By Maria Zhang
At a forum exposing Chinese Communist Party (CCP)–led transnational repression held at Toronto City Hall in December, Dr. Maria Zhang delivered a detailed analysis of how Beijing deploys covert influence operations abroad. Dr. Zhang is a professor emerita at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba and a research affiliate with the university’s Human Rights Research Center.
With more than 30 years of academic experience, she has received research funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the former Canadian International Development Agency, and the University of Manitoba.
Her work has advanced human rights research in Canada, Hong Kong, and China. Her current research focuses on foreign interference and transnational repression, particularly interference and repression originating from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The following is her speech delivered on December 2, 2025, at a forum on exposing transnational repression held at Toronto City Hall.
Infiltrating the system
In Canada’s 2024 public inquiry into foreign interference targeting democratic processes, Canadian intelligence agencies identified the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the most sophisticated, covert, and persistent state actor among all countries.
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Today, we will discuss how the CCP deploys what it calls the “Three Warfare” — public opinion warfare, legal warfare, and psychological warfare — in highly sophisticated and covert ways to suppress dissent and control narratives beyond China’s borders as Dr. Zhang notes. According to a 2021 report by France’s Institute for Strategic Research at the Ministry of the Armed Forces, these “Three Warfare” form the core of Beijing’s global influence and interference toolkit.
What we are describing today is “unrestricted warfare” — winning without fighting. It combines soft power with coercion. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rule, this is now referred to as “sharp power.”
We will illustrate how these strategies are being applied through a real, ongoing case involving the New York–based Shen Yun Performing Arts and Falun Gong. This case exemplifies state-led transnational repression — where a government uses multiple means to silence dissent abroad — an approach that is reshaping the global security landscape.
Shen Yun and Falun Gong: Why they are targeted
Shen Yun Performing Arts is a New York–based company founded by Falun Gong practitioners, with eight touring companies. Shen Yun has performed in approximately 200 cities across 26 countries and reached more than one million audience members in 2025 alone. Shen Yun is dedicated to reviving traditional Chinese culture from before Communist rule — presenting the authentic China that existed prior to communism — while also exposing ongoing human rights abuses in China.
Since launching its world tours in 2006, Shen Yun has been a primary target of the CCP, reflecting the regime’s fear of the revival of China’s spiritual and cultural heritage, precisely what it has tried to erase for decades.
Falun Gong is a traditional Chinese spiritual practice consisting of five exercises, rooted in the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. Founded in China in 1992, it gained widespread popularity and official recognition in the 1990s. In 1999, former CCP leader Jiang Zemin ordered a crackdown on the group, which had grown to an estimated 70 million practitioners. Since then, practitioners have suffered torture; physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse; extortion; and have become primary targets of forced organ harvesting — an issue extensively investigated by international human rights lawyer David Matas.
The ‘three warfares’ in action: 1. Public opinion warfare
Public opinion warfare works in tandem with legal warfare. The CCP uses traditional and social media to shape perceptions and control narratives globally. In the context of transnational repression, state actors exploit Western cognitive biases to amplify divisive content and discredit targeted groups and institutions.
From the outset of the persecution, the CCP has spread hate propaganda and disinformation about Falun Gong outside China to manufacture biased narratives. Two recently leaked internal CCP documents—verified as originating from senior CCP leadership and bearing direct instructions from Xi Jinping—called for a more aggressive global campaign against Shen Yun and Falun Gong, stating that prior strategies had failed and that more forceful measures were required.
The documents outline two primary directives to undermine these organizations:
- Leverage Western media outlets that hold ambivalent positions toward Falun Gong to intensify global propaganda and disinformation campaigns, capitalizing on their perceived neutrality;
- Deploy legal warfare to inflict financial and reputational damage, while escalating repression through bomb threats and mass-shooting threats, which I will discuss shortly.
Beginning in August 2024, “The New York Times” published more than 10 articles in rapid succession accusing Shen Yun of child labor, medical negligence leading to injuries, and financial exploitation of performers. These reports relied on complaints from approximately six former Shen Yun dancers dating back more than a decade — some of whom had violated company policies, while others left for failing to meet artistic standards.
In response, a petition signed by more than 1,500 current and former performers and their family members condemned the articles, stating they were shocked by The New York Times’ severe misrepresentation of their work, beliefs, and way of life. The signatories said the imposed narrative sharply contradicted their positive experiences with Shen Yun.
