Latest / Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News / “China before Communism” – Shen Yun becomes the target!

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“China before Communism” – Shen Yun becomes the target! · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:11
  It's the tip of the spare in the epic battle to defend the United States of America.
• 0:19
  The national security hour exposes the wolves in sheep's clothing and the nefarious plots to undermine and destroy U.S.
• 0:27
  national security.
• 0:31
  Welcome to the National Security Hour on the America Out Loud Network.
• 0:36
  I'm your host, Blanquita Cullum.
• 0:39
  You know, I was reading an interesting quote the other day from a guy I think is pretty fascinating, uh, a British historian and journalist.
• 0:47
  And he says, if it makes you think it's journalism, but if it makes you react, well, now that's propaganda.
• 0:56
  And I've had to really kind of analyze that again because I'm gonna put this right out front.
• 1:03
  As many of you know, I have a kind of a vast career, and I also work as a consultant and a coach to my good friends at the Epic Times slash NTD.
• 1:14
  And I was shocked to see that they were the target of an attack.
• 1:19
  Well, specifically the beautiful classical Chinese Shenyun dancers by the New York Times.
• 1:28
  So I'm gonna get to the bottom of this.
• 1:29
  I mean, uh Steve Lance is my good friend.
• 1:32
  Uh, he has done this amazing, amazing video film, a documentary revealing how Beijing weaponized this.
• 1:44
  I mean, you when you think about the New York Times, the great lady, how could that possibly happen?
• 1:51
  And I can't wait to hear about what's behind the scenes on unbroken, the untold story.
• 1:57
  Steve Lance is a powerful guy.
• 2:00
  He is not only the guy who is the man who's responsible for this great film, but he's also uh the host of the Capitol Report.
• 2:11
  He is the Bureau Chief in Washington, D.C.
• 2:14
  for NTD and the Epic Times.
• 2:16
  And Steve, I gotta get to the bottom of this.
• 2:18
  Welcome to the show.
• 2:20
  Blanquita, thanks so much for your um wonderful setup and introduction.
• 2:25
  It's really an honor to uh to join you.
• 2:28
  Well, the fact of the matter is I was look, you know, as we do, uh, we we look in the background of the New York Times, and I was trying to figure out now what would motivate them.
• 2:40
  In my research, I was looking at according to this is according to the Daily Caller that the that the Justice Department said that entities like um, for example, uh, you have the Houston Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe received quite a substantial amount of money from the Chinese Communist Party.
• 3:03
  And I was blown away to see that the New York Times have received in the past over 50,000.
• 3:12
  Do you think this influenced, or how did this come to pass that they wanted to target this beautiful uh dance ensemble group called Shenyun?
• 3:25
  Give us the background.
• 3:26
  Who are you?
• 3:27
  Yes.
• 3:28
  Well, Blanquita, you you raise a lot of very important and interesting points.
• 3:33
  And perhaps there's um a plethora of reasons as to why um America's paper of record, the New York Times, would be carrying water uh for Beijing at best, and um, you know, being complicit and working in their covert influence operations at worst.
• 3:54
  I'm not saying that that's the case, but there's surely a smoking gun uh over at the New York Times that is enough to draw um the concern of of many.
• 4:05
  And and uh what I can tell you is the point that you made about money being donated, that wasn't necessarily uh directly part of our investigation tracking the Chinese money, but I can tell you uh there are many uh mainstream Western American media outlets that have been uh on the take, if if you will, uh, from China.
• 4:26
  There's something called an advertising, okay?
• 4:29
  It's a full yeah, so an advertorial, it's a very deceiving uh, you know, piece of print copy that is, you know, the advertorial part, it's an advertisement sort of cloaked as an editorial, okay?
• 4:46
  And that's why they call it an advertori.
• 4:48
  So if you were to just open up uh to page B2 of the New York Times, say, for instance, sometimes there will be this uh, you know, article that is taken out that looks like it's it's it's part of their editorial, but it's an advertisement paid sometimes on behalf of uh foreign actors.
• 5:09
  Uh the CCP um it takes out ads through their various um sponsors and state-run media outlets and inserts them, has been known to insert them uh inside of of Western um publications, American publications.
• 5:29
  And you know, that's the editorial part, the advertising part is where the dollars come from.
• 5:34
  There's a there's a dollar amount associated with that full-page ad.
• 5:37
  And as you can imagine, full page in print is not cheap.
• 5:41
  And uh, if you take a few of those out per year, um, you know, it racks up to a significant amount of money.
• 5:49
  On the flip side, uh, it really I think a more powerful incentive for the New York Times is access.
• 5:56
  And so what do I mean by access?
• 5:59
  Access to the Chinese market.
• 6:02
  Everybody wants access to that 1.2 billion uh people, right?
• 6:06
  They see dollar signs above every head.
• 6:09
  And so, in order to maintain access as a news agency or a news outlet, uh in a communist country like China, you need to behave and you need to tow a line.
