New Research on Unprecedented CCP Campaign to Sabotage Shen Yun, Eliminate Falun Gong Globally

Dear Reader,

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) long-standing transnational repression against Falun Gong practitioners outside of China has taken a dramatic turn over the past year. Top CCP leaders have launched a new campaign aimed at turning international public opinion and even the U.S. government against Falun Gong and Shen Yun Performing Arts, an American Chinese classical dance company founded by Falun Gong practitioners.

Since June, multiple internal party sources have leaked details of the tactics that the regime plans to deploy. These are now manifesting in real-world events.

To date, the Falun Dafa Information Center has documented dozens of incidents since January 2024 of anonymous bomb threats, dubious mainstream news reports, questionable lawsuits claiming abuse or environmental damage, social media influencers interviewing disgruntled former Shen Yun performers, and fake emails impersonating practitioners.

What may at first glance seem like isolated events unconnected to the CCP, upon closer examination appear to have common links and patterns pointing back to a coordinated campaign and the regime’s indirect influence. Moreover, even as this current initiative targets Falun Gong, the regime is creating a playbook that could then be applied to other U.S. targets, be they additional diaspora groups or an American company the CCP views as a threatening competitor.

  
This week, we published a landing page tying these various threads together and have included it below. 

Also in this issue:

• A Canadian parliamentarian received a fake email smearing Shen Yun in an attempt to undermine the lawmaker’s vocal support for Falun Gong.

• Local presenters for Shen Yun performances in Georgia and California received violent threats.

• Overseas Chinese researchers published new leaks from the CCP’s security apparatus that outline additional plans to smear the reputation of Falun Gong in the United States.

• A detailed breakdown of falsehoods and distortions contained in New York Times’ articles about Shen Yun and Falun Gong.

Finally, we are sharing again The Long Arm of Beijing, a 20-minute documentary released in April, that provides critical context for the current escalation and includes numerous first-hand accounts of transnational repression by the CCP targeting Falun Gong practitioners.

As we head into the holiday season, we thank you again for your ongoing attention to the plight of Falun Gong practitioners. We wish you and your family a healthy and happy new year.

FEATURE STORY

Map of attempted interference targeting Shen Yun performances in 38 countries.

What’s new?

With roots at the highest echelons of the party, the Chinese regime has launched a new campaign to discredit the Falun Gong community outside China and sabotage the American Chinese classical dance company Shen Yun Performing Arts. The CCP’s stated goal is to turn American society and even the U.S. government against Falun Gong and Shen Yun, weakening them globally as sources of dissent and alternative visions for China’s future.

Thus far, the campaign has manifested in physical attacks, fake bomb threats, groundless lawsuits, and a small number of instigators spreading misleading claims on social media and major news outlets, especially the New York Times. They have also sought to prompt investigations of Shen Yun by U.S. government agencies. This coordinated campaign eerily matches plans that sources within the regime’s security apparatus have leaked in advance, reinforcing the credibility of their warnings.

This week the Falun Dafa Information Center launched a new page on our website consolidating all available information about this new campaign and directing readers to sources for more information. 

Why does it matter?

The CCP’s reinvigorated campaign is already causing harm. Over the past year, at least 15 incidents have been documented that involved threats of violence—or actually physical attacks—against Falun Gong practitioners or Shen Yun performers. Meanwhile, the community is feeling the psychological impact of facing an unfair and misleading assault in the media.

Beyond the severe consequences for Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun, if successful, this campaign would offer Beijing a blueprint for how to destroy any company, organization, or group of people in the United States at will, thus posing a significant threat to American institutions more broadly. Ensuring that such a campaign is consistently exposed and countered plays a critical role in safeguarding democratic principles and the rights of those who speak out against oppression.

What else do you need to know?

In the coming weeks and months, we are likely to see more incidents reflecting this playbook of tactics targeting Falun Gong and Shen Yun: new physical and virtual threats of violence, misleading news coverage, fake social media accounts and emails impersonating Falun Gong, and perhaps more dubious lawsuits. We urge readers to remain skeptical of suspicious content, as the Canadian parliamentarian described below did, and to contact the Falun Dafa Information Center with questions. We will also continue to track emerging cases in this Incident Tracker.