Nevertheless, these unfounded allegations were amplified worldwide, becoming headlines not only in North America but also across Asia. On X, thousands of fake accounts reposted identical content; 80 percent were traced to coordinated CCP networks. The Chinese-language version of The New York Times’ main article was reposted 28,000 times, making it the outlet’s most-shared article on X in 2024.
This represents the CCP’s weaponization of Western media. A CCP-backed Chinese YouTuber based in the United States—named in leaked June 2024 internal documents from China’s Ministry of Public Security—publicly boasted on social media (in Chinese) that he introduced former Shen Yun performers to The New York Times for initial interviews and persuaded others to pressure theaters to cancel performances.
This CCP-employed proxy is currently facing charges in the United States for illegal weapons possession and has issued violent threats against Shen Yun’s New York campus. The same Public Security Ministry meeting records emphasized using social-media influencers to intensify internal conflict and dismantle Shen Yun and Falun Gong from within. Official responses from Shen Yun and reports from the Falun Gong Information Center have refuted these allegations.
Regarding child labor, Shen Yun stated that 85 percent of its performers are adults. For minors, touring participation is part of an accredited academic program. Two institutions — Fei Tian Academy of the Arts and Fei Tian College — are registered with U.S. local education authorities.
As for claims of financial exploitation, these schools provide full scholarships covering tuition, room, and board for all students, valued at approximately $50,000 annually.
On allegations of medical negligence, local physicians confirmed they regularly treat injured Shen Yun performers and conduct dozens of X-rays and MRI scans each year. The New York Times did not contact these doctors nor include these facts.
2. Legal warfare
Legal warfare — or “lawfare” — in Western contexts weaponizes legal systems to damage reputations and impose costs, without necessarily aiming to win cases. During construction of Shen Yun’s New York campus, repeated CCP-linked environmental lawsuits were filed against the site. All were dismissed as baseless, and judges ultimately barred the plaintiffs from filing similar claims again.
More recently, three former Shen Yun dancers filed lawsuits that were widely promoted by The New York Times. What the paper did not disclose is that after leaving Shen Yun, these key complainants developed ties with the Beijing Dance Academy — an institution linked to the CCP — raising serious questions about credibility.
Nonetheless, sensational media coverage can pressure theaters to cancel performances despite the lack of substantive legal merit. Legal warfare provides a veneer of legitimacy for public opinion warfare, reinforcing defamatory narratives while draining resources from diaspora communities. These lawsuits are strategic tools designed to intimidate, silence, and impose financial and psychological costs—not to prevail in court.
3. Psychological warfare
Psychological warfare involves coercion through violence. It operates in coordination with public opinion and legal warfare. When defamatory disinformation dominates headlines, sensational threats create a chilling effect that erodes morale and trust, influencing decisions, such as theaters canceling performances after collaborating with Shen Yun for 18 years.
Beyond resource-draining litigation, what is especially alarming in Shen Yun’s case is the sharp rise in bomb and mass-shooting threats in 2025, part of approximately 150 similar threats worldwide this year alone, including four in Canada. Taiwan has also been affected; authorities traced threats there to a Huawei research facility in Shanxi, China.
These are not mere intimidation tactics but the export of mainland China’s violence abroad. Leaked documents detail the establishment of relevant North American operations and show the surge in bomb threats during Shen Yun’s 2025 tour.
This is not speculation. Here are two seals — one from China’s Ministry of State Security (the CCP’s intelligence agency) and one from the Ministry of Public Security — tasked with coordinating public opinion and legal warfare in North America. They even appointed a director named Yu to lead these campaigns. These are not random acts but state-directed operations.
The interaction of Western disinformation campaigns, lawsuits, and bomb threats reveals the CCP’s warfare strategy: planned, sophisticated, and covert. Its goal is to silence dissent, distort truth, and export violence—undermining democratic sovereignty, the rule of law, and civil liberties we value.
The CCP’s repression of Shen Yun is not an isolated incident; it is a warning. We must recognize the CCP’s strategy of “winning without fighting” — unrestricted warfare — designed to shape and, in some cases, coerce foreign societies into adopting “Sinicization,” or the CCP’s way of thinking, to advance authoritarian objectives.
This concerns the integrity of democratic systems and societal resilience against authoritarian influence. If left unchecked, these tactics will normalize coercion, violence, and censorship beyond China’s borders and erode the foundations of democratic societies.
Editorial note: Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vision Times.
