Investigative Journalist Shares Insight Into Beijing’s Intimidation Campaign Targeting Shen Yun

Steve Lance, executive producer of the documentary ‘Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun,’ says the cancellation of Shen Yun shows in Toronto is ‘concerning.’

Ying Chen, Vice President of Shen Yun, with NTD investigative journalist Steve Lance in a scene from the documentary "Unbroken." Paulio Shakespeare/NTD

As Shen Yun’s opening night performance was about to begin at Lincoln Center in New York on March 26, 2025, investigative journalist Steve Lance saw people holding signs outside the venue showing excerpts from hit pieces attacking the classical Chinese dance company.

At the time, Lance was producing the documentary “Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun,” which follows performers and their families as they contend with mounting smear campaigns, threats, and interference linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Lance spoke to The Epoch Times while in Toronto for the film’s Canadian premiere at Hotel X on April 22, sharing both his findings and his concerns about the recent cancellation of Shen Yun performances in the city due to a hoax bomb threat.

Recalling the scene outside Lincoln Center a year ago, Lance said that when he asked the demonstrators why they were there, they struggled to give a clear answer, saying, “they didn’t really know why.”

“They were very evasive,” Lance said. “We asked one man what he did for a living—he said he was a consultant.” He noted the group appeared to be made up of people from varied backgrounds, not individuals one would typically expect to be closely tied to the issue.

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One man admitted on camera that he was paid to protest, and would get $20 after he finished distributing materials critical of Shen Yun.

Lance also observed another individual, an Asian man standing apart from the group, who appeared to be directing the demonstrators and supplying additional flyers. He said further investigation traced the protesters back to an individual known to be connected to the CCP.

As he looked into the bomb threats and death threats against Shen Yun in recent years—all hoaxes—Lance said the patterns all trace back to the CCP. He said he found it “hard to believe and beyond concerning” that such interference could result in the recent cancellation of six Shen Yun shows in Toronto.

New York-based Shen Yun was founded in 2006 and quickly grew from one to eight touring companies travelling the world every year. This year marks its 20th anniversary, and the show has hundreds of performances scheduled in nearly 200 cities in some 20 countries.

The Toronto cancellations mark the first known instance of a theatre calling off Shen Yun performances in response to a hoax bomb threat.

Lance said what he witnessed outside Lincoln Center is part of the CCP’s broader transnational repression and interference campaign targeting Shen Yun. Tactics range from slashed tires on Shen Yun tour buses to fake bomb threats and death threats, as well as news articles slandering Shen Yun with CCP-linked sources, and lawfare weaponizing the legal system to attack the performance.

Law enforcement agencies have documented these cases globally. In several cases where threatening emails have warned of violence against hosting venues and politicians if Shen Yun is allowed to perform, authorities have traced the emails back to servers in China. This was the case in 2025 when Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau said that emailed threats received by venues hosting Shen Yun had been traced to an area in Xi’an, China.

Shen Yun Performing Arts was founded by leading Chinese artists who are practitioners of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa. In the early 1990s, Falun Gong was the fastest-growing spiritual group in China. Based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, as well as meditative exercises, Falun Gong teaches practitioners to improve their moral character. In 1999, the CCP saw the practice’s growing popularity as a threat and launched a persecution campaign, vowing to eliminate it. Since then, the group has been severely persecuted by the CCP.

Shen Yun violist Rachel Chen (L) and Shen Yun dancer Lillian Parker (R) at the Canadian premiere of the documentary "Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun" at Hotel X Toronto on April 22, 2026. Evan Ning/The Epoch Times

Shen Yun’s stated mission is to revive China’s 5,000 years of traditional culture, which the company says has been all but destroyed under decades of communist rule. The company performs under the tagline, “China Before Communism.” Shen Yun also highlights human rights abuses by the Chinese communist regime, including the persecution of Falun Gong.

As previously reported by The Epoch Times, a political insider revealed in 2024 that Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued a directive in 2022 to his top officials, ordering them to attack Falun Gong overseas by spreading disinformation and using lawfare. Xi had reportedly lamented at the meeting that the regime’s previous efforts to suppress Falun Gong activities abroad had essentially failed, and required a new strategy to target the spiritual group internationally.

Subsequently, Chinese agents in the United States were found to have attempted to bribe an IRS agent in a bid to revoke Shen Yun’s non-profit status. Two men, who both received prison sentences for the scheme in 2024, travelled to Shen Yun’s headquarters in upstate New York to surveil Shen Yun artists.

Meanwhile, Lance said what stands out most about the multi-pronged interference efforts is the “resilience” of Shen Yun’s artists—and their absence of resentment.

“It’s really a resounding theme, which is they’re being driven to do this by something beyond themselves, and that’s reflected in the whole company culture,” Lance said.

‘Noble Mission’

“Unbroken,” which was released on March 24, follows Levi Browde and his two sons, Jesse and Lucas Browde, who are principal dancers with Shen Yun, as they contend with bomb threats, lawfare, and media coverage attacking the performing arts company.

