Shen Yun Performing Arts Responds to Media Attacks

The performance, “Flowing Sleeves,” from the 2009 Shen Yun Performing Arts program. Shen Yun Performing Arts

Shen Yun Performing Arts says recent media reporting about it is “riddled with gross distortion” and aids Beijing’s global campaign to malign the arts company, which was founded by first generation immigrants and artists fleeing persecution in China.

Headquartered in upstate New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 with a mission to revive traditional culture and showcase a China as it existed before communism. Each year, the classical Chinese dance and music company performs for a live audience of over a million people around the world.

Most prominently, The New York Times on August 15 published an article in both English and Chinese attacking Shen Yun largely based on interviews with disgruntled former employees.

According to a statement from Shen Yun, the reporting “bears no resemblance to the lived experience of our performers and staff” and rather distorts the company’s “workplace culture, the quality of life of our artists, as well as the teachings and beliefs of our Falun Gong faith.”

Many Shen Yun performers are practitioners of Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual discipline comprising meditative exercises as well as teachings rooted in values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice, while immensely popular in China during the 1990s, was suddenly persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999. Since then, it has faced unrelenting suppression involving detention, hate propaganda, torture, and for those overseas—direct assault and blackmailing of their family back in China.

Shen Yun performances include dance pieces depicting the persecution. It also experienced the regime’s suppression campaigns directly.

A January report by Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), recorded over 100 incidents of the regime targeting Shen Yun, including diplomatic pressure, anti-Shen Yun ads in major newspapers, slashing tour bus tires, imprisoning performers’ relatives in China, and sending fake bomb threats to theaters and Shen Yun’s principal training ground.

Recently, Beijing appears to have dramatically raised the stakes, Shen Yun said, citing a new report from the FDIC, that the regime is directing its agents to feed “malicious” and “negative” information about Falun Gong to social media influencers and media in the West.

The goal of this new campaign, according to the report, is to sow hatred among the public and trigger a U.S. law enforcement response. Whistleblowers from inside the regime shared notes from a June meeting held by provincial level officials of the Ministry of Public Security, the top Chinese secret police agency, telling “all provincial-level governments” to “fully support” two YouTube influencers who have been actively producing anti-Falun Gong and anti-Shen Yun content.

The curtain call for Shen Yun Performing Arts at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York on Jan 11, 2015. Larry Dai/Epoch Times

The State Department has urged Beijing to stop its persecution of Falun Gong in light of the report.

The two YouTubers have interviewed former Shen Yun artists let go after violating company code of conduct or failing to reach the artistic standards required. Some of the same ex-performers were also interviewed by the New York Times, according to the FDIC report.

Earlier this month, one of the YouTubers, according to FDIC, listed “media like the New York Times” as a one of the “battlefields” for going after Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

“It is no surprise, then, that the media reports in question are riddled with gross distortions of our company operations, and present crude and insensitive interpretations of the faith of our performers,” Shen Yun said in the statement. “To be clear: how we run our company, the manner in which we treat each other, and the values that we hold dear are completely absent from the accounts featured in these media reports.”

While “it may not be a lifestyle for everyone,” the company said, working at Shen Yun challenges one to reach artistic excellence in a workplace that has, to many, become a “big family.”

“Shen Yun has set the bar for classical Chinese dance globally. To meet this standard requires extraordinary discipline, work ethic, and dedication on the part of the artists. We are also a company rooted in faith, which values moral living and self-improvement as key ingredients to delivering world-class artistic and cultural offerings to our audience,” the statement reads.

Shen Yun principal dancer William Li in upstate New York on Dec. 10, 2023. Li has been with Shen Yun since 2007. Blake Wu/The Epoch Times

A number of current and former performers who spoke with The Epoch Times have expressed deep appreciation for being part of Shen Yun.

How Shen Yun was founded was “pretty much the American dream,” William Li, a principal dancer at Shen Yun who had experienced Chinese police harassment when he was little, told The Epoch Times. “You’re a refugee, you come to America, you start with nothing. And then you build up your own company, you build up your life from scratch. That’s really amazing that we can do that in America.”

Shen Yun said its goal is to bring hope and inspiration worldwide by “showcasing the beauty, depth, and spirituality of traditional Chinese culture.”

“It is sad to see media companies in the West, wittingly or not, get caught up in the CCP’s illicit, global campaign to destroy the American company we built, and in so doing, deprive untold millions around the world from experiencing a vision of the China that once was, as well as a vision of a more hopeful and compassionate world.”

Chinese agents have recently tried to sabotage Shen Yun in exactly the ways described in the FDIC report.

In late July, two Chinese agents pleaded guilty to acting as unregistered agents of the CCP and bribing an IRS agent “in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong,” according to the FBI.

Prosecutors in the court hearing identified Shen Yun as the target of the plot. The goal was to get the IRS to revoke its nonprofit status.

Regarding the conviction, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement: “Efforts such as this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States will not be tolerated. This Office remains committed to thwarting malicious transnational repression attempts by foreign influences on American soil.”