Whistleblowers of Shen Yun and Falun Gong Respond to Falun Gong’s Accusations: We Are Not CCP Agents

Welcome to Zooming In and I am Simone Gao. Today, I want to talk about something deeply personal and significant.

For over 25 years, I was a Falun Gong practitioner. I began practicing in the late 1990s, and it became a core part of my life. But last November, everything changed. The Falun Gong organization issued an order demanding that I cut all ties with someone named Yu Chao. I chose not to comply, and as a result, I was expelled from the organization.

This person, Yu Chao, is a whistleblower who has exposed troubling practices within Shen Yun. I was not the only one who received the order to cut ties with Mr. Yu. Falun Gong ordered all practitioners to cut ties with him—banning us from watching his programs or engaging with him in any way.

After I was expelled, something unexpected happened. Almost all the articles, videos, and work I’d contributed to The Epoch Times and NTD TV over the past 20 years got erased. Only a few are still up, probably just to show they didn’t completely wipe everything. Then, starting in August, Falun Gong-affiliated media started spreading reports calling people like me agents of the Chinese Communist Party or facilitators of the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

These accusations are baseless. They are not only false but also damaging.
I’ve decided it’s time to address these claims head-on.

The accusations against me and others are part of a bigger strategy by Falun Gong to distract from the scandals uncovered in The New York Times’ investigation into Shen Yun. Instead of addressing the issues, they’ve been claiming that these revelations are just another round of CCP persecution, insisting that all of us, including The New York Times, are somehow being directed by the CCP.

Let me be clear: I’m not a CCP agent, and neither are the former Shen Yun performers or whistleblowers I know who’ve decided to speak out. Today, I’m going to share my story, the stories of others who’ve come forward, and the evidence that proves these claims wrong. First, let’s hear what Yu Chao has to say.

Yu Chao:

Thanks Yu Chao. Mr. Yu not only interviewed former Shen Yun performers He also bravely questioned how Falun Gong operates internally. What stood out to me the most was when he looked into why Falun Gong authorities were collecting and storing personal information from practitioners’ passports a few years ago. He thought it was something that deserved real investigation.

At the time, he suspected that Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, might have been trying to get in Xi Jinping’s good graces by gathering personal data from overseas practitioners and sharing it with Beijing. Back then, I just brushed it off as conspiracy talk.

Recently, a whistleblower named Olivia, a former editor at Minghui.org, shared on the X platform that during a meeting of senior editors, Minghui’s chief editor, Meng Siwei, allegedly said that Falun Gong had handed over copies of overseas practitioners’ passport info to Beijing in 2019. At the same time, practitioners in mainland China were encouraged to file lawsuits against former Party leader Jiang Zemin using their real names. According to Falun Gong media, Jiang was a political rival of Xi Jinping and the one who ordered the crackdown on Falun Gong.

Meng reportedly said, “We need to do something to help Xi Jinping.” Thus, in China, a real-name lawsuit campaign against Jiang Zemin was launched. This campaign led to the arrests of tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners.

Minghui.org, the official website of Falun Gong, is the platform where Li Hongzhi’s articles are first published and later disseminated across other Falun Gong media outlets. Li has instructed practitioners to rely on Minghui for major announcements.

Sharing sensitive personal data of U.S. citizens without their consent with a foreign government is a serious crime. I strongly urge the U.S. government to launch a thorough investigation into these claims.
Next, let’s talk about the former Shen Yun performers. According to reports from the Falun Dafa Information Center, Minghui, the epochtimes and other Falun Gong media, those who have come forward with allegations against Shen Yun and lawsuits against Falun Gong are “suspicious individuals” because they have visited China and have connections to the Beijing Dance Academy.

An article in The Epoch Times titled “10 Things You Need to Know About The New York Times Report on Shen Yun” wrote: “Among the six former Shen Yun performers interviewed or quoted by The New York Times, at least three have undisclosed ties to the Beijing Dance Academy. The Beijing Dance Academy, a state-run institution, is a tool used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to target Shen Yun globally. It is also the only major competitor of Shen Yun and its affiliated schools worldwide. These three individuals have gone to Beijing and cooperated with the Beijing Dance Academy.”

