The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) campaign to intimidate and harass Shen Yun Performing Arts and Falun Gong practitioners on U.S. soil represents a serious violation of American sovereignty, warns William L. Saunders, a leading scholar on religious liberty and human rights.
Saunders, director of the Center for Human Rights at The Catholic University of America and chair emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society, recently told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s actions extend far beyond geopolitical disputes.
“It’s very serious, because it violates the sovereignty of the United States for the Communist Party to harass people on U.S. soil,” he said.
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts, founded by Falun Gong practitioners in 2006, aims to revive traditional Chinese culture.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It was first introduced to the public in 1992 and quickly grew in popularity, with at least 70 million people taking up the practice by the decade’s end, according to official estimates at the time.
Fearing Falun Gong’s popularity, the CCP in July 1999 launched a brutal persecution campaign to eradicate the practice. Since then, millions have been subjected to arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labor, and even forced organ harvesting.
Surge in Threats Against Shen Yun, Falun Gong
Since early 2024, incidents of harassment and intimidation against Shen Yun and Falun Gong practitioners have surged worldwide, which whistleblowers attribute to a 2022 instruction from CCP leader Xi Jinping to top state officials—overseeing political, intelligence, and influence operations—on a new strategy to target Falun Gong on a global scale.
According to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), Beijing attempted to sabotage Shen Yun more than 130 times between 2007 and 2024 across 38 countries. Over the past year, there have been more than 110 incidents recorded, involving threats of bombings, shootings, and arson. Many of these took place in the United States.
The escalation has coincided with Shen Yun’s growing prominence, as it performs in more than 200 cities each year, drawing audiences of more than 1 million with its depictions of “China before communism.” Among its programs, it highlights the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, a focus that has made Shen Yun a long-standing target of Beijing.
“I think harassment of Chinese people in the U.S. is offensive to American values,” Saunders said. “So geopolitically, it’s very serious.”
Transnational Repression
The CCP’s pressure campaign has extended beyond cultural institutions. Chinese Americans who openly criticize the regime could face retaliation, both directly in the United States and indirectly through threats to family members living in China.
Saunders noted that such actions demonstrate the “determined cruelty of the Communist Party” and that the regime continually harasses those who merely hold different opinions.
One prominent case of transnational repression is that of Cheng Peiming, a survivor of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting program who now lives in New York. Cheng reported a suspicious attempted intrusion at his home on June 17, when surveillance footage captured a masked man approaching his car before fleeing when an alarm sounded. This incident occurred after earlier vandalism and a home break-in last November.
In July 2024, he appeared at a Washington press conference, publicly testifying about surviving organ harvesting and fleeing China.
“The CCP wants to silence me because I’m the only surviving witness of their organ harvesting,” Cheng told NTD, the sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.
His testimony alarmed Beijing. A leaked CCP meeting record obtained by the FDIC showed officials in Heilongjiang Province discussing efforts to pressure Cheng into retracting his account, and even considering assassination.
Call for US Action
Saunders stressed that the United States cannot allow such intimidation to go unanswered.
“You don’t persecute people for speaking their minds,” he said.
“That’s just an uncivilized and very brutal tactic.
“So anybody from China who has become a U.S. citizen, of course, has to be protected by the U.S., and anybody who’s a visitor ought to be protected from harassment.”
Li Chen contributed to this report.
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