The New York company has been facing fake bomb threats and disinformation amid global tours to bring back traditional Chinese culture predating communism.
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 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 and 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. Attack articles targeting Shen Yun appear on Western media, and are then 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.
Taiwan authorities have suspected a China-based research entity operating under Chinese tech giant Huawei to be the possible culprit for the emails.
‘Terrorism’
Shen Yun performances often include stories about human rights abuses that Falun Gong practitioners suffer in China for adhering to their faith, which some performers and their family members have experienced.
In 1999, the CCP launched a systematic elimination campaign against Falun Gong, which at the time had at least 70 million practitioners. 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 such as Falun Gong practitioners. As a father, it moved him to know that ordinary families in China would be targeted as state enemies, and the authorities could “just have control over your 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 the Shen Yun artists, while relatively safe within U.S. borders, are “still taking a huge risk by directly challenging” the regime on its human rights abuses.
Keeping the ‘Pressure up’
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 from the 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.), 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 to those who are getting hurt, tortured when they get arrested.”
He said the U.S. government “will bring more focus on transnational repression” from China and that he hopes President Donald Trump, when he meets with the Chinese regime leader Xi Jinping, will urge the release of incarcerated Americans and people imprisoned for their faith.
“We’re going to keep the pressure up.”