Is Shen Yun Cult? CCP Propaganda vs. Real Allegations in 2026

Last Updated on 2 weeks ago by TodayWhy Editorial

Two groups of people call Shen Yun a cult — and they mean different things by it. Understanding who is saying it, why, and what they offer is the only way to think clearly about one of the most contested performing arts companies in the world.

TodayWhy examines both sources of the “cult” label on their own terms, presents what the evidence actually shows for each, and explains why conflating them — as both the Chinese government and some Western coverage have done — distorts the full picture.

Two Sources of the “Cult” Label

When someone calls Shen Yun a cult, the first question to ask is: who is saying it, and what are they basing it on?

🇨🇳 Source 1 — CCP / Chinese State

• Chinese embassies and consulates worldwide
• Chinese state media (CGTN, Xinhua, People’s Daily)
• Ministry of Public Security internal directives
• CCP-linked social media campaigns and YouTube channels

🇺🇸 Source 2 — Western / Legal

• Former Shen Yun performers (lawsuits, media interviews)
• New York Times investigative reporting (2024)
• U.S. federal investigators (DHS, State Dept, SDNY)
• New York State Department of Labor

These two sources are institutionally independent and their evidence is categorically different. The Chinese government wants to shut Shen Yun down because it exposes CCP crimes. Former performers allege they were harmed inside the organization. These are not the same claim, even when they use similar language.

⚠️ Why conflation matters The CCP has explicitly sought to amplify Western allegations as confirmation of its own “cult” narrative — treating independent legal proceedings as propaganda wins. Meanwhile, some Western coverage has uncritically repeated CCP talking points alongside legitimate reporting. Readers deserve to know which they are reading at any given moment.

Source 1: The CCP’s Political Campaign Against Shen Yun

The Chinese government’s “cult” label for Shen Yun is an extension of the same political designation applied to Falun Gong in 1999. It is not an independent assessment of Shen Yun’s practices. It is a pre-existing political weapon applied to anything connected to Falun Gong.

Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by Falun Gong practitioners and openly states this on its official website. Its performances include scenes depicting CCP persecution of Falun Gong, present Chinese culture “before communism,” and explicitly critique Communist Party rule. From Beijing’s perspective, this makes Shen Yun a political threat — not a spiritual concern.

The CCP’s campaign against Shen Yun is documented and extensive:

• Since 2006, the Falun Dafa Information Center has documented 365 incidents targeting Shen Yun worldwide, including diplomatic pressure on venue managers, threats to sponsors, and harassment of performers’ family members in China (FDIC Incident Tracker)
• In June–July 2024, leaked notes from an internal Ministry of Public Security meeting explicitly described a strategy to “eliminate” Falun Gong globally through media manipulation, including by “fully supporting” specific anti-Falun Gong YouTubers spreading false claims about Shen Yun (FDIC report)
• In December 2024, a Ministry of Public Security video conference discussed mobilizing agents within the Falun Gong community to expose alleged “dark secrets” about the group (FDIC, April 2025)
• In January 2026 alone, Chinese embassies in Australia, the UK, Denmark, and Melbourne issued near-identical public statements denouncing Shen Yun — timed to disrupt its 20th anniversary tour (FDIC, January 2026 update)
• Xi Jinping personally issued directives in 2022, described as a “spiritual decapitation operation” against Li Hongzhi and a “public opinion warfare” campaign against Shen Yun in Western media (The Epoch Times, December 2024)

The “cult” framing in all of these materials is identical to what the CCP applied to Falun Gong in 1999 — a retroactive political label designed to generate social fear, not a finding based on theological or sociological analysis.

📖 Related:Why Is Falun Gong Called a Cult — And Why That Label Is Wrong — full analysis of the xiejiao designation, its political origins, and what scholars actually conclude.