I contacted the three former Shen Yun performers mentioned in the article—Jeff Sun from New Zealand, his wife Ashley Cheng, and Zhang Junge from Taiwan—regarding their visits to China and the Beijing Dance Academy.

Jeff explained that he and his wife visited the Beijing Dance Academy during trips to China in 2018 and 2019. They also toured other institutions, including Minzu University, Tsinghua University, and the Beijing Film Academy. Jeff had left Shen Yun in 2015. He told me that their visit to the Beijing Dance Academy was purely out of curiosity since Shen Yun had been heavily influenced by the academy.
According to Jeff, Li Hongzhi often praised the Beijing Dance Academy and encouraged Shen Yun performers to learn from it. He values Shen Yun teachers who are alumni of the academy and personally guides performers through the academy’s instructional videos.

Jeff also mentioned that Shen Yun had tried to recruit Beijing Dance Academy grads by offering high salaries, U.S. green cards, and even marriage proposals. However, these attempts didn’t work, as those who joined left shortly after.

Jeff told me that during their visit, no one at the Beijing Dance Academy was aware of their background as former Shen Yun performers or Falun Gong practitioners. They had no discussions about Shen Yun or Falun Gong and did not cooperate with the academy in any capacity.

Jeff also noted that, during their trips to China, they observed no signs of Falun Gong. He described China as a modern country where people seemed indifferent to Falun Gong, contrary to Shen Yun’s claims that practitioners would face hostility or arrest upon returning.

Jeff and Ashley’s experience might not reflect that of every Falun Gong practitioner or individual perceived by China as hostile. For instance, although I am no longer a Falun Gong practitioner, I do not plan to return to China due to my work as a journalist covering China’s politics and economy.

The former Shen Yun performer from Taiwan, Zhang Junge, provided a brief response to The Epoch Times’ accusations. In a message to me, she wrote: “I feel there’s no need to clarify something I didn’t do. I’ve already hired a lawyer, and they will handle it for me.”

On November 26, Zhang Junge filed a lawsuit against Shen Yun, Li Hongzhi, Li’s wife Li Rui, and others. The lawsuit alleges that Shen Yun and its leadership exploited vulnerable children for low-paid or unpaid labor. It also claims Falun Gong-affiliated media defamed her by labeling her a CCP agent.

The lawsuit references a YouTube video by Fei Tian College professor Zhang Tianliang, who allegedly spread false and defamatory claims that Zhang and her husband were CCP agents and that their dance studio in Taiwan was funded by the Chinese government. Zhang remarked that these accusations appear to follow a coordinated narrative among Falun Gong media.

Next, I’ll share my own experiences. According to Falun Gong media, anyone who comes forward at this time to share their experiences with Falun Gong is likely a CCP agent or at least someone aiding the CCP in persecuting Falun Gong. Their reasoning is that the sudden emergence of such individuals during this period suggests a coordinated effort.

For instance, Falun Gong practitioner and YouTube influencer Tang Jingyuan mentioned in a November 18 episode of his program that Falun Gong had allegedly obtained internal CCP documents. These meeting records reportedly instructed various departments to mobilize overseas agents and activate internal spy networks within Falun Gong groups, particularly in the U.S. Additionally, provincial propaganda systems and their online operatives were allegedly directed to supply anti-Falun Gong materials to two former Falun Gong members on YouTube who have been critical of Shen Yun and Falun Gong. The documents purportedly outlined plans to generate public support for these individuals and other influencers.

Well, the “two former Falun Gong members on YouTube attacking Shen Yun and Falun Gong” likely refer to Yu Chao and myself. Yu Chao has told his story, here is mine.

