CCP Mounting Unrestricted Warfare to Suppress Shen Yun, Lawmaker Says

The New York company has been facing fake bomb threats and disinformation amid its global tours, which aim to bring back traditional Chinese culture.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) walks through the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 12, 2024. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

The Chinese regime’s growing campaign to suppress a New York-based performing arts organization is tantamount to unrestricted warfare, according to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

“They fight on every single inch of the battlefield,” Perry told The Epoch Times, referring to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Unrestricted warfare is a doctrine that leverages all available nonmilitary means to subdue an enemy. Utilizing such tactics, the CCP is taking advantage of the U.S. judicial system and the freedom of the Western media, Perry stated.

Shen Yun showcases dance and music performances under the motto “China before communism.” The company was founded in 2006 by practitioners of Falun Gong—a faith group brutally persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999—and has itself been a target of the CCP since.

Over the past year, the regime’s targeting of Shen Yun has escalated significantly, with dozens of bomb and death threats aimed at intimidating theaters that host Shen Yun performances, as well as the company’s training facilities in upstate New York. Following a secret directive from top leadership in Beijing, Chinese regime agents in the United States have attempted to bribe the IRS to open a probe against Shen Yun. They also went to Orange County, New York, where Shen Yun is based, to surveil local Falun Gong practitioners.

Articles targeting Shen Yun have appeared in Western media and then been boosted on social media platform X by thousands of accounts with suspected links to Beijing.

Perry, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, said it was important to take these threats seriously.

It’s important for the United States and the West in general to “understand the pathology of this enemy,” he said. “The CCP just takes advantage of the U.S. judiciary system and also the freedom of the media.”

For the intimidation emails, the senders use virtual private networks, or VPNs, making it hard to trace where the emails are from, “but we’re well familiar with the threats and the coercion and the intimidation by the Communist Chinese Party,” Perry said.

Taiwanese authorities have said they suspect that a China-based research entity operating under Chinese tech giant Huawei may have been behind the emails.

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

‘Terrorism’

Shen Yun performances include stories about human rights abuses suffered by Falun Gong practitioners for adhering to their faith in China. Some of the performers and their family members have experienced the persecution firsthand.

In 1999, the CCP launched an elimination campaign against Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. At the time, at least 70 million people were practicing in China, according to official estimates. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Indiana state Rep. Craig Haggard, who in April proposed a resolution to recognize Shen Yun’s artistry and values, recalled how watching Shen Yun led him to learn about forced organ harvesting, which the Chinese regime systematically carries out in China against prisoners of conscience. As a father, he said, it moved him to know that ordinary families in China would be targeted as state enemies, and that the authorities could “just have control over [a] family’s life and death.”

Shen Yun, he said, is trying to showcase “the beautiful part of China” while highlighting the darkness under communist rule.

Haggard called the bomb threats against Shen Yun “outrageous” and a form of “terrorism.”

“They’re trying to intimidate through threatened potential violence, and this is going on in our own backyard,” Haggard told The Epoch Times. He added that Shen Yun’s artists, while relatively safe within U.S. borders, are “still taking a huge risk by directly challenging” the regime on its human rights abuses.

The House Armed Services Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) delivers remarks during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on Feb. 12, 2015. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Keeping Up the Pressure

Vicky Hartzler, a commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and former congresswoman from Missouri, said the bomb threats also reveal fear on the part of Chinese authorities.

“It just shows the level of threat that they see from this group, and for how successful these events are in fostering positive relationships between other countries and the Chinese people, and certainly practitioners of Falun Gong,” Hartzler told The Epoch Times.

“The Chinese Communist Party sees this as a threat, and they’re escalating the degree of persecution ... [and] trying to silence this positive voice.”

The Chinese regime has exploited free speech in the United States to conduct targeted disinformation campaigns, she said, but “where Chinese authorities may be putting out disinformation, there’s certainly an opportunity to set the record straight by putting out the correct information.”

She considers it a reminder to educate average Americans on the tactics the regime uses.

“We need to be vigilant, but also we need to be assertive and shut them down when we can,” she said, “so we’re not so vulnerable to be taken in by them.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, listens during a press conference on the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act passed by the House on Capitol Hill on May 7, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, voiced a similar sentiment.

The United States needs to “push back even harder,” he said.

Communist China is the “worst repressive state on the face of the earth,” he told The Epoch Times. “So we’ve got to stand up for those who are getting hurt, tortured when they get arrested.”

He said the U.S. government “will bring more focus on transnational repression” from the Chinese regime and that he hopes President Donald Trump, when he meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, will urge the release of incarcerated Americans and people imprisoned for their faith.

“We’re going to keep the pressure up.”