What the CCP Claims — And Why It Doesn’t Hold

Chinese consular statements and state media characterize Shen Yun as a “cult propaganda show” on the grounds that it is organized by Falun Gong, which Beijing has designated a xiejiao (heretical organization). This is circular reasoning: the “cult” conclusion is assumed, not demonstrated.

As the U.S. House of Representatives noted in H.Res.605, a bipartisan resolution: “Chinese authorities have devoted extensive time and resources over the past decade worldwide to distributing false propaganda claiming that Falun Gong is a suicidal and militant ‘evil cult’ rather than a spiritual movement which draws upon traditional Chinese concepts of meditation and exercise.” Arthur Waldron, Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, has praised Shen Yun as an “authentic treasure” of Chinese civilization (Falun Dafa Information Center) — the opposite of the CCP’s framing.

The “cult” label also collapses under factual scrutiny: Shen Yun performs in over 170 cities annually in free democracies that can and do regulate performing arts organizations. No democratic government has restricted Shen Yun on cult grounds. The governments of France (99 shows in 2026), Taiwan (33 sold-out performances), and the United States (Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center) have all hosted Shen Yun without restriction.

The “Media Warfare” Directive and the NYT Question

A central and contested claim deserves its own examination: the assertion — made by Shen Yun, by Falun Gong-affiliated researchers, and by a Chinese legal scholar in exile — that mainstream Western outlets, principally The New York Times, have become unwitting or willing vehicles for a CCP campaign against Shen Yun.

The Alleged October 2022 Directive

According to reporting by The Epoch Times, Chinese legal scholar Yuan Hongbing — a former law professor at Peking University now living in exile in Australia — says he received detailed accounts from two separate sources inside China: a member of a veteran CCP family who now opposes Xi Jinping, and a regime insider Yuan describes as speaking out “for reasons of conscience.” Based on these accounts, Yuan alleges that Xi convened a secret meeting just before the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, attended by the ministers of National Security and State Security, senior officials of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Front Work Department — the CCP’s main overseas influence arm.

At this meeting, Yuan says, Xi described two decades of efforts to suppress Falun Gong internationally as having failed, citing in particular the growth of Falun Gong-founded media outlets — The Epoch Times and NTD, which by then published in 23 languages — into what Xi called the CCP’s leading international “hostile force.” Xi reportedly ordered a restructured approach: the Ministry of Public Security would continue domestic persecution, while the Ministry of State Security — China’s principal foreign intelligence service — would take the lead on the international campaign, with the United Front Work Department and Foreign Ministry in supporting roles. Xi is quoted, via Yuan’s sources, invoking the idiom “to fight a snake, hit at the seventh inch” — meaning to strike at the most vital point — and explicitly instructing officials to use “social media and Western media with no apparent ties back to the CCP,” reasoning that CCP state media is “seen as propaganda” and therefore ineffective.

Days after the Party Congress concluded, Chen Yixin — previously the mayor of Wuhan and secretary-general of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, during which periods persecution of Falun Gong intensified — was installed as the new head of the Ministry of State Security. A separate whistleblower account, reported independently by Epoch Times in November 2024, alleges Chen has personally driven the subsequent campaign and aimed to “resolve the Falun Gong issue” by the end of that year.

“Information Laundering”: An FBI-Coined Term, Independently Documented

Separately from Yuan’s specific account, there is a distinct and more independently verifiable thread: in a 2025 statement, the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office described to The Epoch Times a phenomenon it calls “information laundering” — the practice of seeding false or misleading information through minor, low-credibility outlets until it is picked up and legitimized by mainstream sources. This is the FBI’s own terminology, offered as “a generalized description of what we’ve seen at the FBI,” not a claim invented by Falun Gong-aligned sources.

