Shadow From Beijing: Xi Jinping’s Cultural Crackdown Reaches Australian Shores

New South Wales MP defends performing arts group, Shen Yun, as CCP influence tactics ripple through Australia and NZ.

Shen Yun Global Performing Arts’ 13th performance at the Capitol Theater in Sydney, Australia, on March 9, 2025. Lu Ming/The Epoch Times

An MP has raised concerns after a shadowy edict from CCP leader Xi Jinping, issued deep within Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, echoed its way down under.

One of the targets of the directive is Shen Yun, a performing arts group that recently completed its tour of Australia and New Zealand.

The group tours the world with a mission to share the true heritage, culture, and identity of China’s 5,000 year civilisation—something lost under the country’s communist and radical left-wing movements.

Since Shen Yun’s inception, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has run a concerted campaign to undermine the group, carrying out vandalism, repeated threats, and even a bomb threat, as well as leveraging the overseas diaspora and relationships with Western institutions.

Incidentally, since August 2024, The New York Times has published nine articles to smear and discredit the performing arts company.

During Shen Yun’s tour in Auckland, The New Zealand Herald also ran its own—albeit a much more straightforward story—interviewing an alleged former performer.

When Shen Yun visited Sydney, the city’s major newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, ran an article on its front page a day before the opening night of the show, before later broadcasting the content on its partner television station Channel Nine.

The Capitol Theatre in Sydney, Australia, on March 16, 2024. Rene/The Epoch Times

Tim James, member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, expressed concerns about the undue pressure on Shen Yun.

“I am a supporter of artistic expression, and Shen Yun, like any other performing arts group, has the right to share its cultural heritage and message with audiences,” he told The Epoch Times.

“It’s concerning when any group faces undue pressure or intimidation for simply expressing their beliefs and traditions.”

James also called for media reporting to be fair, balanced, and based on verified facts.

“The broader issue of foreign influence targeting individuals or organisations in Australia is one that requires vigilance,” he said.

“We must always stand firm in defending freedom of expression and ensuring that no group—whether cultural, political or religious—faces interference or intimidation.”

What Was Xi’s Secret Meeting About?

According to leaks, a secret meeting of the CCP leadership was held in October 2022, where party leader Xi personally ordered top security officials to intensify attacks on Falun Gong practitioners in the United States.

As part of Xi’s instructions, various CCP departments and organisations were tasked with launching disinformation campaigns via social media influencers and Western media outlets, and to also use the American legal system to tie up organisations founded by Falun Gong practitioners.

These non-profit organisations and companies—including The Epoch Times and Shen Yun—was started with the purpose of exposing human rights abuses happening in China, during a time when Western media were reluctant to report critically about the CCP.

Liu Li, whose family members in China were arrested for their spiritual belief, speaks at a rally held by Falun Gong practitioners in Canberra, Australia, on March 27, 2024. The Epoch Times

The main reason for the new directive was because Xi considered the CCP’s existing international suppression against Falun Gong to be a failure, and felt threatened by initiatives started by practitioners to expose the truth.

The CCP began its persecution campaign against the spiritual meditation group on July 20, 1999.

Xi’s Directive In Action Down Under

On Feb. 25, the Sydney Morning Herald’s article, “Their Posters Are Everywhere, But Behind Shen Yun Lies A Darker Story,” was timed to publish a day before opening night of Shen Yun’s run in Australia’s financial centre.

The article leverages the earlier New York Times stories that tries to portray Shen Yun in multiple negative angles, from abusing youth labour laws to being fanatical—Falun Gong representatives have vehemently denied these claims, accusing the Times of cherry-picking facts.

“[The New York Times article] grossly distorts the common practices and culture of our organisation in an attempt to paint a false picture that our company ‘[relies] on minors and teenagers,’” according to a statement from Shen Yun, who also said 85 percent of its performers were adults.

