On the afternoon of March 29, minutes before a nearly sold-out Shen Yun performance was set to begin, the Four Seasons Centre received a bomb threat written in Swedish and sent from a Chinese Gmail account. The email claimed that explosives would be detonated at both the venue and Parliament Hill if the show was not cancelled. The theatre evacuated the audience. Toronto police arrived quickly and later confirmed the threat was unfounded. Yet the venue cancelled the show anyway.
What followed was worse. Venue management initially agreed to enhanced security and said performances would continue. Days later, citing “escalating threats,” it reversed course and cancelled the remaining five shows. Nearly 10,000 ticketholders lost their seats. The Four Seasons Centre became the first venue anywhere in the world to cancel multiple Shen Yun performances in response to what its own city’s police had determined was a fake threat.
Why the CCP treats a dance company as a political threat
The New York-based performing arts company had anticipated this pattern. On March 1, weeks before the Toronto incident, Shen Yun published a detailed statement on its official website describing a sustained campaign of harassment spanning nearly two years: over 150 false bomb threats, mass shooting threats, and threats to rape, murder, and kill the children of its performers. The threats were sent to Shen Yun’s headquarters, to schools attended by its student performers, to family members, to host theatres, and to government officials who had expressed support for the company. At least six heads of state, including the leaders of Denmark, Canada, and Australia, received similar messages.
Every single threat contained the same demand: cancel the shows.
Taiwan’s police traced some of these threats to Xi’an, China, as part of a broader investigation into the sustained campaign against Shen Yun over the past two years. Their content aligned closely with letters sent by Chinese diplomatic officials to theatres and government offices. Shen Yun left little ambiguity about the source: “Without a doubt, these threats come from Communist China.”
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The statement explained why the Chinese Communist Party, which governs China as a one-party state, treats a dance company as a political threat. Shen Yun’s performances draw on traditional Chinese culture, mythology, and spirituality that the Party spent decades attempting to erase, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. The company also depicts the persecution of Falun Gong, a traditional spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist principles, which has been brutally suppressed in China for more than 25 years. Practitioners have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed; credible reports document the forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience. More than 90 Shen Yun performers have family members who have been imprisoned, tortured, or killed in China solely for their beliefs.
Shen Yun performs for more than one million people annually across dozens of countries. Multiple governments have passed legislation targeting forced organ harvesting by the Chinese state. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Falun Gong Protection Act unanimously last year.
“It is outrageous and completely unacceptable,” the statement read, “that Shen Yun, an American arts organization based in New York, has been subjected to death threats for so long. It is equally outrageous that heads of state and other major leaders in Western democracies have been subjected to the same intimidation. This must stop. We cannot allow Beijing to use threats of violence and intimidation to control what performances we attend, what stories are told, and how we see the world. This is about more than protecting Shen Yun. It is about protecting free societies from being silenced and coerced by the world’s largest totalitarian regime.”
Canadian parliamentarians condemn the cancellations as a failure to resist foreign intimidation
Five federal Members of Parliament went on record to condemn the intimidation campaign and the venue’s capitulation.
MP Amarjeet Gill attended a March 28 ceremony at the Four Seasons Centre to present a commendation to Shen Yun artists, and posted on Facebook on April 5: “It is deeply regrettable that the remaining Shen Yun performances in Toronto were cancelled due to security threats. No artist or cultural institution should face intimidation for sharing their cultural heritage. I admire the resilience, courage, and determination of Shen Yun’s performers.”
MPs Judy Sgro, chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong, along with Garnett Genuis, Marc Dalton, and Ned Kuruc, all condemned the Party’s transnational repression and expressed concern that foreign interference of this kind is now affecting the daily lives of Canadians.
Beyond Parliament, the Reverend Jiang Jiawei, Speaker of the Hong Kong Parliament in exile, told Vision Times: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms any bomb threat or terrorist intimidation targeting public events, cultural institutions, and innocent citizens. This is barefaced coercion. It is a direct assault on civilization, on the rule of law, and on freedom itself. Any attempt to silence dissent, suppress belief, or disrupt public order through threats and violence cannot be justified and must never be tolerated.”
The stakes, Jiang argued, extend far beyond a single cancelled performance. “The foundation of a free society is the refusal to submit to violence, to fear, or to authoritarian power. If we go silent in the face of threats today, what is damaged tomorrow is not merely one event, but the core values our societies hold dear.” He called on the international community to confront transnational intimidation as a systemic threat, and demanded that Canadian authorities conduct a thorough investigation, establish accountability, and adopt the strongest possible measures to prevent recurrence. “For those who make threats, our answer is one: we will not retreat, we will not go silent, and we will not allow fear to take our freedom.”
