Shen Yun Faces Unrelenting Interference Campaign by Chinese Regime
Shen Yun is not your ordinary performing arts company. Every year, the company not only contends with the challenges of bringing a high-end stage production to hundreds of cities around theworld, but alsomust deal withan unrelenting campaign by the Chinese communist regime to interfere with its performances wherever it goes. This interference has plagued the company since its founding more than a decade ago, LeeshaiLemish, an emcee with the company, told The Epoch Times.
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a classical Chinese dance and music company founded inNew York in 2006. Its mission is to revive 5,000 years of traditional Chinese culture through the arts.
Its performances include depictions of the Chinese regime’s two-decade-long persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa. Under the persecution, adherents of the practice have been arbitrarily detained, subjected to forced labor, tortured, and even killed for their organs. Outside China, the regime has sought to demonize the practice while suppressing information exposing the persecution, such as by influencing overseas Chinese media and infiltrating overseas Chinese community groups.
Lemish, who has been with Shen Yun since its inception, said, “I started noticing that as we were going and performing around the world, there are all types of phenomena that were following us that you normally would not expect with a performing arts company.”
Theaters received letters from their local Chinese consulate or embassy demanding that they pull the performance, “It’s just a drop in the bucket in terms of what is actually out there,” Lemish said, adding that as he tours, people with inside information on the theaters’ dealings are constantly telling him in private of attempts by Chinese authorities to shut down the performances.
Shen Yun Performances Denied
Attempts by the Chinese regime to thwart ShenYun’s performances have largely failed— the company has expanded to seven touring contingents and is due to embark on its biggest touring season yet in 2020. But there have been some cases of theaters folding to the pressure.
Most recently, the Royal Theater in Madrid canceled the show a few weeks before the company was due to perform for the first time at the venue in January, citing “technical difficulties.”
However, an undercover phone call to the Chinese Embassy in Madrid conducted by the U.S.-based nonprofit World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) revealed that this reason was manufactured after the embassy managed to pressure the theater into dropping the performance.
In an audio recording of the phone conversation, Lu Fan, the Chinese ambassador to Spain, explained how he convinced the Royal Theater’s general manager to cancel Shen Yun by warning himthat the theater “can’t afford to lose the Chinese market because of this.”
The attempt to pressure theatres to breach of contract with Shen Yun by the Chinese consulate in Denmark, Thailand, and Korea also have resulted in dropping the performance in recent years.
Chinese Regime’s Evolving Tactics
Piling pressure on theaters is only one of the ways in which the Chinese regime has tried to interfere with Shen Yun. Chinese individuals were seen loitering around the company’s buses and accommodation , appearing to be monitoring the company’ s movements. Some attendees attempted to disrupt the company’s performances using electronic devices, such as a universal remote control to interfere with the screen projector.
In the early years, mainland Chinese state-sponsored performance troupes would perform directly across the road from where Shen Yun was performing and on the exact same dates, in an effort to compete with the company, according to its website.
Recently, the interference has increasingly moved online. Shen Yun’s website and servers also have repeatedly come under attack. “There’s a very strategic and concerted effort to defame us in any possible way, especially in themedia andonline,” Lemish said.
He said that Chinese internet trolls have been working to get negative publicity about Shen Yun ranked higher than the company’s website and media articles with favorable reviews of the performance. Known as the “50-Cent Army,” (each negative comment posted is paid $0.50) these internet trolls are hired by the Chinese regime to spout propaganda and silence dissenting views online, both inside and outside of China.
The emcee said this move fits within the Chinese regime’s broader campaign to shift public opinion online internationally.
“It’s making us work a lot harderbecause just the normal way that people discover things these days [is] by Googling them and by hearing about them … on social media,” he said.
“They’re really making a strongeffort tonot allow us to use those channels, and then create negative impressions on people to make it harder for us to sell tickets.”
However, the company is undeterred. “We’re not going to be intimidated by it,” Lemish said. “We’ve faced this all along from the very beginning. It’s never slowed us down.”
We knew that … there were forces behind the scenes trying to stop our performances. Leeshai Lemish, Shen Yun emcee