Last Updated on 7 minutes ago by TodayWhy Editorial
Every year, thousands of people see Shen Yun’s advertisements plastered across bus stops, newspapers, and social media. Many buy tickets expecting an evening of classical Chinese dance. Few realize they are watching a performance born from one of the most severe religious persecutions of the 21st century — and that the Chinese government is actively trying to ensure they never see it again.
What Is Shen Yun?
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a classical Chinese dance and music company founded in New York in 2006. Its name translates roughly as “divine rhythm” — a reference to the spiritual heritage at the heart of its mission. The organization is structured as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) and operates eight separate touring companies that travel simultaneously across five continents every season.
Each year, Shen Yun produces an entirely new two-hour production featuring classical Chinese dance, a live orchestra that blends Eastern and Western instruments, hand-crafted costumes, and patented digital backdrops. The company performs at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including New York’s Lincoln Center and Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center.
In 2026 — Shen Yun’s 20th anniversary season — the company staged roughly 800 performances across more than 200 cities in 21 countries. All 33 performances in Taiwan sold out, and Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, sent a formal message of congratulations.
- 800+ performances in the 2026 season
- 21 countries on the 2026 world tour
- 8 touring companies operating simultaneously
- 20 years since Shen Yun was founded (2006)
The Falun Gong Connection
Shen Yun was founded by practitioners of Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa), a Chinese spiritual discipline that combines meditation, gentle exercises, and a moral philosophy centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992, Falun Gong attracted tens of millions of followers in China throughout the 1990s — estimates put the number at roughly 70 to 100 million by 1999.
Shen Yun does not hide this connection. Its official website states: “Shen Yun was founded in New York by Falun Gong practitioners amid horrific persecution in China, where the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has waged a brutal campaign against our faith since 1999.”
The company is based at Dragon Springs, a campus in Deerpark, New York, which also serves as the headquarters of the Falun Gong community in North America. Performers train at the affiliated Fei Tian Academy of the Arts.
📖 Related: Why Is Falun Gong Banned in China — And Why Does It Matter? — our pillar article on the history and global significance of the persecution.
Why Was Shen Yun Founded?
To understand why Shen Yun exists, you need to understand what happened to Falun Gong in China — and what happened to Chinese culture under communist rule.
The Persecution That Drove Falun Gong Overseas
In July 1999, after years of rapid growth, China’s Communist Party formally banned Falun Gong and launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate it. The persecution that followed — documented by human rights organizations, the United Nations, the United States Congress, and the European Parliament — included mass arrests, forced labor, torture, and killings in custody. By the end of 2024, Minghui.org had documented over 5,100 confirmed deaths since 1999, with 164 fatalities recorded in that year alone.
Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi had already moved to the United States before the ban. Over the following years, many practitioners who managed to leave China settled in North America and Europe, bringing their faith — and their sense of cultural loss — with them.
The Cultural Mission
The founders of Shen Yun saw a double crisis: their religion was being persecuted, and China’s traditional culture was being actively dismantled. Under seven decades of communist rule, the CCP had suppressed or destroyed vast swaths of China’s artistic heritage — classical dance forms, musical traditions, spiritual narratives rooted in Buddhism and Taoism, and the very cosmology that had shaped Chinese civilization for thousands of years.
In 2006, a small group of first-generation Chinese immigrants — some of them refugees from religious persecution — gathered in upstate New York with a shared goal: to reconstruct and present that heritage on stage, sharing what they called “China before communism” with audiences around the world.
“We wanted to show the world what China really is,” Leeshai Lemish, one of Shen Yun’s earliest members and its longtime emcee, has said. “Not the China of today’s propaganda — but the China of 5,000 years of history, art, and spirit.”
By the end of 2006, Shen Yun had its first production ready. Two decades later, it had grown into what is widely described as the world’s premier classical Chinese dance company.
What Does Shen Yun Actually Perform on Stage?
A typical Shen Yun performance lasts approximately two hours and consists of around 20 individual dance pieces, each telling a different story drawn from Chinese history, mythology, literature, or current events.
Classical Chinese dance — the core of every Shen Yun show — is one of the oldest and richest dance traditions in the world, developed over thousands of years in the imperial court, folk festivals, and opera. It is technically demanding, requiring performers to master intricate body movements, hand gestures, and the use of flowing sleeves and fans as expressive instruments.
The live orchestra is a deliberate fusion: traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument), pipa (a lute), and dizi (a transverse flute) perform alongside a full Western symphony orchestra. Shen Yun composes original music for every production.
The visual backdrop is patented technology: an animated digital screen that interacts in real time with the dancers on stage, creating effects where performers appear to leap off a mountain and land on stage, or ascend into heavenly realms.
The Political Content
Shen Yun does not present itself as purely aesthetic entertainment. Some pieces explicitly depict the modern-day persecution of Falun Gong in China — scenes in which communist police arrest meditating practitioners, or in which figures of faith are shown overcoming oppression through spiritual conviction. A reporter for The New Yorker described one scene in which what appeared to be a “Communist tsunami” destroyed a city on stage.