Ronald Rychlak, a University of Mississippi law professor and scholar of Soviet-era disinformation, told The Epoch Times that the technique requires patience: false narratives are seeded across several lower-tier outlets until “a reliable source or a reliable person reads it in three different places and repeats it” — at which point a legitimate reporter can pick up the narrative in good faith, “not being aware that someone is laying breadcrumbs down.” Nicholas Eftimiades, a CIA, State Department, and Defense Intelligence Agency veteran specializing in CCP influence operations, told the outlet that Falun Gong specifically draws this kind of attention because it has proven unusually resistant to CCP infiltration: “Falun Gong has really done a good job of… warding off infiltration by the CCP. And that’s exactly why the CCP is going after them through these methods… aggressively.”

The Specific 2024 NYT Reporting Sequence

The Epoch Times reported in March 2024 — five months before the NYT’s first major Shen Yun investigation was published — that it had obtained internal communications suggesting NYT reporters Michael Rothfeld and Nicole Hong were “specifically seeking out former artists who might have left the company years ago with a grudge.” Shen Yun Vice President Ying Chen told The Epoch Times the reporters appeared focused on “a tiny group that might have something bad to say about Shen Yun” while overlooking performers who described positive experiences. In a later interview on the Sinica podcast, NYT reporter Nicole Hong said she and Rothfeld began working on the story after an anonymous “tipster” approached them with information on Shen Yun’s “inner workings” and introduced them to a former performer — a sourcing origin point that, if accurately described, is consistent with either an ordinary investigative tip or the early stage of an information-laundering operation, and the available public record does not establish definitively which.

The Epoch Times has identified a Chinese American YouTuber who publicly claimed credit for introducing former Shen Yun performers to the Times for its initial interviews and who separately boasted of filing complaints against Shen Yun with state authorities to trigger legal action. According to Falun Dafa Information Center reporting cited by The Epoch Times that references multiple unnamed CCP whistleblowers, this individual is “completely utilized” by China’s Ministry of State Security as an unwitting conduit — “He will send out anything that is provided to him, perhaps unaware it comes from the CCP,” one whistleblower is quoted saying — rather than a knowing agent himself. The same man had been flagged by the FBI as “potentially armed and dangerous” after being found near the Shen Yun campus with a handgun, an AR-15, and more than 600 rounds of ammunition; he was subsequently arrested and charged with illegal firearms possession.

A Pattern of Independently Adjudicated CCP Operations Against Shen Yun

Separate from any contested claims about media influence, there is a category of evidence that is independently and conclusively established: completed U.S. federal criminal cases with guilty pleas. In July 2024, John Chen (Chen Jun) and Lin Feng pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York to acting as unregistered agents of the Chinese government. Court documents and FBI evidence — including text messages the FBI recovered via Chen’s iCloud account — established that the two men attempted to bribe an undercover FBI agent posing as an IRS official with $50,000, obtained from CCP handlers, specifically to trigger a bogus federal investigation that would strip Shen Yun of its nonprofit status. Chen reportedly told his cellmate he had worked for the 610 Office and that the Chinese regime paid him $250,000 to emigrate to the U.S. decades earlier, plus $50,000 a month afterward — sums a counterintelligence expert interviewed by The Epoch Times called consistent with “hundreds” of similar but undetected cases. Separately, Lin admitted to FBI investigators that he and Chen had also surveilled the Falun Gong community in Orange County, New York — where the Shen Yun campus is located — to gather material for a meritless environmental lawsuit intended to obstruct the community’s growth. That environmental suit was ultimately dismissed by a federal judge in September 2024 “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.

This pattern of using the U.S. legal system itself as a weapon — sometimes called “lawfare” — was separately flagged by Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, who told a September 2024 Congressional hearing that “researchers, business owners, and academics who expose the truth about a Chinese company… have suddenly found themselves slapped with frivolous lawsuits.” In a related case unconnected to Shen Yun specifically, Mike Sun — a campaign treasurer for a Southern California city council member — was indicted in December 2024 for acting as an unregistered Chinese agent after working to help install a CCP-favorable candidate into local office, illustrating that the same influence apparatus operates well beyond the Falun Gong-Shen Yun context.

