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A man looks at his phone near a giant image of the CCP flag on the side of a building in Beijing, during the ongoing 19th Communist Party Congress, on Oct. 23, 2017. GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images
According to the sources, Xi chastised the officials, saying their previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong overseas were ineffective, and ordered a new campaign that would focus on the most prominent companies started by Falun Gong practitioners abroad. Those include Shen Yun Performing Arts, a premier classical Chinese dance and music company that puts on hundreds of performances a year under the tagline “China before communism,” as well as several media companies, including The Epoch Times and NTD.
Shen Yun, it appears, has borne the brunt of the new campaign, facing hit pieces in Western media and from social media influencers; attacks by social media bots and trolls; legal warfare; and even bomb threats and death threats.
Since 1999, Falun Gong practitioners have faced brutal persecution in China involving imprisonment, torture, and even forced organ harvesting. Incessant harassment by the regime’s henchmen has extended to American soil.
The CCP sees Shen Yun as undermining its ideological grip on China and the image it presents to the world, which in turn threatens its grip on power and its ambition for dominance overseas, multiple experts previously told The Epoch Times.
The State Department on Feb. 7 denounced the CCP’s continued targeting of Shen Yun, telling The Epoch Times: “We condemn such acts of intimidation and urge protection of the right to free expression.
“We urge the Chinese Communist Party to end its now 25-year campaign to eradicate Falun Gong.”
The spokesperson added that the department’s annual international religious freedom report had documented “incidents of interference against Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun Performing Arts in many countries.”
Several CCP whistleblowers came forward last year with more details about the anti-Falun Gong campaign.
The campaign mainly relies on information laundering via social media influencers and Western media outlets that can’t easily be traced back to the CCP. In tandem, it utilizes the U.S. legal and law enforcement system to go after companies started by Falun Gong practitioners, particularly Shen Yun, the whistleblowers said.
The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, personally oversees the campaign, one whistleblower said, though other agencies are also involved, including the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
Some of the fake accounts have been sophisticated, building a following for months, or even years, by posting various kinds of unrelated content, such as nature, food, animal, and travel photos, before abruptly mixing in anti-Falun Gong content.
According to whistleblowers, Chinese public security officials have been ordered to support YouTubers who portray Falun Gong and Shen Yun in a negative light.
One of the YouTubers specifically mentioned by the whistleblowers has claimed credit for supplying sources to the New York Times reporters.
Lawfare
In the past few years, an American man with longtime business ties to China repeatedly filed defective environmental lawsuits against Shen Yun’s campus in Orange County, New York. The most recent one was dismissed by a federal judge in September 2024—this time “with prejudice,” so it can’t be refiled.
In July 2024, two Chinese Americans—John Chen and Lin Feng—pleaded guilty to acting as agents of Beijing after they attempted to bribe an IRS agent to open a bogus investigation into Shen Yun.
Lin told the FBI that he and Chen also surveilled the Falun Gong community in Orange County to collect information for an environmental lawsuit meant to inhibit the growth of the community in the area, according to court documents.