The Falun Dafa Information Center is urging relevant U.S. agencies to take immediate action to investigate this ongoing and sophisticated CCP malign influence campaign. We also ask readers to help share this research.

TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION

In early December 2024, a Canadian parliamentarian who has been publicly supportive of Shen Yun Performing Arts received a suspicious email. The email sender claimed to be a former Shen Yun dancer, shared links to recent misleading reports in the New York Times, and relayed alleged accounts of overwork and trauma during their time with the company.

The parliamentarian questioned the email’s authenticity and informed a local Falun Gong practitioner who checked with Shen Yun which confirmed that there was no such performer by the name that was listed as the email’s signatory.

TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION

On the morning of December 11, 2024, an email containing a death threat was sent to the Atlanta Falun Dafa Association, which is the local presenter for Shen Yun performances at the Atlanta Symphony Hall during the upcoming Christmas week. The email sender claimed in Chinese that they would “go to the Atlanta Symphony Hall and shoot at all people there if the Hall hosts Shen Yun performances!” The email was accompanied by an image of a pistol and many bullets. 

Half an hour later, the same sender sent a nearly identical email to the ticketing service for the San Francisco Bay Area, which sells tickets for Shen Yun performances at the San Jose Performing Arts Center. The FBI and local police were notified of both incidents. Since March 2024, there has been an increase in threats of violence targeting Shen Yun shows and its performers. In all prior cases, anonymous threats were confirmed to be false and no violence occurred.

CCP INFLUENCE

On December 11, a group of overseas researchers tracking the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) repression of Falun Gong practitioners published new information from internal CCP sources. The leaks contain notes from a recent video conference that was chaired by Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong. They outline emerging plans and tactics in carrying forward an intensified campaign targeting Falun Gong overseas and especially in the United States, with the explicit goal being to “sabotage the relationship between Falun Gong and the United States.”

The conference call notes reaffirm the priority being placed on this campaign by top Chinese officials, cite an intent to “increase support for anti-Falun Gong personnel,” and make several references to providing “donations” or financial assistance to those aiding the CCP, including to Falun Gong practitioners who “convert” and speak out against the Falun Gong community. The Falun Dafa Information Center has published an English translation of the leaked information and analysis on its significance.

On Aug. 15, 2024, the New York Times published an article on the Shen Yun dance company, founded by people who practice Falun Gong, and a companion article on the same day dealing with Falun Gong itself. The articles portrayed Shen Yun as an abusive environment that treats performers as “expendable.” The paper’s portrayals are unrecognizable not only to current and former Shen Yun performers, but also to doctors, lawyers, and China specialists closely familiar with these communities.

To understand how such distortions came to appear in such a prominent American newspaper, the Falun Dafa Information Center researched various aspects of the reporting. We discovered that the Times disregarded repeated and good-faith attempts by Shen Yun and others to provide information that ran counter to its preconceived narrative, used highly problematic sources and a small sample size to build a particular storyline, ignored a wide-range of experts, did not disclose critical information to readers, and continued a decades-long pattern of grossly distorting the beliefs of Falun Gong practitioners.

The findings raise serious concerns about why the Times would engage in reporting that breaches journalistic ethics, while obviously harming a religious minority that is persecuted in China. The extent to which the Times’ reporting achieves the goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also worth noting and deeply disturbing.

Below, we detail 10 things readers should know about the Times’ coverage. 

For more than 20 years, the CCP has targeted Falun Gong in the United States and around the world in an illicit and increasingly sophisticated campaign to malign and silence. A 20-minute documentary released in April by the Falun Dafa Information Center sheds light on this alarming phenomenon. Drawing upon personal stories of citizens across North America, Europe, Australia, and Hong Kong, as well as hundreds of documented incidents of transnational repression from more than 40 countries, the film traces the CCP’s international aggression from Beijing to New York City and everywhere in between.