This category of evidence — guilty pleas, FBI-recovered communications, a dismissed lawsuit, a separate indictment — is qualitatively different from the contested claims about media influence above: it is closed, adjudicated, and does not depend on anonymous sourcing.

Are the Two Campaigns Connected? The Question About NYT’s Lead Reporter

A further question has been raised publicly, and it deserves direct treatment rather than omission: could the CCP have reached the NYT reporting itself — not merely the sources around it — through personal or family channels? The specific claim that has circulated centers on Nicole Hong, the NYT reporter who led the Shen Yun investigations alongside Michael Rothfeld.

In September 2024, Jennifer Zeng — a blogger and former Falun Gong-camp detainee who writes about CCP transnational repression — published a post asserting that Hong’s father, George Hong (Chinese name: Hong Zhaohui), a professor at Fordham University, held an honorary director position with the U.S. chapter of the Western Returned Scholars Association. The Western Returned Scholars Association is, on undisputed public record, a real organization — it operates under the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the agency responsible for the CCP’s overseas influence operations, a fact independently documented by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Jamestown Foundation, and other China-watching research institutions. That foundational fact about the organization itself is not in dispute.

This claim was picked up and amplified in March 2025 by Blaze Media, in a column arguing the family connection should raise questions about the “impartiality and motivations” behind Hong’s reporting.

⚠️ This claim was retracted George Hong disputed the allegation directly, and Blaze Media subsequently appended an editor’s note to its own article stating: “This article relied on reporting from Jennifer Zeng regarding Professor George Hong’s alleged connections to organizations closely linked to the CCP. Hong denies these allegations, which he says are ‘false,’ ‘fabricated,’ and ‘baseless.’ These claims are hereby retracted.” As of this writing, no other independent news organization — including those without any relationship to Falun Gong or Shen Yun — has verified the specific claim about George Hong’s organizational position, and the outlet that published it has withdrawn the assertion.

What remains, after the retraction, is considerably thinner than the original claim: George Hong is a Fordham University professor; he has academic and professional ties to China common among many Chinese-American academics of his generation, some of whom hold honorary or visiting titles at Chinese institutions without those titles implying any operational relationship with Chinese intelligence or propaganda services; and his daughter is an NYT investigative reporter. None of this, on the public record as it currently stands, demonstrates that Nicole Hong’s reporting was directed, influenced, or compromised by anyone in Beijing. Family members routinely hold views, careers, and affiliations entirely independent of one another, and a parent’s documented or undocumented institutional ties are not evidence of a child’s professional conduct.

At the same time, dismissing the question entirely would also be a mistake, for a specific and limited reason: the verified pattern described above — the October 2022 directive (as alleged by Yuan Hongbing), the Ministry of Public Security’s documented June 2024 internal call to “fully support” social media voices critical of Falun Gong, the FBI’s own “information laundering” framework, and the completed federal prosecution of agents who specifically sought to use the U.S. legal and media environment against Shen Yun without visible CCP fingerprints — establishes that the CCP has both the intent and the demonstrated operational capacity to pursue exactly this kind of indirect, deniable influence over Western institutions. That context makes it reasonable to ask whether any single instance of negative Shen Yun coverage might be connected to that campaign. It does not make it reasonable to treat an unverified, specifically retracted claim about one named individual’s family as if it were proof of that connection.

📖 Related:Why Is Falun Gong Banned in China? The Full Story of a 27-Year Persecution — more on the 610 Office and CCP transnational repression infrastructure.

Source 2: Allegations from Former Performers

A body of testimony has emerged from former Shen Yun performers who describe difficult conditions inside the organization.