Bloggers, advocates, and community groups push back
The prominent Chinese-Canadian blogger known as Laodeng, who himself has faced transnational harassment and physical threats from the Chinese Communist Party, offered both a cultural assessment of Shen Yun and a political warning.
Having attended a Shen Yun performance last year, Laodeng described it as the authentic essence of Chinese civilization: “That truly is the ‘rhythm of the divine,’ the quintessence of Chinese culture, the unbroken root of Chinese civilization.” He argued that the Party’s compulsive hostility toward Shen Yun flows directly from its Marxist-Leninist nature, which has placed it in opposition to traditional Chinese values and to everything representing truth, goodness, and beauty.
On the Toronto incident, Laodeng was unsparing. Bomb threats of this kind impose enormous pressure on performers, audiences, organizers, and venues alike, but cowardice in response only hands the Party a victory it did nothing to earn. “This kind of despicable tactic will only make people see the reactionary nature of the CCP more clearly, and increase their support for the cause Shen Yun represents.”
His warning to Canada was blunt: “If the CCP can use a blackmail email to shut down activities it dislikes in Canada, the consequences for Canada will be severe. Canada is a sovereign state, a major Western power. It must treat the CCP’s thuggish behavior seriously, push back firmly through diplomatic channels, and preserve the dignity of a great nation.” He urged Canadian audiences to show up for Shen Yun in force and called on the government to guarantee the company’s right to perform in Canada without obstruction.
Paul Tse, president of the Toronto Hong Kong Parents Association, said he was deeply disappointed as an audience member whose plans were upended. He challenged the adequacy of existing security frameworks directly: “Major venues around the world face similar security risks. A single threatening email is never grounds to cancel an entire performance run.” Tse urged the Canadian government to guarantee Shen Yun’s right to perform in Canada in future, free from disruption. “This incident has already caused serious damage to Canada’s international reputation,” he said.
Friends of Hong Kong Canada and other organizations took to social media to condemn what they described as Beijing deciding what Torontonians are allowed to watch.
On April 3, the prominent Chinese-Canadian social media commentator known as Gongzi Shen posted on X that the episode raises a systemic question: if a confirmed fake threat is sufficient to cancel six performances at a major venue, Beijing has discovered a cheap and replicable tool for suppressing unwanted cultural expression in Canada. Shen Yun’s organizers noted that the Four Seasons Centre did not share additional threat communications with them, and Toronto police confirmed no further threats had been found, leaving the basis for cancelling five subsequent shows unexplained.
Sarah Cook, former director of China research at Freedom House and author of a book examining China’s underestimated influence operations, posted on X that the situation demands serious investigation: “Cancelling five shows due to a threat that has been confirmed false makes no sense. Shen Yun has received hundreds of threats. No actual violence has ever occurred. This is purely an intimidation strategy, and in this case it has proven more effective than direct Chinese diplomatic pressure, which is a concerning precedent.”
Former federal candidate Andy Lee posted that Shen Yun, produced by Falun Gong practitioners and depicting China before communist rule, represents a cultural and symbolic challenge to the Party’s legitimacy. Every trace of that narrative, however artistic, threatens the regime. Concerned Canadian, an X account with more than 170,000 followers, publicly questioned whether the CCP or its agents inside Canada had a direct hand in this campaign of cultural and community intimidation.
A fake email, six canceled shows, and no consequences for Beijing
The Party’s reliance on low-cost intimidation to shape artistic expression in Western countries is a calculated one. A single threatening email costs nothing. If it causes a venue to cancel six performances and produces no legal consequences for the sender, the return on investment is enormous. If the Canadian government fails to trace the source of these threats, establish accountability, and adopt stronger protective measures, it will have set a dangerous precedent, one that undermines national sovereignty, emboldens foreign interference, and signals to authoritarian states that Canada’s cultural institutions can be coerced at minimal cost.
NTD’s English-language service recently released Unbroken: The Untold Story of Shen Yun, a documentary told through the perspectives of Shen Yun artists who have performed for two decades under conditions of CCP suppression, fake bomb threats, and death threats. The film is available to stream free of charge on GanjingWorld (GJW+) and YouTube.
