Shen Yun Performing Arts Responds to Media Attacks

Shen Yun Performing Arts says recent media reporting about it is “riddled with gross distortion” and aids Beijing’s global campaign to malign the arts company, which was founded by first generation immigrants and artists fleeing persecution in China.
Headquartered in upstate New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 with a mission to revive traditional culture and showcase a China as it existed before communism. Each year, the classical Chinese dance and music company performs for a live audience of over a million people around the world.
Most prominently, The New York Times on August 15 published an article in both English and Chinese attacking Shen Yun largely based on interviews with disgruntled former employees.
The goal of this new campaign, according to the report, is to sow hatred among the public and trigger a U.S. law enforcement response. Whistleblowers from inside the regime shared notes from a June meeting held by provincial level officials of the Ministry of Public Security, the top Chinese secret police agency, telling “all provincial-level governments” to “fully support” two YouTube influencers who have been actively producing anti-Falun Gong and anti-Shen Yun content.
Earlier this month, one of the YouTubers, according to FDIC, listed “media like the New York Times” as a one of the “battlefields” for going after Falun Gong and Shen Yun.
“It is no surprise, then, that the media reports in question are riddled with gross distortions of our company operations, and present crude and insensitive interpretations of the faith of our performers,” Shen Yun said in the statement. “To be clear: how we run our company, the manner in which we treat each other, and the values that we hold dear are completely absent from the accounts featured in these media reports.”
While “it may not be a lifestyle for everyone,” the company said, working at Shen Yun challenges one to reach artistic excellence in a workplace that has, to many, become a “big family.”
“Shen Yun has set the bar for classical Chinese dance globally. To meet this standard requires extraordinary discipline, work ethic, and dedication on the part of the artists. We are also a company rooted in faith, which values moral living and self-improvement as key ingredients to delivering world-class artistic and cultural offerings to our audience,” the statement reads.
Shen Yun said its goal is to bring hope and inspiration worldwide by “showcasing the beauty, depth, and spirituality of traditional Chinese culture.”
“It is sad to see media companies in the West, wittingly or not, get caught up in the CCP’s illicit, global campaign to destroy the American company we built, and in so doing, deprive untold millions around the world from experiencing a vision of the China that once was, as well as a vision of a more hopeful and compassionate world.”
Chinese agents have recently tried to sabotage Shen Yun in exactly the ways described in the FDIC report.
Regarding the conviction, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement: “Efforts such as this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States will not be tolerated. This Office remains committed to thwarting malicious transnational repression attempts by foreign influences on American soil.”