📋 Allegations from Former Performers (2024–2025 Lawsuits and Media Reports)

• Training schedules of 15+ hours per day, six days a week, for young performers
• Little or no pay during early performance years; monthly salaries exceeding a few hundred dollars for some
• Male and female performers prohibited from speaking to each other except for work purposes; dating requires organizational approval
• Limited contact with family outside the compound
• Foreign performers allegedly directed to enter into romantic relationships with American citizens for visa purposes

The primary lawsuit was filed in November 2024 by Chang Chun-Ko, who danced for Shen Yun from age 13 to 24 and lives in Taiwan. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, it names Shen Yun Performing Arts, Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, Falun Gong founder Li Hongzhi, and others as defendants. It alleges violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and New York labor law. A second lawsuit, filed in May 2025 by Sun Zan and Cheng Qing Ling — both from New Zealand — echoes similar allegations, describing 15-hour training days, forced performance through injuries, and a culture of fear enforced through strict obedience.

These lawsuits are before U.S. federal courts. They are allegations, not adjudicated findings. No verdict has been reached as of publication.

The Chang Chun-Ko Case: A Closer Look

Because the Chang Chun-Ko lawsuit is the lead case in this dispute, and because Shen Yun has raised specific, documented questions about her credibility, this case warrants closer examination than a typical legal filing — on both sides of the ledger.

What Shen Yun and The Epoch Times Allege About Chang

Shen Yun has stated that Chang’s public position on the company reversed dramatically over time. According to Shen Yun’s official December 2024 statement, in the two years after leaving the company in 2019, Chang wrote positively about her time at Shen Yun, made multiple requests to return to the company or teach at an affiliated school, and expressed interest in opening her own dance studio that would help send students to Shen Yun. Shen Yun says this directly contradicts the allegations she would later make in media interviews and her legal complaint.

The Epoch Times further reported that after returning to Taiwan, Chang’s dance studio entered into a collaboration with a teacher at the Beijing Dance Academy — a CCP-run institution that Shen Yun has identified as a direct competitor. Chang also gave an interview to Wang Zhi’an, a former Chinese state media reporter, in which — according to Epoch Times reporting — she and Wang speculated that the death of a young child belonging to a Fei Tian College professor’s family was connected to the family’s Falun Gong faith. That speculation prompted two separate defamation lawsuits against Chang in 2025: one from the bereaved mother, Xianyuan, and one from Li Bojian, a former Shen Yun principal dancer whose deceased fiancée’s accidental death Chang and Wang had also discussed in terms Li says were false and defamatory.

⚠️ How to weigh this A change in someone’s stated position over time, a business connection to a CCP-linked institution, and being countersued for defamation are all legitimate reasons for a reader to scrutinize Chang’s credibility and possible motives. None of these facts, however, directly disprove the specific factual allegations in her labor lawsuit — which concern documented working hours, pay records, contracts, and institutional practices that are separately verifiable through discovery, regardless of what one concludes about Chang’s personal trajectory or motivations. Credibility questions about a plaintiff are relevant to weighing testimony; they are not a substitute for examining the underlying employment records.

The NYT Investigation and Federal Probe

In August 2024, the New York Times published an investigative report based on interviews with more than 150 people, including 25 former performers, review of thousands of pages of documents, and examination of secret recordings made inside the Dragon Springs compound. The report alleged that Shen Yun treated young performers as an “expendable commodity,” discouraged medical treatment, and subjected performers to emotional manipulation.

A follow-up report in November 2024 revealed that the New York State Department of Labor had opened an inquiry into Shen Yun’s labor practices — specifically whether the organization had complied with child labor laws.

⚠️ Important context on the investigation A federal investigation does not constitute a finding of wrongdoing. Investigations can conclude without charges. The existence of an investigation means investigators found sufficient basis to inquire — not that the allegations have been proven. As of June 2026, no charges have been publicly reported. This article will be updated if and when proceedings produce a legal determination.

Shen Yun’s Response

Shen Yun has vigorously denied the substance of all allegations. In an official statement published November 2024, the company called the NYT coverage “riddled with inaccuracies” and described it as “precisely an attack on the faith that drives us and the hard work that characterizes our performance culture.”

