A bomb threat on the opening day of Shen Yun’s performance at the Kennedy Center last week is just the latest in a string of threats the America-based Chinese dance group says it has received, with 19 incidents since the new year. 

A spokesman for the group says that they believe the threats stem from the Chinese Communist Party’s pressure against Shen Yun, which has harassed the organization before and banned its performances in China. 

Shen Yun, which aims to depict “China before communism” is tied to the Falun Gong religious movement, which is heavily suppressed by Chinese authorities who view the religion as a threat to the Communist Party’s power. The group has also faced its own controversies in the United States, including a lawsuit, which the group says is part of the attacks from the Chinese government. 

“[What’s] important to note this actually has been happening all over the world just this tour alone for Shen Yun,” the groups Emcee Leeshai Lemish posted to X shortly after the Kennedy Center evacuation. 

“They will not succeed”

“[This] is something that's very much in line with what the Chinese Communist party has been doing, trying to stop us from performing for 18 years,” Lemish said. Shen Yun’s opening night went off without a hitch on Thursday at the Kennedy Center, the performing arts venue in Washington, D.C. that recently attracted public attention after newly inaugurated President Donald Trump took direct control over the venue.

Just before 11:00 AM on Thursday, the Kennedy Center notified the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police that the venue had received a bomb threat targeting Shen Yun. The Kennedy Center received an email claiming a bomb had been placed in the theater and would explode if Shen Yun was allowed to perform later that evening, a spokesperson said. 

The threat prompted an evacuation of the Kennedy Center and U.S. Park Police worked with the MPD’s bomb unit to secure the building. No explosive was found during the sweep. 

Lemish, who has been tracking the threats against Shen Yun across the world on his website, said that messages his group has received before performances across the country are “pranks” that are “meant to scare people.” 

“They will not succeed” in stopping the performances or driving away audiences, Lamish said.

"Molotov cocktails! Kill everyone in sight!"

On January 27, coinciding with the Chinese New Year, Shen Yun says it received a similar bomb threat targeting its headquarters in Dragon Springs, NY. 

“We used alcohol and glass bottles to make a large number of improvised incendiary bombs. On the first day of the Chinese New Year, many of us will secretly go to Dragon Springs in New York, set fire to nearby vehicles, then kill the guards, break into Dragon Springs, and throw them at the wooden buildings. Molotov cocktails! Kill everyone in sight! At the same time, our personnel will attack members of Congress who support Falun Gong!” the threatening email shared with Just the News reads, translated from Chinese. 

In December, the Falun Dafa Association of Atlanta said that it received a email containing a threat to kill everyone that attended the group’s show at Atlanta Symphony Hall, where five performances were scheduled for later that month. The association said that it contacted both the Atlanta Police Department and the FBI. 

“The Chinese Communist Party is behind this. They have been doing their utmost against Shen Yun to sabotage to make these so far unfounded threats,” Mary Silver of the Atlanta association told Fox 5. Shen Yun shared with Just the News nine other examples of threats the group has received before performances across the world. Some included images of bombs, knives or other weapons and were written in both English and Chinese.

The group says the string of threatening emails and other messages follow a pattern of Chinese government interference or harassment of the group and its performers that has happened since it was founded in 2006. In the late 1990s, Chinese Communist Party officials began to crack down on the Falun Gong movement and its adherents, believing it a challenge to the party’s authority. 

Overseas police stations in US run by CCP

The Chinese government has also come under scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, which monitored secret “police stations” set up to spy on or harass Chinese dissidents in the United States. 

In recent years, the Justice Department has identified efforts by Chinese officials to expand espionage operations in the United States targeting Chinese dissidents critical of the regime. Last year, a New York resident named Chen Jinping pleaded guilty to “conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the government of the People’s Republic of China” after helping to open a clandestine overseas police station in lower Manhattan in coordination with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. 

The Justice Department said Chen and one codefendant the first known overseas police station in the United States, occupying the floor of an office building in Chinatown before it was closed in the fall of 2022. The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, said that the pair operated a “transnational repression scheme” that targeted Chinese dissidents living in the United States. 

“We will continue our efforts to protect the rights of vulnerable persons who come to this country to escape the repressive activities of authoritarian regimes,” Peace said in a statement last year. 

Ministry of Public Security officials were also charged in a separate case with a scheme to create fake social media accounts to spread messages favorable to the Chinese Communist Party and “threaten, harass and intimidate specific victims.” In one incident, dissidents were threatened by ministry officials on a videoconference call about the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

The DOJ also charged two Chinese nationals in July last year in a scheme targeting the tax-exempt status of a an “entity run and maintained by Falun Gong practitioners,” which was reportedly Shen Yun. 

A set of “false narratives”

Shen Yun has generated its own share of controversy. In November last year, the group faced a lawsuit from a former dancer who alleged the group participated in forced labor and trafficking. The lawsuit alleged the group made extensive profits by exploiting dancers recruited from abroad. The New York Times also interviewed former performers who described poor treatment. 

Shen Yun countered that these accounts are part of a set of “false narratives” being spread about the group in the media, connecting them to the wider effort of the Chinese Communist Party to discredit the group. 

“To be clear, these articles are one-sided and deeply flawed. They cherry-pick the accounts of a mere handful of former Shen Yun performers—several of whom have public connections with the Chinese regime and/or were let go by Shen Yun for violating company rules—and use these accounts to make broad assertions about a company that has worked with hundreds of performers over the last 18 years,” Shen Yun said in a statement. 

“News organizations that seek to abide by basic standards of journalistic integrity should exercise restraint, skepticism, and engage in careful fact-checking before they amplify the accusations of such individuals, especially given the CCP’s well-documented effort to target Shen Yun with transnational repression and propaganda.”