This is deliberate. Shen Yun’s mission is not only cultural preservation but bearing witness — using the universal language of dance to tell a story that state censorship in China has sought to silence.
Why Does the CCP Fear Shen Yun?
The Chinese Communist Party’s animosity toward Shen Yun goes far beyond its annoyance at a dissident artistic group. The threat, from Beijing’s perspective, is structural.
Shen Yun Presents a China Without the CCP
Every Shen Yun performance offers audiences a vision of Chinese civilization that has nothing to do with the Communist Party — a China whose identity is defined by Confucian ethics, Buddhist compassion, Taoist harmony, and five millennia of artistic tradition. This is a direct challenge to the CCP’s core narrative, which holds that the Party is inseparable from the nation’s identity and its future.
Shen Yun reaches millions of people in countries where the CCP has limited ability to control information — and it does so through the cultural prestige of major concert halls, which lend it a credibility that a protest leaflet could never achieve.
Shen Yun Exposes the Persecution
Because Shen Yun’s performances include scenes depicting the persecution of Falun Gong, each show is, in effect, an act of testimony to an audience that may never have heard of the mass arrests, the labor camps, or the organ harvesting allegations. The CCP has spent enormous resources trying to suppress this information internationally. Shen Yun reaches directly into the audiences the CCP most wants to influence.
Xi Jinping’s 2022 Directive
According to Yuan Hongbing, a prominent Chinese legal scholar and political dissident now based overseas, Xi Jinping personally issued new directives against Falun Gong — and specifically against Shen Yun — at an expanded meeting of the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission ahead of the 20th Party Congress in 2022. Yuan, who shared his account in February 2025 after receiving information from multiple internal party sources, described a strategy built on three pillars: character assassination of Falun Gong’s founder Li Hongzhi (described internally as a “spiritual decapitation operation”), “public opinion warfare” to shape mainstream Western media narratives against Falun Gong and Shen Yun, and “legal warfare” to use U.S. and international legal systems against the community.
⚠️ What “public opinion warfare” looks like in practice A December 2024 internal source shared notes from a Ministry of Public Security video conference in which officials discussed strategies including mobilizing agents within the Falun Gong community itself and persuading practitioners to “break with Falun Gong” and publicly expose alleged “dark secrets” about the organization. (Falun Dafa Information Center, April 2025)
The Global Sabotage Campaign: Over 150 Threats in Two Years
What began as diplomatic pressure — Chinese embassies and consulates contacting venues and warning officials not to attend or host Shen Yun — has, since 2024, escalated into what human rights experts and legal analysts describe as state-sponsored terrorism.
The Scale of the Threat Campaign
Over the past two years, Shen Yun has received more than 150 fake bomb threats and death threats targeting its venues worldwide. The pattern is consistent: emails arrive — often in Chinese — claiming that explosives have been placed in the theater and will be detonated if Shen Yun is allowed to perform. Every threat so far has proved to be a hoax, but the disruption is real.
Notable incidents include:
- February 20, 2025: The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. was evacuated before Shen Yun’s opening night. The show proceeded the same evening after the venue was cleared.
- January 28–February 1, 2026: Attackers hijacked the Shen Yun website’s infrastructure to blast over 200 violent threat messages worldwide, impersonating political leaders and public figures.
- March 29, 2026: A bomb threat forced the evacuation of Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre during a performance. The show was cancelled, and the venue subsequently cancelled all five remaining Shen Yun performances through April 5 — the most significant successful disruption to date.
- Australia, 2026: Organizers received a threat claiming that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s home would be “blown into ruins” if Shen Yun’s shows proceeded.
The threats frequently arrive at venues in different countries simultaneously, sometimes from identical email addresses — a pattern that security experts say points to a coordinated, centralized operation rather than isolated actors.
Wu Shaoping, a Chinese human rights lawyer now based overseas, told Vision Times that the method reflects a deliberate shift in CCP tactics: “They don’t need to carry out the threat locally. All it takes is an email sent from inside China. Even if it turns out to be a hoax, and even after authorities clear the venue, the disruption has already served its purpose.”
Diplomatic and Institutional Pressure
The bomb threat campaign runs alongside a longer-established playbook. For years, Chinese consulates have sent letters to venue managers, warned local politicians against attending, and applied economic pressure on sponsors and ticket sellers. In January 2024, the Falun Dafa Information Center documented over 130 such incidents in 38 countries. The U.K. government’s November 2025 country policy note on Falun Gong confirmed that “the PRC government pressured foreign entertainment venues in multiple countries to refuse to host or cancel already-scheduled performances.”
None of this has stopped Shen Yun. Every threat to date — with the exception of the Toronto cancellation — has failed to prevent a scheduled performance from taking place.