On specific points, Shen Yun’s public statements assert:

• On average, 85% of performers are adults; young performers occupy only the remaining positions
• Young performers attend on full scholarship worth approximately $50,000 per year, including room, board, and education — which it describes as “the chance of a lifetime”
• Students perform as part of a curriculum approved by the New York State Department of Education under an optional practical training framework, which is not subject to minimum wage requirements
• The allegations come from “a mere handful of disgruntled former artists” and are not representative of performers’ experiences
• Shen Yun “believes in treating our artists with care and respect”

Shen Yun has also argued that the NYT investigation was connected to a CCP-backed campaign to undermine the company (The Epoch Times, December 2024): noting that an individual who publicly claimed credit for introducing former performers to NYT journalists had also bragged about filing complaints against Shen Yun with state authorities and had been flagged by the FBI as “potentially armed and dangerous” after being found near the Shen Yun campus.

“The recent Times articles are precisely an attack on the faith that drives us and the hard work that characterizes our performance culture.”— Shen Yun Performing Arts, official statement, November 2024

Where the Two Narratives Intersect — And Are Weaponized

The CCP has explicitly moved to exploit the Western labor allegations as propaganda ammunition. The pattern is documented: within days of each NYT article, Chinese consulates issued statements citing the allegations. CCP-linked social media accounts amplified the lawsuits. The June 2024 Ministry of Public Security leaked notes had already called for using “legal warfare” against Shen Yun — and the subsequent lawsuits and investigations fit precisely that template.

This creates a genuinely difficult situation for readers and journalists: The CCP’s use of those same allegations as propaganda does mean CCP-linked sources have a strong interest in amplifying them regardless of truth.

The responsible approach is to treat each set of claims according to its own evidence standard: the CCP’s “cult” designation fails that standard entirely.

What We Can — and Cannot — Conclude

❌ Not supported by evidence

The CCP’s characterization of Shen Yun as a “cult” — a political label derived from Beijing’s 1999 campaign against Falun Gong, applied to suppress anti-communist cultural expression, and contradicted by Shen Yun’s free operation in 100+ democratic countries.

Labeling Shen Yun a “cult” on the basis of the CCP’s political campaign is factually wrong and serves Beijing’s interests.

The two questions are separate and should be evaluated separately:

• Is Shen Yun a cult by the standard definition used by sociologists and religious scholars? The evidence — practiced freely in 100+ countries, no forced membership, no documented violence, no apocalyptic worldview — does not support this conclusion by any academic standard. The label originates in CCP propaganda.
• Are the labor and control practices alleged by former performers real and illegal? This is a live legal question before U.S. courts and federal investigators. It deserves to be decided on the evidence — without CCP interference in either direction.

📖 Related:Why Did Falun Gong Create Shen Yun — And Why Does China Want to Shut It Down?

📖 Related:Why Is Falun Gong Banned in China? The Full Story of a 27-Year Persecution

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does China call Shen Yun cult?

China’s Communist Party calls Shen Yun cult as part of a documented campaign to discredit and shut down the company, whose performances present Chinese culture “before communism” and depict the persecution of Falun Gong. Leaked Ministry of Public Security documents from 2024 detail explicit strategies to spread anti-Shen Yun narratives in Western media. The “cult” label applied to Shen Yun derives directly from the CCP’s prior labeling of Falun Gong, which Freedom House and independent scholars have identified as a political tool, not a factual assessment.

What do former Shen Yun performers allege?

Multiple former performers, in lawsuits and media interviews, allege grueling training schedules of 15+ hours per day, little or no pay, restricted contact with family and the outside world, dating subject to organizational approval, and public “criticism sessions” used to enforce discipline. Shen Yun disputes these characterizations, calling the NYT coverage “riddled with inaccuracies.”

Are the CCP’s “cult” label and the labor allegations related?

