Hundreds of Shen Yun Artists Join March in New York, Warn of CCP’s Repression in America

NEW YORK CITY—Shen Yun Performing Arts, a group long considered a thorn in the Chinese communist regime’s side, joined thousands of Falun Gong practitioners on July 20 in a parade through Manhattan’s Chinatown to condemn the Beijing’s persecution of faith and warn Americans about the regime’s growing reach on U.S. soil.

After years of expressing their faith through dance, Shen Yun performers who spoke to The Epoch Times said far-reaching repression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now threatening them directly, in the United States.

Angelia Wang, a principal dancer with Shen Yun, said joining the parade on Sunday was “a different way to use my voice … and exercise my freedom of religion.”

Today, the CCP has its sights set on Shen Yun, which was founded by Falun Gong practitioners, but tomorrow it could be another group, Wang and other artists said.

“We’ve seen a systematic increase in attacks on Falun Gong practitioners on American soil, including [targeting] Shen Yun,” said Piotr Huang, a principal dancer with Shen Yun. “Before, we thought the persecution was only in China. Now we can feel it on our doorstep.”

Twenty-six years ago, the CCP launched its systemic persecution against Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual discipline that teaches the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance.

In the small hours of July 20, 1999, Falun Gong practitioners were arrested en masse, marking the beginning of a campaign that has resulted in untold numbers of prisoners of conscience tortured, brainwashed, and even killed for their organs. The CCP sought to turn Chinese society against Falun Gong, and in the following years, practitioners around the world spoke out.

In 2006, Falun Gong practitioners founded the classical Chinese dance company Shen Yun in New York with a mission to revive 5,000 years of Chinese civilization—a China before communism—through the arts. Since then, the company has grown to include eight performing groups that tour simultaneously around the world, reaching a live audience of around a million each year.

In 2007, the CCP sent some 60 performing arts troupes overseas in an effort to drown out Shen Yun’s message—a costly failure.

The regime has since restrategized; recent whistleblower information revealed a 2022 plan by Party leader Xi Jinping to co-opt the U.S. government, courts, and media, in order to sway public opinion and turn Americans against Shen Yun and Falun Gong. And that plan has materialized in recent years, with Shen Yun’s artists being on the receiving end of CCP-backed espionage, lawfare, propaganda, and some 100 violent threats over the past year.

The cause for the regime’s obsession with Shen Yun is fear, said Leeshai Lemish, an emcee with the company.

“Shen Yun is showing the world what China was like before communism, what China is like under communism, and what China could be like without communism,” he told The Epoch Times.

Lemish said a company survey found that 92 performers had been directly affected by the persecution.

That includes Sun Hung-wei, a dancer who was 6 years old when police raided his family home in China. His father put him and his older brother into a small room, telling them not to leave. Then, as the brothers cried, the police took their mother away. They sentenced her to seven years in prison because she practiced Falun Gong.

Sun said that at that moment, his mind turned blank. There was nothing he could do, he told The Epoch Times.

After his mother got out of prison, the authorities continued to pressure her to sign papers promising to renounce her faith. The officers threatened to stop Sun’s schooling if she didn’t sign. Left with no other option, Sun’s family sent him to Taiwan to protect him, and he eventually made his way to the United States.

For Sun, July 20 is a day to raise awareness to help stop the suffering of more families like his in China, and to commemorate the lives lost, he said.

Ethan Guo, another Shen Yun principal dancer, lost his grandfather when he was 1 due to the persecution.

She has many friends who were bullied in China or lost their parents, grandparents, cousins, or aunts because of the persecution, and the fact that this repression is spreading into a free society is “very concerning,” she said.

“That’s very scary because it’s attacking America at its very core values—freedom of speech and religion,” she said. “We have to stand up and speak out about this.”

Lemish said that by joining the parade, the Shen Yun members are also defending the fundamental freedoms of America.

Shen Yun members and their families aren’t the only ones receiving threats from the CCP, he said.

The threats have targeted “anybody who dares to stand up and speak up for Falun Gong or for Shen Yun and against oppression,” including threats against lawmakers, theaters hosting the performance, the White House, the FBI, and the State Department.

Americans have “a shared threat,” Lemish said. “We’re all connected, because, for example, if the organ harvesting in China doesn’t stop, how many more Americans are going to unwittingly [become] accomplices to murder by getting organs from somebody who is a prisoner of conscience and they don’t even know it?”

As the regime continues to infiltrate U.S. society and manipulate democratic systems, “we should stand shoulder to shoulder on this, to defend our freedom, defend the freedoms of Chinese people, to try to help them get back as much of it as they can, and stop the human cost, which has been going on for way too long,” he said.

Fu Shuai, a Chinese man from Chicago watching the parade in New York on July 20, said he’s seen Shen Yun several times and thought it “insane” that the CCP could threaten these artists overseas.

“Even in China, it shouldn’t repress Shen Yun,” he said, “Its performances express truth, compassion, and tolerance, and tells you about how the CCP persecutes Falun Gong, and I’ve seen how Western audiences applaud from the bottom of their hearts.”

A man who shared his surname Ye said he admires the Falun Gong practitioners for turning out in Chinatown to raise awareness of the CCP’s persecution year after year, without fail.

Originally from China, Ye saw Falun Gong’s rise in popularity in the 1990s, and how it was never extinguished, despite the CCP’s violent persecution and propaganda.

“Look, after 26 years, there are more and more practitioners, and more young practitioners. People know what Falun Gong is about, no matter how much the CCP tries to slander them,” he said.

“God is watching over them,” he said.

Sarah Lu and Sally Sun contributed to this report.