📖 Related: Why Is Falun Gong Called a Cult — And Why That Label Is Politically Motivated
The ‘Unbroken’ Documentary (2026)
On March 24, 2026, NTD’s Sincere Pictures released “Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun,” an award-winning documentary directed by Fiona Young. The world premiere took place at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, where Shen Yun principal dancers arrived in gowns designed by the company’s Artistic Director. The Los Angeles premiere followed on June 17, 2026.
The film follows two brothers — Lucas and Jesse Browde — and their fellow performers as they trace a journey from ordinary American childhoods to the world’s most prestigious stages, navigating the tension between artistic ambition, spiritual conviction, and an escalating campaign of intimidation. It blends personal storytelling with investigative reporting on the CCP’s sabotage campaign.
“I’m most excited about what’s going to happen when the world sees the story of Shen Yun. People can see who we really are, why we do what we do.” — Leeshai Lemish, Shen Yun MC, at the New York premiere
“Unbroken” is available to view at UnbrokenShenYunMovie.com.
20 Years On: Shen Yun Today
Shen Yun’s 2026 season was its largest in history, and the CCP’s campaign against it was also the most aggressive on record. The paradox is one Shen Yun’s performers acknowledge openly: the more Beijing tries to silence them, the more visible the show becomes.
The organization’s 20-year trajectory — from a small group of refugees rehearsing in upstate New York to a global cultural phenomenon performing 800 shows a year — runs directly counter to what the CCP intended when it banned Falun Gong in 1999. The goal was eradication. What emerged instead was a performing arts company that has introduced more people to the idea of “China before communism” than perhaps any other cultural institution in the world.
Whether audiences agree with Shen Yun’s spiritual worldview, appreciate its artistic merit, or simply find themselves curious about the story behind the advertisements, one thing is clear: the decision to silence it has not succeeded. And the documentary “Unbroken,” premiering today in Los Angeles, is the latest evidence that Shen Yun has no intention of going quietly.
📖 Related: Why Is Shen Yun Called a Cult — Separating CCP Propaganda from Legitimate Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Falun Gong practitioners create Shen Yun?
Falun Gong practitioners founded Shen Yun in 2006 in New York after the Chinese Communist Party banned their faith in 1999 and began systematically destroying traditional Chinese culture. Shen Yun was created as a way to preserve and share that culture — dances, music, stories, and values — with the world before it was erased by decades of communist rule.
Is Shen Yun directly connected to Falun Gong?
Yes. Shen Yun was founded by Falun Gong practitioners and is operated by the Falun Gong community from its headquarters in New York’s Hudson Valley. The company openly states this connection on its website. Its performances also include scenes depicting the persecution of Falun Gong in China.
Why does China want to shut down Shen Yun?
China’s Communist Party views Shen Yun as a direct threat because the show presents a vision of Chinese culture without communism, exposes the persecution of Falun Gong, and reaches millions of international audiences annually. The CCP has tried to pressure venues into cancellations and, more recently, orchestrated over 150 bomb threats globally against Shen Yun performances.
What is the ‘Unbroken’ documentary about Shen Yun?
“Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun” is an award-winning 2026 documentary produced by NTD’s Sincere Pictures. It follows Shen Yun performers and their families as they face an escalating CCP-linked intimidation campaign. The film premiered in New York on March 24, 2026, and had its Los Angeles premiere on June 17, 2026.
Has the CCP actually succeeded in stopping Shen Yun performances?
Partially. Bomb threats forced the cancellation of shows in Toronto in March–April 2026 at the Four Seasons Centre. However, Shen Yun’s overall 2026 season — its largest ever — continued with roughly 800 performances in over 200 cities across 21 countries. All 33 Taiwan performances sold out, and Taiwan’s president sent congratulations.
What does Shen Yun actually perform on stage?
Shen Yun presents classical Chinese dance and music, showcasing stories from ancient Chinese history, mythology, and literature. Each production is entirely new each year. Performances blend a live orchestra — incorporating traditional Chinese instruments such as the erhu and pipa alongside Western instruments — with digital animated backdrops and intricately handcrafted costumes. Some scenes depict the modern-day persecution of Falun Gong under CCP rule.
Sources & Further Reading
- Falun Dafa Information Center — An Unprecedented CCP Campaign to Sabotage Shen Yun, Eliminate Falun Gong Globally (April 2025)
- UK Home Office — Country Policy and Information Note: Falun Gong, China (November 2025)
- Vision Times — CCP Bomb Threats Force Shen Yun Cancellations Across Canada (April 2026)
- Vision Times — Attackers Exploited Shen Yun Website to Send 200+ Bomb Threats Worldwide (March 2026)
- Shen Yun Official — Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun (Documentary, 2026)
- Britannica — Shen Yun Performing Arts
- U.S. USCIRF — Freedom Forsaken: Falun Gong and Beijing’s Playbook for Repression (October 2025)