

The goal appears to be to interfere with Shen Yun everywhere, including by pressuring local officials and theater management to cancel the shows.

According to information leaked in June and July 2024 from China’s Ministry of Public Security meetings and the CITIC Foundation for Reform and Development Studies (a Chinese think-tank), the communists have made a “strategic shift” aimed at eliminating the Falun Gong and Shen Yun worldwide through a multi-pronged campaign that involves the following: amplifying disinformation and anti-Falun Gong content through the use of social media; activating overseas CCP agents, including within the Falun Gong community to spread falsehoods and destabilize the Falun Gong and Shen Yun; and attempting to “instigate a U.S. government-led crackdown on organizations founded by Falun Gong practitioners.”

CCP Agent Sentenced

Last month, a CCP agent who admitted to being an unregistered agent of the Chinese regime was sentenced to 20 months in prison in New York for trying to bribe an IRS official for the purpose of revoking Shen Yun’s nonprofit status.

A co-conspirator “worked inside the United States at the direction of the [People’s Republic of China]  … to further the PRC government’s campaign to repress and harass Falun Gong practitioners,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Targeted Reporting

The CCP’s transnational suppressions appear to have now expanded to using Western media outlets with large followings to smear Shen Yun.

Despite these attacks, Shen Yun says it will “remain steadfast in our mission: to showcase the beauty, majesty, and spirituality of China’s 5,000-year-old civilization.”

Concluding Thoughts

Xi has directed a whole-of-government campaign to eradicate Falun Gong and associated organizations worldwide. That campaign is also being fought on American soil. It involves information and psychological warfare, intimidation, co-opting of foreign media, physical harassment, and lawfare.

It is incredible that the resources of the gigantic Chinese regime bureaucracy are focused on suppressing and persecuting peaceful groups like the Falun Gong and Shen Yun Performing Arts Company. To their credit, the vim and vigor (and inherent cynicism and cruelty) by which the CCP’s minions attack them is a direct reflection of how much the communists fear their uplifting messages.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.