Shen Yun dancers Lucas Browde (L) and Jesse Browde at the Canadian premiere of the documentary "Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun" at Hotel X Toronto on April 22, 2026. Courtesy of Alex Gurevich

Lance recalled that Lucas Browde, who is featured in “Unbroken,” said he doesn’t take the threats against Shen Yun personally and is “just trying to live his life in a way that shows people the true situation and the true nature of what Shen Yun is all about.”

Shen Yun artists are highly trained in classical Chinese dance, which the company says is one of the oldest and most comprehensive dance systems in the world, involving leaps, flips, and other difficult tumbling techniques.

Drawing on his own experience as a former competitive hockey player, Lance noted the intense focus required to perform at a high level—and said he can only imagine how challenging it is for Shen Yun’s performers to maintain that standard while facing threats at the same time.

“When a goaltender prepares, he doesn’t talk to anybody else in the team. He’s just focusing,” Lance said. “Can you imagine if every game he had to evacuate and deal with a bomb threat?”

He said Shen Yun’s artists are “essentially Olympians” in terms of their training and that dealing with the stress that comes with the threats the performing arts company receives “really sets them apart.”

In his experience spending time with Shen Yun’s artists, Lance says they have a level of humility he has not experienced elsewhere. He noted that more than 90 Shen Yun performers and employees either have themselves been persecuted by the CCP or have one or more family members that have been persecuted.

“This is very personal, and it’s very real, and it’s a very noble mission that they’re all behind,” Lance said.

A Shen Yun Performing Arts poster outside the Four Seasons Centre in Toronto on April 2, 2026. Teng Dongyu/The Epoch Times

Toronto Cancellations

Shen Yun’s backstory, Lance said, is what makes it so “hard to believe and deeply concerning” that six performances scheduled in Toronto in late March and early April were cancelled after Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts—the show’s venue—received bomb threats from an email account bearing a Chinese name, which was later determined to be a hoax.

The theatre’s decision to cancel the show came despite police confirming that the threats were not credible, and despite requests by the show’s local presenter, the Falun Dafa Association of Toronto, to allow the shows to proceed. The association said interference tactics should not lead to artistic suppression in Canada.

Since the cancellations, the presenter has revealed more emails from the sender of the bomb threats, who boasted of having links to the CCP and admitted the threats were hoaxes.

Lance said that during production of the film, the Browde brothers were touring with their group in Taiwan when Shen Yun received similar threats. He said authorities there were able to trace the source back to mainland China.

Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau said last year that through a multiagency investigation it had traced the emails back to a location near a Huawei research facility in Xi’an, China.

“What that told us was that the Chinese Communist Party has been harassing this group, and this is a state actor just using intimidation tactics. This is not a domestic act of terrorism,” Lance said.

Lance said he expected that authorities and intelligence services in democratic societies would read the threats as such, and would be able to advise the public about the nature of the threats.

He said that by cancelling the shows, the Toronto theatre is in a sense “emboldening the CCP” in its activities to suppress Shen Yun and disrupt performances using hoax bomb threats.

“It’s sort of like why you don’t pay a terrorist ransom, because if you do, they know that it works and they’ll keep doing it,” he said. “By shutting the show down, you’re opening the door for even more on top of what they’ve been doing.”

Shen Yun Performing Arts held its second Toronto performance of the 2026 season at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on the evening of March 28, 2026, with the theatre filled to capacity. May Huang/The Epoch Times

‘Resist the Fear’

Lance noted that similar threats have occurred in other cities, but the shows went on anyway with increased security.

The Toronto presenter of the show said Shen Yun’s performances around the world have been targeted by such threats more than 150 times over the past two years and that each time the shows were allowed to proceed after police confirmed the threats were unfounded.

Such was the case in Vancouver earlier this month, when the hosting venue, the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, received fake bomb threats from the same email account that threatened the Toronto shows. The Vancouver theatre allowed the shows to go ahead after receiving confirmation from police that the threats were not credible. The same occurred at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre in mid-March.

The Vancouver Police Cybercrime Unit determined that email account that sent the threats to the Vancouver theatre, which is the same email account that sent threats to the Toronto theatre, was linked to a Chinese phone number based in China.

There are multiple layers to the CCP’s intent in sending hoax threats, including to scare the population and to change the way people carry out their daily lives, Lance noted.

“I think it’s in the spirit of free and democratic countries to resist the fear that some of these terrorist campaigns are trying to instill,” he said.

Lance also said he hopes “Unbroken” adds “another dimension” to what the Toronto audiences who were directly affected by the cancellations have personally experienced.

“If the Chinese communist regime continues to go unchecked, if their bad behaviour continues to be swept under the rug and go unnoticed because of business deals, because of self-interest, it’s only a matter of time until each and every one of us becomes a victim of their crimes,” he said.

He added that he hopes the cancellations in Toronto serve as a warning and a “wake up call.”

Eva Fu contributed to this report.