CCP-linked sources seek to amplify the labor allegations as confirmation of the “cult” narrative. The CCP’s designation predates the labor allegations by decades and is a political label. The labor allegations, raised by former performers and investigated by U.S. federal authorities, are legal questions that must be evaluated on their own merits, independent of Beijing’s political campaign.

What has Shen Yun said in response to the allegations?

Shen Yun has categorically denied the allegations. It says 85% of performers are adults; young performers attend on full scholarships worth ~$50,000 per year including room and board; and that the NYT articles “grossly distort” its culture. The company has also argued that the coverage is connected to a CCP-backed campaign and that the individual who helped introduce former performers to NYT journalists was flagged by the FBI as potentially dangerous.

Did the CCP try to influence New York Times coverage of Shen Yun?

Exiled Chinese scholar Yuan Hongbing has alleged, based on internal sources, that Xi Jinping held a secret October 2022 meeting ordering officials to use Western and social media with no visible CCP ties to discredit Falun Gong and Shen Yun, with China’s Ministry of State Security leading the effort. Separately, the FBI has described a tactic it calls “information laundering” for seeding false narratives that get picked up by mainstream outlets, and U.S. courts have already secured guilty pleas from two men who bribed an undercover FBI agent in a scheme to strip Shen Yun of its nonprofit status. The adjudicated criminal cases are independently confirmed; the internal-meeting narrative rests on a single source’s account.

Was the NYT reporter who wrote the Shen Yun articles connected to the CCP?

A blogger alleged in September 2024 that Nicole Hong, the lead NYT reporter on the Shen Yun investigations, had a father with ties to a CCP-linked organization. Blaze Media picked up the claim in March 2025. The CCP’s separately documented pattern of seeking deniable influence over Western media is a reasonable basis for general scrutiny of sourcing.

Sources & Further Reading

• Falun Dafa Information Center — An Unprecedented CCP Campaign to Sabotage Shen Yun (April 2025)
• Falun Dafa Information Center — Incident Tracker: CCP Transnational Repression Against Falun Gong and Shen Yun
• Britannica — Shen Yun Performing Arts — Overview and Criticism
• Berger Montague (Law Firm) — Child Trafficking and Other Allegations Made Against Shen Yun (November 2024)
• NPR — Two Former Shen Yun Dancers Allege Forced Child Labor, Brutal Conditions (May 2025)
• Rep. Chris Smith (CECC) — Remarks on CCP Transnational Repression Targeting Shen Yun (July 2025)
• Shen Yun Official — New York Times Coverage Riddled With Inaccuracies and Exudes Bias
• Freedom House — Battle for China’s Spirit: Falun Gong — Religious Freedom in China (2017)
• Vision Times — Behind the CCP’s Attacks on Shen Yun and Falun Gong in the US (May 2025)
• The Epoch Times — New York Times, After Years of Appeasing CCP, Now Plans Attack on Shen Yun (March 2024)
• The Epoch Times — Shen Yun Alleges Lawsuit “Undoubtedly” Part of CCP Attack Campaign (December 2024)
• The Epoch Times — The New York Times Has Become a CCP “Mouthpiece,” Says Expert (January 2025)
• The Epoch Times — Woman Who Filed Lawsuit Against Shen Yun Is Sued for Defamation (February 2025)
• The Epoch Times — Unraveling the CCP’s Playbook for Transnational Repression in America (June 2025)
• The Epoch Times — In Secret Meeting, Xi Jinping Ordered New Strategy to Attack Falun Gong Globally (December 2024)
• The Epoch Times — How the CCP Uses “Information Laundering” Networks to Subvert America (February 2025)
• Blaze Media — The New York Times Wages War on Shen Yun — But Is Beijing Pulling the Strings? (March 2025; claim regarding reporter’s family ties subsequently retracted by the publisher)
• Jamestown Foundation — Reorganizing the United Front Work Department (background on the Western Returned Scholars Association)