I do feel like I’ve gotten special attention from the Chinese government. After being kicked out of Falun Gong and finally stopping my practice, I started sharing my experiences and thoughts on Falun Gong on my Chinese YouTube channel and the X platform. Since then, no matter what I post on X, I get flooded with abusive comments. A lot of these comments are tagged to make them easy to find, with the most common tag being “Falun Gong discard,” saying I was abandoned by the group. Other posts, without any specific tags, use some of the worst language to attack me as a person and as a woman.

Whenever I post, I end up spending hours blocking accounts, but it feels like an endless task. A lot of these accounts are brand new and clearly automated bots. While some people think Falun Gong is behind these attacks, I believe they’re actually coming from Chinese government trolls.

These trolls aren’t supporting me; they’re using people like me who’ve spoken out about Falun Gong to push their own agenda. Their goal seems to be making it look like these abusive comments are coming from Falun Gong itself, which would make its public image even worse.

That said, some of the posts might actually be from real Falun Gong practitioners, calling me an agent, a traitor, or using other nasty terms. But in my opinion, the posts with coordinated keywords and patterns are definitely from Chinese trolls.

At the same time, my YouTube channel gets supportive comments that I think are from the same trolls. These comments are repetitive, come from newly created accounts, and seem fake. I just delete and block them.
The way the Chinese government handles me shows they think they can’t control me directly. Instead, they seem to be trying to use what I’m doing for their own purposes.

As for claims by Falun Gong media that the CCP provides us with large amounts of anti-Falun Gong material to spread on social media, this has never happened to me. I have a public email address for audience feedback, and I’ve never received such material. Instead, I’ve received numerous emails from Falun Gong practitioners, some trying to persuade me and others just insulting me.

Everything I’ve shared on YouTube and X is all based on my own experiences and thoughts, and I own 100% of the content. Honestly, since the persecution of Falun Gong started, no one from the Chinese government has reached out to me, let alone given me any tasks.

I’m sharing my story to highlight how Falun Gong has handled this PR crisis: they label anyone who exposes their scandals as being aligned with the CCP, trying to shift the blame onto them. They seem to think this will fix things, but it won’t, because their reasoning is completely flawed. Their logic is: The CCP persecutes Falun Gong, so anyone pointing out Falun Gong’s darker side must be working with the CCP. That’s a clear fallacy and it won’t fly in the U.S.

I believe that U.S. lawmakers who support Falun Gong are unaware of the full truth. Falun Gong practitioners have only shared one part of the story—that Falun Gong is persecuted in China. Over time, lawmakers will learn the whole story, and their stance may shift. The failure of the “Falun Gong Protection Act” in the U.S. Senate may already be a sign of this.

America is not China. In China, the CCP can suppress dissent without challenge. In America, if Falun Gong defames someone, that person has the legal right to fight back in court.

Falun Gong kicked me out because I wouldn’t cut ties with XX as they demanded. They put out a notice accusing me of using Falun Gong resources to “groom CCP agents” for years. They even went as far as deleting all my articles, interviews, and documentaries from their platforms. It’s pretty much like what the CCP does.

But this is America. Falun Gong can’t just erase my personal website, social media, or articles published in U.S. outlets. My work has been featured in places like The Hill, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The National Interest, and others. Whether or not I’m a CCP agent should be judged by my work, not by someone’s unfounded accusations.

I haven’t been back to China since I came to the U.S. more than two decades ago, and my family has advised against it because of all the years I’ve spent criticizing the Chinese government.

I’m not a CCP agent. I believe that Yu Chao, the former Shen Yun performers speaking out about exploitation, and those who’ve left Falun Gong for similar reasons, aren’t CCP agents or under CCP influence either. Falun Gong trying to discredit us by labeling us as agents and deflecting from their scandals is both wrong and counterproductive. Ironically, it’s starting to look more and more like the behavior of the CCP itself.
I really hope Falun Gong doesn’t turn into something like the CCP, just wrapped in stories of miracles.

Thank you for watching, and see you next time.