Shen Yun Performing Arts Addresses Criticism from Media

August 18, 2024 TruthUSA

‘We are also a company rooted in faith, which values moral living and self-improvement,’ the company said in a statement.

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.

According to a statement from Shen Yun, the reporting “bears no resemblance to the lived experience of our performers and staff” and rather distorts the company’s “workplace culture, the quality of life of our artists, as well as the teachings and beliefs of our Falun Gong faith.”

Many Shen Yun performers are practitioners of Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual discipline comprising meditative exercises as well as teachings rooted in values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The practice, while immensely popular in China during the 1990s, was suddenly persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1999. Since then, it has faced unrelenting suppression involving detention, hate propaganda, torture, and for those overseas—direct assault and blackmailing of their family back in China.

Shen Yun performances include dance pieces depicting the persecution. It also experienced the regime’s suppression campaigns directly.