A Global Phenomenon Overcoming Adversity

Shen Yun not only has to overcome the financial challenges the industry faces, but also faces ongoing sabotage attempts by the communist regime in China.

Shen Yun Performing Arts World Company’s curtain call at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, on Feb. 19, 2023. Kim Guk-hwan/The Epoch Times

Commentary

As many performing arts companies struggle financially in uncertain economic times, Shen Yun Performing Arts has completed its 18th global tour earlier this month, performing what it calls a historic run of 799 shows in 199 cities across 26 countries to an audience of more than 1 million people.

Shen Yun not only has to overcome the financial challenges the industry faces, but also faces ongoing sabotage attempts by the communist regime in China. This includes threats directed at theaters, performers, and their families in China and warnings of economic and diplomatic reprisals in locations where Shen Yun performs. Additionally, there are issues with online disinformation and gross misrepresentations by various media outlets.

How does a performing arts company presenting traditional Chinese culture today survive and flourish when facing such challenges?

Performing Arts in the West

In the post-COVID-19 pandemic arts landscape, traditional performing arts productions, such as ballet and classical music, are under increasing pressure to remain financially viable.

Australia’s largest performing arts companies, Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet, have each posted recent losses, despite receiving significant government grants.

The Paris Opera Ballet, the world’s oldest national ballet company, receives government subsidies to ensure financial stability.

What Sets Shen Yun Apart?

Shen Yun is a nonprofit organization established in New York in 2006. Its success is almost entirely funded by ticket sales and limited donations, not government grants or corporate sponsorships.

It is audience appreciation and support that allows Shen Yun to grow and be successful. More and more people want to experience what Shen Yun presents.

A full house at FirstOntario Concert Hall in Hamilton, Ont., on Dec. 31, 2019. Evan Ning/The Epoch Times

Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture, which has been decimated by the impact of communism in China for more than 70 years, and share these inspirational stories with the world.

The traditional values displayed on stage are not an act—performers aim to embody these principles each day. Most artists practice Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a spiritual and meditation practice with teachings centered on truth, compassion, and forbearance.

After being introduced to the Chinese public in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong’s popularity grew exponentially, reaching at least 70 million by the decade’s end, according to official estimates.

Fearing that the popularity of Falun Gong would threaten its authoritarian rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a brutal persecution campaign to eradicate the practice in July 1999. The persecution continues today, including the killing of practitioners to harvest their organs for the state-run organ transplant industry in military and civilian hospitals.

Media, Negativity, and Truth

Media outlets that intentionally publish sensational, one-sided articles attacking Shen Yun and Falun Gong ignore the harmful impact on millions of practitioners, including those suffering persecution in China.

Psychological research has identified an inherent negativity bias in human beings. It relates to survival mechanisms developed thousands of years ago, where identifying danger or negative threats was essential and could be a matter of life or death.

The impact of negativity bias on our decision-making is well understood in the media and politics today. Negative news draws greater attention and can be perceived as believable or truthful. Negative information can lead people to vote against a candidate.

If people are not mindful, they can be swayed to accept what is good as something bad or to be avoided.

Negative media reporting in the United States is part of Beijing’s campaign, leaked in advance from its security apparatus, to try to turn American society and the U.S. government against Shen Yun and Falun Gong.

In contrast, the Paris Opera Ballet, which has rigorous professional standards similar to Shen Yun, and a modest pay rate (as of 2020) for a full-time entry-level dancer of 2,000 euros per month (around $2,280), does not attract such negative media attention. This distinction lies in its focus on European culture, which isn’t seen as a threat by the CCP.

CCP’s Fear of Shen Yun

The CCP knows it does not have the support of the will of the Chinese people. In transforming itself from a “revolutionary” to a “ruling” party, it has killed tens of millions in its drive to replace traditional Chinese culture with communist culture.

A Chinese paramilitary policeman guards at Tiananmen Square under crimson clouds at sunset after several days of heavy air pollution, in Beijing, China, on July 4, 2013. Feng Li/Getty Images

Its manic campaign to sabotage Shen Yun displays its deep-seated insecurity: Shen Yun presents an inspiring vision of what China was, and can be, without communism. This dissolves the CCP’s illusory claim to represent Chinese civilization, and that “China” and the party are inseparable.

Communism and Secularism

Some Western media seem to take their reporting cues from the propaganda used by the CCP to demonize and persecute Falun Gong. There is nothing “Chinese” about the Communist Party. It has been an invasive form of foreign interference in China since 1921, and, like a pandemic, it has contaminated China and the world with its Marxist–Leninist ideology that declares religions are human creations, denies the possibility of life after death, and the existence of God or a Creator.

Over the past 50 years, the importance of religious belief has declined in the West, accompanied by a rise in secular thought. While secularism provides for the reasonable separation of church and state, it can also include philosophical elements that reject religion and align with communist atheist ideology that interpret life solely through a focus on the material world.

A focus on materialism and “self” in the West has led to a sense of isolation from the totality of being human—body, mind, and spirit—and can lead to depression as life may appear random or even meaningless. Chinese traditional culture emphasizes the unity between Heaven and Man and the intrinsic value and spiritual essence of every human being.

Shen Yun’s Universal Appeal

Archbishop Makarios Griniezakis, head of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia, saw Shen Yun perform in Sydney in February this year and was moved to write to Shen Yun in appreciation.

Archbishop Makarios Griniezakis of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia watched Shen Yun in Sydney, Australia, on Feb. 26, 2025. NTD

“Through this rich and most captivating performance, you [Shen Yun] offer a beautiful and spiritual message to the wider society, which is of the utmost importance in our current days,” Archbishop Makarios wrote in the March 3 letter, as reported by NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

“This testimony of cultural and spiritual revival is not only paramount for the people of China, but it sends a pertinent message to the whole world.

“It is through the artistic exploration of faith, love, hope, and unity that the audience is able to contemplate such virtues of which the contemporary world seeks not only to deny but to systematically reject.”

The message of hope and kindness that Shen Yun brings to the world is a universal blessing; its audiences truly appreciate it, regardless of their political or religious orientation. There is nothing the CCP can do to stop that momentum.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.