An image from Shen Yun's promotional campaign (source: Shen Yun website)

As Shen Yun gears up for its annual multi-million-dollar tour of Australia, the U.S.-based Chinese dance group is facing a class action lawsuit for multiple counts of child trafficking, abusive practices and breaching a slew of U.S. labour laws

It’s that time of the year again, promotion is underway for the Shen Yun Chinese dance spectacular set to tour Australia in February and March. With 27 performances across three cities, laminated posters have popped up in shop windows, commercials are appearing on YouTube and across other social media platforms and print and television advertisements are in tow. Financial statements reveal that in 2023 the group spent more than $1 million in advertising across Australia.

Each year the dance troupe performs in 22 countries, putting on more than 800 performances before, what it claims is, an international audience of more than one million. Based on published ticket prices, Shen Yun is likely generating more than $300 million in revenue.  

Shen Yun was established by Falun Gong, also known as a Falun Dafa, a New York-based group founded by Li Hongzhi. Exiled from China, he has lived in the U.S. since the late 1990s.

The group he founded is deeply opposed to the Chinese Communist Party, and those in Chinese communities that don’t unequivocally denounce the party. According to many media reports, including from the New York Times, Falun Gong has for a number of years run political misinformation campaigns.

In Australia senior Falun Gong members have attended political fundraisers for figures including former prime minister Tony Abbott and, thanks to its fierce anti-China stance, has a sympathetic ear among China hawks.

There are now serious allegations of a dark side to Shen Yun that its Australian audiences know nothing about. For years those associated with its practices have remained silent, now a former dancer is taking Shen Yun and Li Hongzhi to court in the United States claiming systematic abuse of its performers.

In papers filed with U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, it’s alleged that, “Shen Yun is part of an enterprise that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars via forced child labor of vulnerable minors.”

The lawsuit lists 11 counts against Shen Yun and four co-defendants. Six counts are for human trafficking and five for breaches of U.S. labour laws.

The complainant is Taiwanese born Chun-Ko Chang who claims she was recruited by Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, at the age of 13 and performed until she was 24. In court documents she alleges that immediately upon arriving at Dragon Springs, the group’s secretive and heavily guarded upstate New York compound, her immigration papers and passport were seized.  

Dragon Springs Buddhist Inc is named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit.

In a statement released by her lawyers, Ms. Chang says, “I started dancing for Shen Yun when I was only 13. 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 am bringing 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.”

Among the lawsuit’s allegations are that performers are subject to regular abuse and coercion, public humiliation, controls over their diets that lead many into eating disorders, their phone calls to family members are monitored, they are forced to work up to 90 hours per week, paid well below minimum wages and those wages are paid into bank accounts controlled by Shen Yun.  

Shen Yun has released a statement strenuously denying the allegations, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of being behind the lawsuit, saying, “The recent civil complaint filed against Shen Yun is undoubtedly part of a coordinated offensive against our company being orchestrated by the Chinese regime.”

Shen Yun Australia dances around tax

Tickets for the February/March Shen Yun tour of Australia cost up to $299, well above the top prices for major commercial musicals like Sister Act, Wicked and Hamilton which are currently touring the country. However, unlike those productions the revenue from Shen Yun ticket sales is being funneled into a tax-exempt charity, Falun Dafa Association of Australia Inc.

Financial statements reveal the association generated $2.3 million in Shen Yun ticket sales in 2023. Its Victorian branch collected another $600,000 in ticket sales, while Queensland’s 2022 performances raked in $724,000.

The charity’s financial statements reveal almost the entirety of its operating costs are attached to the staging and promotion of the Shen Yun dance tours. Its audited financial statements declare, “The principal activities of the Association for the year ended 30 June 2023 were to promote the development and practice of Falun Dafa, a cultivation way of a High Order in Australia.”

The financial statements do not list any monies being spent on what might be regarded as actual charitable activities.

The numbers point to a tax-exempt charity wholly engaged in the staging and promotion of a multi-million-dollar commercial enterprise. A commercial enterprise, which court filings allege is built on the trafficking and exploitation of child performers.

The New York lawsuit claims, “Shen Yun’s core motive is commercial. Shen Yun generated revenues of [US]$51.5 million in 2023 alone, and with holdings valued above [US]$265 million dollars (most of which is in cash).”

Aliens and the Australian Falun Gong connection

There are no accurate figures on the number of Falun Gong practitioners in Australia, nor in China where its followers are subject to persecution, detention and reports of imprisonment.

Li Hongzhi remains a shadowy figure who does not appear to have been interviewed by any western media outlet since a Time magazine article in 1999.

