The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of attacking the traditional arts of China. The arts have this pesky ability to make people think, particularly in ways that might not be in line with communist ideology. That’s why the Party waged specific campaigns, like the Cultural Revolution, to eradicate traditional Chinese culture, burning books, smashing relics, and banning the teaching of traditional arts.
The Party generally aims to destroy people’s faith in a traditional culture that has lasted thousands of years and produced one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen; they destroyed countless treasures and thousands of years of knowledge that may never be recovered.
Despite what you may see from movies and shows coming out of mainland China today, this has never stopped. On Jan. 5 and 7, right before its 2015 premiere in New York, the official website of Shen Yun Performing Arts, a respected global classical Chinese performing arts company, came under a large-scale cyberattack. According to Shen Yun’s press release, “Data shows the attack originated in mainland China, where massive computer resources were hijacked and mobilized in an attempt to overwhelm the Shen Yun website.”
