This month, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials accused the U.S. of “blackmail” over the Trump administration’s revived tariff strategy. But if there’s any regime on Earth that understands the mechanics of blackmail, it’s the CCP. They’ve mastered the art — not just through trade policy or espionage, but through targeted, violent intimidation against American cultural institutions like the one I am part of: Shen Yun Performing Arts.
The New York Times has been a willing bedfellow in this effort.
Shen Yun is an American company. We are based in New York, we tour across the U.S., and we are proud to present the beauty of traditional Chinese culture — before communism — through classical dance and music. What we are not is a state-sponsored propaganda machine — unlike the many cultural troupes the CCP sends abroad to rewrite China’s history and whitewash its crimes. And for that, the CCP has made us enemy number one in the cultural sphere.
But in recent weeks, this battle has reached new and alarming levels. In Taiwan, where unlike mainland China, Shen Yun performs and is celebrated with dozens of sold-out shows every year, authorities report they have…
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