In that interview Li was quizzed about Falun Gong’s stated claims that its senior followers are able to levitate, however, they are prevented from doing so in front of others. When pressed to cite an actual occurrence of levitation, he replied that he had seen magician and illusionist David Copperfield levitate.

One of the main tenets of Falun Gong’s beliefs is that aliens inhabit Earth. “The aliens come from other planets,” Li told Time. “The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes… Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens.”

He said, “The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans.”

Now believed to be in his seventies, the most recent image of Li (pictured below) is of him speaking at a Falun Gong conference in New York in 2016.

^{Li Hongzhi at a New York conference in 1996 (Image: Falun Dafa website)}

A page on Falun Gong’s website states he spoke at a conference in Sydney in 1997, while a submission Falun Gong’s Australian arm lodged with senate committee in 2020 claimed he’d visited Australia twice, in 1996 and 1999.

This was the same committee where Liberal senators, Eric Abetz and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells demanded three Chinese Australians—two of whom weren’t even born in mainland China and the third, a respected academic who’d moved to Australia as a child—denounce the Chinese government before being allowed to give evidence at a committee hearing. At that same hearing representatives of Falun Gong media were given the red-carpet treatment by Abetz and Fierravanti-Wells.  

Local Falun Gong media exempt from tax

Falun Gong controls two media outlets in Australia, the Epoch Times and Vision Times both producing hard copy newspapers distributed for free in predominantly Chinese-Australian populated suburbs.

The Epoch Times has, since its inception, run an anti-China political narrative; yet, as with the Falun Dafa Association of Australia, is a tax-exempt registered charity.

In 2023, Epoch Times Australia generated more than $2 million in revenue from its commercial activities. In addition to advertising and subscription revenue of $1,183,341, according to its financial statements, the news outlet received $109,544 in unspecified commonwealth grants. It has a Victorian subsidiary that posted revenue of $805,937 and a West Australian division that posted $80,977; both are registered charities.  

Years of alleged abuse and intimidation

In August the New York Times published an extensive investigation into Shen Yun and its practices. The Times interviewed 25 former dancers one, a 27-year-old Chinese-New Zealander named Cheng Qingling, has a story is strikingly similar to that of Chang. She says she was recruited at the age of 13.

It’s claimed another girl from Taiwan was just 11 when she was recruited, her identity was protected by The Times. She claims to have dislocated her knee whilst warming up before a performance and, after having another dancer push her kneecap back in place and receiving treatment with an ice pack, was forced to perform in the show.

Former practitioners characterise Falun Gong as a cult that denies adherents access to medical treatment. In the lawsuit before the New York District Court, it’s claimed that dancers were told they could not see doctors for injuries instead they had to “pray to feel better.”

Among the most disturbing allegations contained in the lawsuit is that dancers who defy the group’s leader and senior Falun Gong members 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.”

In addition to the civil lawsuit, the New York Labor Department has opened up a separate investigation into the alleged use of child labour and abuse of performers by Shen Yun.

Shadowy bankers

A third defendant named in the lawsuit is the opaque International Bank of Chicago. The complaint alleges, “The International Bank of Chicago Facilitated and Benefitted from the Forced Labor Scheme. Shen Yun sets up and largely controls the bank accounts for minor Dancers. For hundreds and hundreds of minors to open bank accounts under these circumstances should raise red flags for any bank. However, the Shen Yun Defendants found a willing partner in the International Bank of Chicago.”

The bank has five branches in and around Chicago, its only location outside of Illinois is a tiny shopfront branch 12 kilometres from the Falun Gong compound in New York state.

^{International Bank of Chicago’s NY branch, 12 kms from Falun Gong’s Dragon Springs compound (Image: Google Maps)}

It is reported that upon the opening of that branch CEO, Frank Wang, declared, “the bank’s target market includes religious refugees and Chinese performance artists in the region… [including] members of Shen Yun Performing Arts, [the] traditional Chinese dance group based in Cuddlebackville [Dragon Springs].”  

The lawsuit claims several of “the Bank’s representatives have close ties to Hongzhi Li and are Falun Gong practitioners.” It further alleges the bank is a co-conspirator with other defendants “who together operate an incredibly lucrative business that has generated (because of forced labor and trafficking) over a quarter of a billion [US] dollars in what is almost entirely pure cash.”

The CEO, Frank Wang is not listed on the bank’s website and, apart from his inactive LinkedIn profile and a 2012 news release, a Google search reveals neither the bank, nor Wang himself, has posted anything about its CEO.

In the past, Shen Yun has not allowed any of its performers to be interviewed by Australian media; it’s almost certain they will be muzzled next year and without any local media attention on its alleged practices, it may be a case of the show must (and will) go on.