Shen Yun’s ‘Divine Melody’ Tarnished by Accusations of Abuse

             For many urban Americans, it has become impossible to go about daily existence without encountering some sort of promotion for Shen Yun, a touring dance show claiming to provide a unique artistic and historical window into “China before Communism.” The deluge of advertisements for the production has almost become a herald of spring akin to Groundhog Day; spring has sprung once one’s mailbox has once again been stuffed with Shen Yun fliers, one’s freeway commute is flanked with Shen Yun billboards, and one’s internet browsers are inundated with videos of beaming Chinese performers dancing their heart out for their adoring Western audience.

On the surface, all of the utopian messaging surrounding Shen Yun seems mostly benign, if a bit irritating—after all, what could be so harmful about celebrating the centuries of Chinese culture and innovation before the modern Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime? If a person never investigated further, they likely wouldn’t know that Shen Yun—which roughly translates to “divine melody” in English—was created as a Western recruitment and propaganda tool for the Falun Gong, a conspiratorial, right-wing UFO cult, supported by international human trafficking, child labor, and the aforementioned aggressive media campaign.

The Falun Gong, a religious offshoot of the traditional Chinese qigong practice, was founded in the early 1990s by Li Hongzhi and has based its global operations out of a compound in Dragon Springs, New York ever since its 1998 ban and subsequent exile from China. The CCP considers the “evil cult” a fascist threat to its policy of state communism and atheism. The expulsion was preceded by torture, mass arrests, and other human rights abuses that garnered worldwide condemnation. Prior to its ban, an estimated 70 million people were involved with Falun Gong and millions still practice the religion at home in China and the U.S., which has tacitly supported the movement for its anti-communist views amidst its escalating competition with China.

 So what does this group embroiled in so much controversy actually believe? The Human Rights Watch profile on Falun Gong details that the movement has been known for their opposition to the CCP, anti-evolutionary views, opposition to homosexuality and feminism, and rejection of modern medicine, among other views described as far-right or conspiratorial—such as their doctrine, as explained by founder Li Hongzhi in his 1999 interview with Time, that “race mixing in humans is part of an alien plot to drive humanity further from the gods” and that children of interracial marriages “do not have a heavenly kingdom to go to.”

Li, revered as a god by the Falun Gong faithful, has also stated that he believes extraterrestrials from other dimensions walk the Earth and are responsible for introducing mortality, war, and worst of all, science to humans, which the Falun Gong condemns as an alien plot to supplant the human race by “assimilating human minds to theirs and replacing people's souls.”

Despite their extreme beliefs, Falun Gong has gained significant influence in U.S. politics over the last decade through their operation of the far-right Epoch Times newspaper, their public promotion of QAnon and anti-vaccine conspiracies, and their production of  advertisements for U.S. President Donald Trump. A former Epoch Times editor told NBC News that Falun Gong leaders "believe that heaven sent Trump to destroy the Communist Party."

Shen Yun is just one (highly profitable) arm of the organization’s media empire, which includes Falun Gong assets such as the Epoch Media Group, New Tang Dynasty, Sound of Hope Radio, and the Rachlin media group—all of which are directly leveraged to promote positive opinions of the religion, advocate for its fringe spiritual and political beliefs, and encourage conversion.

Throughout the fall of 2024, the New York Times published a sequence of damning exposés based on interviews with former Shen Yun dancers, who alleged that the dance company engages in child abuse, human trafficking, labor exploitation, criminal neglect, and coercion behind the scenes. One of these whistleblowers, Chun-Ko Chang, said that she was recruited in Taiwan to join Shen Yun when she was just 13. After traveling with the company to New York, she said the group’s leaders, including Falun Gong founder Hongzhi Li, confiscated her immigration documents and passport and proceeded to utilize their power over her to control her movements, keep her from getting medical care, and underpay her, according to the lawsuit she filed in November 2024.

In the Times interview, Chang said “Shen Yun is part of an enterprise that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars via forced child labor of vulnerable minors” and detailed the extensive abuse the youth dancers suffered at the hands of Falun Gong leaders: “Dancers who are perceived to fall short of Hongzhi Li’s directives and expectations are subjected to mass criticism sessions wherein they are berated on stage in front of the entire community” and are “repeatedly told from a young age that individuals who reject Hongzhi Li’s authority face physical harm, in the form of disease or violent death through incidents like suicide or car accidents.”

It also appears that the massive profits incurred by the annual Shen Yun tours are a direct result of underpaying their employees—if they are paid at all. Chang alleged that she received no pay for the first year she began performing with Shen Yen in December 2009, despite working up to 18 hours a day preparing for shows. Other whistleblower reports corroborate that Shen Yun’s business model relies on underage dancers and musicians to work long hours with little pay to generate its inflated profit margin; Evan Glickman, a percussionist who traveled with Shen Yun for two years, said in the Times investigation that nearly “two-thirds of the musicians were students” and "that [Shen Yun] would not run if they had to pay real musicians, like every other organization in the country does.”

 The organization also appeared to take great lengths to dissuade its mistreated workers from leaving, illegally requiring that performers who chose to resign from Shen Yun repay the costs associated with their “education, housing, and living expenses provided under full scholarships, potentially amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.” Their exploitative practices, brought to light by the Times’ interviews with dozens of victims, prompted the New York State Department of Labor to open a formal probe into the Shen Yun Group only a week after the accounts were published. In February 2025, agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed that Shen Yun is under criminal investigation for visa fraud.

For Chang, the fight to hold Shen Yun and Falun Gong accountable for their crimes is far from over. She said “from the outset, they showed me how cruel they could be towards those who disobeyed their authority. Thus, I knew I couldn’t leave without suffering dire consequences. I [brought] this lawsuit to make sure no other children go through what I went through, even though I know they will try to destroy me for it.”