The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, Chen Yixin, is personally driving a smear campaign in the United States against Shen Yun Performing Arts, a whistleblower within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) security apparatus has said.
Shen Yun, a premier classical Chinese dance and music company, has been a prime target of the CCP for its portrayal of Chinese culture free of communist influence. The New York-based company was founded by practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice persecuted by the CCP for the past quarter century.
Chen has been known as a loyal acolyte of CCP leader Xi Jinping. He has headed the regime’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) since 2022 and has made it his personal mission to carry out the regime’s wish to eliminate Falun Gong overseas, with Shen Yun as a prime target, according to information provided by the whistleblower and published on Nov. 24 by the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDIC), a nonprofit monitoring the persecution of Falun Gong.
“His plan was to undermine Falun Gong’s overseas presence, dismantle the organization, and completely resolve the ‘Falun Gong issue’ by the end of the year,” the whistleblower said.
After failing with several of his domestic initiatives, Chen turned to the Falun Gong campaign as a source of political capital, according to the whistleblower.
“Every time Xi goes abroad, there are protests from Falun Gong practitioners, which greatly displeases him,” he said.
If Chen succeeds in his mission to eliminate Falun Gong overseas, “he could then present his achievements to Xi Jinping and seek recognition and rewards,” the whistleblower said.
Lineup of Leaks
This is already the fourth CCP whistleblower to have come forward this year with information about the CCP’s latest anti-Falun Gong campaign.
The goal of the campaign is to turn “the American government and public opinion against the persecuted community” with smears laundered through sources such as social media influencers and major U.S. media, the FDIC stated.
Notably, The New York Times has published a series of hit pieces on Shen Yun this year. A Chinese American YouTuber has taken credit for jump-starting the paper’s coverage by providing key sources.
The whistleblowers have said that the YouTuber is a vehicle used by the CCP to spread defamatory information about Falun Gong.
Although the YouTuber isn’t a CCP agent, he is “completely utilized by State Security,” the latest whistleblower said.
“He will send out anything that is provided to him, perhaps unaware it comes from the CCP,“ the whistleblower said. ”The agents won’t reveal their identities [to him], but he is already a pawn of the CCP.”
The FDIC didn’t reveal the identity of the whistleblower, but has deemed him credible because of “corroboration with other insider information and real-world incidents.”
“The insider relaying this information has taken great risks to share it with the outside world in order to warn Falun Gong practitioners and others,” said Levi Browde, executive director of FDIC.
“These latest details show how adept the regime can be at manipulating those outside China to act on its behalf. Social media influencers and even professional journalists can inadvertently contribute to the CCP’s agenda by sharing information that originates from MSS agents without being aware of its source. We hope these revelations help the international community to be more vigilant and skeptical of CCP disinformation about a persecuted community like Falun Gong.”
Sophisticated Campaign
Chen’s push against Falun Gong “is a systematic and complete plan,” the whistleblower said.
“Every step of the way, there are public security and national security behind the manipulation of the conspiracy,” he said.
He indicated that some elements of the campaign are managed by the CCP’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
“The secret agent informants within organizations such as Falun Gong and the pro-democracy movement are basically managed by the Fourth Bureau [of the MPS]. Once these people are mobilized, the threat is very high,” he said.
“These agents will not only [conduct] sabotage themselves, they will also motivate a lot of people around them, and then they will also reveal a lot of information to them, so that these people can jump out and attack Falun Gong.”
Veteran of Persecution, US Infiltration
Chen has long been active in the persecution of Falun Gong within China, including as one of the top officials at the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission from 2018 to 2023.
“Fight a good war of annihilation … maintain a severe and high-pressure environment and resolutely eradicate the soil in which they thrive,” Chen said in a 2021 article.
During his tenure, tens of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were arrested and harassed by police, and hundreds were killed, often while in custody, based on documented cases collected by Minghui.org, the official website of Falun Gong. Human rights researchers estimate that the actual totals are many times higher.
Under Chen’s rule, the MSS has expanded its purview well beyond intelligence and counterintelligence, “airing publicly its views on security threats related to the country’s economy, foreign policy and even culture,” The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 8.
His ministry was likely behind the Salt Typhoon cyberattack that infiltrated U.S. telecom networks, breaching cellphone communications of possibly thousands of Americans, including the campaigns of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the paper reported.
In 2020, he spearheaded the draconian lockdowns in the Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of the COVID-19 pandemic.