The New York Times building in New York City on Aug. 31, 2021. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

“The remaining positions are open to students from its affiliated schools, Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, providing young performances opportunities to gain on-stage experience.”

Lucy Zhao, the president of the Australian Falun Dafa Association—mentioned in the Herald’s story—said there were several inaccuracies in the local report too.

For example, the article stated that the Association had its public charity registration removed.

“The Falun Dafa Association of Australia is a legally registered body and a legitimate not-for-profit charitable organisation,” Zhao told The Epoch Times.

The president also rejected claims that Shen Yun was “propaganda” to promote Falun Gong.

Zhao said some performers had actually suffered persecution in China at the hands of the CCP, and that the performing arts was an outlet to tell the world the truth about what was happening.

“Advocacy through the arts is common. Therefore, it is disrespectful to refer to the content as propaganda,” she said.

Zhao also dismissed any criticism toward Falun Gong practitioners contributing time and effort to help promote Shen Yun, comparing it to Salvation Army volunteers or Rotary members who often use their own time and resources to help the community.

Calls for a Retraction

Zhao was also concerned that such a large media outlet would feed the CCP’s narrative against Shen Yun and Falun Gong practitioners.

“We can certainly testify that there has been a surge in inaccurate media reporting targeting Shen Yun, Falun Gong and its activities,” she said.

“This certainly validates the persecution effort by the CCP, as documented in the recent leaked documents from top levels of the CCP.”

The association president was also worried that the tone and insinuation of the SMH article could incite hatred in the community and discourage people from seeing the beauty of the show.

“We can see such hostile responses in the reader comment section underneath the SMH’s report. This is a real pity,” she said.

“Currently, our request to [the] SMH remains clear–to retract the coverage or issue significant corrections that would offer a balanced view of the subject.”

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a candlelight vigil in memory of Falun Gong practitioners who passed away during 25 years of ongoing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party, at the Chinese consulate in New York City, on July 20, 2024. Larry Dye/The Epoch Times

Other Incidents Against Shen Yun

In September and November 2024, two Chinese agents in the United States were found guilty and sentenced to prison for conspiring to bribe an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent with US$50,000 (A$79,000) to open an audit into Shen Yun.

At the same time, numerous social media accounts with suspected links to the CCP have sprung up and carried out coordinated attacks on Shen Yun.

Many of these accounts were used to amplify hit pieces published by The New York Times against the performing arts company.

The emergence of those accounts has alerted social media platform X and prompted the company to take action.

By March 2025, X had removed thousands of such accounts from its user base.

The CCP also resorted to bomb threats, with the most recent incident occurring at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 20.

Over 1,500 Shen Yun artists and their family members gathered at the Lincoln Center on March 26 calling for the United States to investigate Beijing’s weaponisation of American institutions against their company and community.

Shen Yun MC Leeshai Lemish speaks at a press conference highlighting the Chinese Communist Party's transnational repression activities targeting the company, at Lincoln Center in New York City on March 26, 2025.Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

They include Shen Yun emcee Leeshai Lemish and principal dancer Piotr Huang.

“We have families being persecuted in China. We have performers who have lost parents to persecution in China,” Lemish said.

“We have performers who could not go see their parents for the last time, missed their kids’ weddings.”

By reenacting persecution scenes on stage, he said, the performers try to “give voice to the people in China who have no voice.”

What Is Shen Yun?

Shen Yun was established in 2006 by a small group of elite Chinese artists in New York who wanted to revive the 5,000 years of Chinese culture, which had been systematically destroyed after the CCP came into power in 1949.

The initiative soon attracted talent around the world, including China.

Through the artists’ painstaking efforts and the exceptional quality of the performance, Shen Yun has achieved significant success and become the fastest-growing performing arts company in the United States’ history.

In the past 19 years, Shen Yun has developed from one to eight large, equally sized performing companies that tour the world simultaneously.

Each year, Shen Yun performs in over 200 cities around 36 countries, to a global audience of millions.