Beijing Weaponizes U.S. Institutions against Falun Gong, Shen Yun

For over 25 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ruthlessly tried to wipe out the Falun Gong meditation practice in China—and even around the world. Chinese diplomats and agents have vigorously tried to silence Shen Yun, a world-renowned U.S.-based performing arts company founded by Falun Gong practitioners. Meanwhile, the regime has more broadly worked to infiltrate America’s political and media ecosystem.

These two trends are now converging. Beijing and its proxies are weaponizing influence in the United States to escalate attacks on Falun Gong and Shen Yun—per instructions from the CCP’s top leader. The implications, if they succeed, run much deeper than just our community.

What’s happening:

• The CCP’s long-standing transnational repression targeting Falun Gong practitioners outside China has escalated dramatically since 2023, following a direct order from Xi Jinping.
• Over 180 violent threats and impersonation attacks have targeted Shen Yun shows and tried to intimidate Falun Gong practitioners and supporters in the United States.
• Beijing is manipulating U.S. media, the legal system, and social media to smear Falun Gong and influence our institutions.
• This is a test run—if it works here, it can target anyone.

What is Transnational Repression?

• Transnational repression is when a foreign authoritarian government uses coercion, intimidation, and harassment to silence members of its diaspora or other critics far beyond its borders.

“China conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world.”
— Freedom House

• Falun Gong has been a key target of this campaign, because of practitioners’ role in exposing CCP atrocities, including forced organ harvesting and religious persecution. For 25 years, the Chinese regime and its security forces have spied on, assaulted, bullied, and maligned Falun Gong practitioners and their families outside China to silence the Falun Gong community and companies started by practitioners.
• Companies like Shen Yun Performing Arts have become prime CCP targets because they reach global audiences with uncensored truth. Since 2006, the CCP and Chinese diplomats have systematically tried to sabotage and silence Shen Yun—over 250 incidents in 38 countries of such attempted suppression have been documented.

Why Shen Yun is in the Crosshairs

• Founded in 2006 in New York, Shen Yun revives 5,000 years of Chinese civilization nearly lost under communism.
• Segments in the show depict:
  • The courage of Falun Gong practitioners under persecution
  • Modern-day tyranny in China that the CCP is desperate to hide

• The result: a global campaign to smear and sabotage Shen Yun performances, including:
  • Diplomatic pressure on theaters to cancel shows
  • Violent threats to U.S. theaters
  • Media disinformation and planted articles

A Disturbing New Escalation (2022–2025)

• Rising CCP efforts to infiltrate America:  U.S. Congressional investigations, think tank reports, and public comments by intelligence officials have revealed a multi-pronged strategy by the CCP—via its security services, hacking teams, and United Front Work Department—and various proxies to infiltrate American society, manipulate public opinion, engage in espionage, and silence critical voices. This apparatus is now being turned against Falun Gong and key U.S. institutions.

• In late 2022, Xi Jinping personally lamented the CCP’s failures in crushing Falun Gong outside China and ordered a multi-agency plan to “eliminate Falun Gong worldwide”—with an emphasis on U.S. operations.

Key tactics include:

• Lawfare: Bogus lawsuits to harass Falun Gong groups and Shen Yun
• Media manipulation: Pushing false narratives into U.S. mainstream outlets
• Social media disinformation: Mobilizing CCP-linked YouTubers, influencers, and fake accounts
• Search engine interference to suppress Falun Gong content
• Threat campaigns: Anonymous death & bomb threats to theaters, families, and supporters

Over 150 threats since March 2024 have targeted Falun Gong practitioners, their children, and U.S. officials who support them.

• Graphic threats: shootings, bombings, sexual assault
• Tire slashing and harassment at parades and info booths
• Taiwanese authorities traced at least one campaign directly to China

Media as a Weapon

• New York Times coverage on Shen Yun has amplified Beijing-engineered narratives
• Recent multi-part series relied on CCP-linked sources and distorted Falun Gong beliefs

U.S. Countermeasures

Despite escalating harassment, some CCP plots have been stopped:

• Two CCP agents were convicted in 2024 for bribing an IRS official to revoke Shen Yun’s non-profit status. One of them was pictured in Department of Justice documents shaking hands with Xi Jinping.
• A New York judge dismissed a series of environmental lawsuits against Shen Yun’s headquarters filed by people with suspicious ties to China.

But Beijing-aligned media and social disinformation efforts are still gaining traction, threatening free speech and U.S. sovereignty.

What’s At Stake?

This is a foreign malign influence campaign unlike any we have ever seen in which Beijing is leading U.S. institutions to sabotage and malign Shen Yun—an American company.

Today it’s Shen Yun. Tomorrow it could be you.

The CCP’s end goal:

1. Destroy Falun Gong’s voice in the United States
2. Silence Shen Yun, its most visible cultural platform and a potent avenue of free expression that undermines Beijing’s narratives globally
3. Deploy a playbook for manipulating American institutions

This will not stop with Shen Yun, nor Falun Gong. This is a playbook that, once proven effective, Beijing can run against any individual or organization in America. Rebuffing this campaign is therefore a critical issue of national security, national sovereignty, and democratic resilience in the face of a foreign dictatorial regime.

U.S. institutions—our media, social media platforms, legal system, and theaters—are now battlegrounds for foreign influence. This is a race for survival for the CCP: silence dissent and uncensored truth before it threatens their control.

The Chinese regime is afraid the full scope and scale of the atrocities committed against Falun Gong will be exposed widely on the world’s stage. At the same time, they see the rise of Falun Gong’s voice across America becoming stronger and more credible.

Our First Amendment rights are on the line. If Beijing can silence a peaceful spiritual group and an American arts company…they can dictate what we see, hear, and believe.

Calls for Action

1. Approach China news—including on Falun Gong and Shen Yun—with skepticism. The CCP is investing massive resources to influence U.S. media coverage of China, activating proxies or unwitting allies to disseminate blatantly false or misleading information, including about Falun Gong and Shen Yun. Sophisticated news consumers should thus maintain a healthy skepticism when encountering claims that align closely with the CCP’s narratives.

2. Report strange messages or impersonations. A key tactic used by Beijing proxies is to post or send deranged communications, posing as Shen Yun performers or Falun Gong practitioners. In many cases, these impersonations are easy to prove false, but it helps to have the original records. If you see or receive something strange allegedly from a “Shen Yun performer” or “Falun Gong practitioner” that seems problematic, it probably is. Please contact us: [email protected].

3. Stay informed, share what you’ve learned. Subscribe to the Falun Dafa Information Center’s newsletter. Follow us on Facebook or X, and actively share our content with others.

4. Watch Shen Yun & see what Beijing fears most.

5. Get the facts on Falun Gong here.

Remember: China is not the CCP. Ordinary Chinese citizens are the regime’s greatest victims.