• 6:21
  Um, you know, take for example the outlet that I work at, NTD, part of the epoch media group.
• 6:27
  Since our inception, we have been banned in China.
• 6:31
  We're not allowed in China, and that's because we report on the facts, and we we touch on important issues that are so-called sensitive by the Chinese Communist Party.
• 6:42
  And so, therefore, you know, our are some of our earliest reporters were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
• 6:49
  And we and we'll explore that because to kind of paint uh broader picture in and to what you're informing the audience in the past, the New York Times was not allowed in China.
• 7:05
  It was kind of banned in China.
• 7:07
  Then all of a sudden it gained favor, and it's now again being read in China.
• 7:14
  So to your point, it begs the question of what happened?
• 7:19
  Who made this happen?
• 7:21
  Who sat down at the table and said, if you do this, we'll do that.
• 7:25
  How about doing this and we'll do that?
• 7:28
  We don't know for sure.
• 7:29
  Could be an allegation, but what are your thoughts?
• 7:33
  You're right.
• 7:33
  We we don't know for sure, but what we do know is that the um chief editor, the executive editor at the at the New York Times, uh Joseph Khan, um, he made his chops in Beijing, uh, as the Beijing bureau chief uh in the late 90s, early 2000s.
• 7:53
  And uh at a certain point he was critical uh of the CCP in various ways.
• 7:59
  And that's the other thing.
• 8:00
  Like you can the CCP will allow you to be critical of them to a certain degree, because they know they're you know cunning and smart that in order for you to maintain some form of credibility, especially in America's eyes as it stands right now, um, or the American pe people's eyes, you have to maintain uh some ability to criticize the Chinese Communist Party.
• 8:24
  Otherwise, you know, you won't be taken seriously.
• 8:26
  So it's really sort of insidious as to how they go about picking and choosing the topics that they want to be uh critical about.
• 8:34
  There are some third rails, right?
• 8:36
  That the CCP lays down uh the law and uh what do you mean by that?
• 8:42
  What do you mean by setting down a third rail?
• 8:44
  What does explain that?
• 8:46
  Well, I'll give you one example, probably and arguably the largest third rail inside of uh China for any media outlet to report on is Falun Gong, the spiritual discipline that was once embraced inside of China uh until they found out too many people were practicing it, and then they banned it, put out mass propaganda defaming it.
• 9:08
  Um, and you know, sort of what lays on the other end of the persecution that has been brought on to this, you know, peaceful spiritual group is something that is just too dangerous for the world to know about in the CCP's eyes because their their whole operation, any bit of legitimacy that they have, once it's really talked about at scale, at scope, and that's the forced live organ harvesting.
• 9:38
  And I'll give you an example.
• 9:39
  The New York Times had a reporter uh inside of Beijing that was actually on the trail to expose forced organ harvesting.
• 9:49
  Her name is Didi Kirsten Tatlow, and she is a very well-respected journalist, has been, still is, and she brought this to her editors.
• 9:59
  Uh
• 10:00
  She had some meetings with some high-level CCP military officials, and she was hearing rumblings.
• 10:06
  She spoke fluent Chinese.
• 10:08
  She was born in Hong Kong.
• 10:10
  And she was hearing rumblings of this forced organ harvesting.
• 10:14
  And in 2019, she testified with a signed affidavit during the London China Tribunal that she was forced out of the New York Times by her editors because she was about to expose and explore the forced live organ harvesting that was taking place under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party.
• 10:36
  So that is a perfect example of what one of those third rails are.
• 10:40
  And to some of your listeners who have no idea what I'm talking about, uh, when it comes to this, there's a reason why you have not heard about it.
• 10:47
  And that is because there are not many mainstream or small stream uh media folks that are willing to talk about it or that just don't know about it.
• 10:56
  But there are people know that it's happened, but you do, and and kudos to the well, I do, I do because I have my own experience.
• 11:03
  And that was when I was a Senate confirmed governor overseeing our international broadcasting.
• 11:10
  And as you know, I I was the chairman of Radio Free Asia and a board, uh a senior board member regarding Voice of America.
• 11:20
  When I went to Beijing uh to try to get more stations on board for Voice of America, I could not tell them I was also the chairman of Radio Free Asia because they would not have allowed me in the country.
• 11:38
  And when I was working uh and going to uh Hong Kong to meet with our team with Radio Free Asia and and Voice of America, that Chinese bureau branches, um, we caught a spy.
• 11:54
  A young woman who was not making a lot of money, one of my team said, uh, Governor, can you please tell me how she can go back to Beijing every week?
• 12:05
  And we said, follow the money.
• 12:08
  And she was being paid by the CCP to monitor what was going on, reportedly.
• 12:15
  And uh, we were able to uh change her employment situation with us.
• 12:21
  But uh I also saw a minister who was uh uh a Chinese minister in Beijing.
• 12:28
  I met with him, and he uh was not a sanctioned church.
• 12:34
  Uh he met with me for lunch, and across the table were seven other men who had followed him and his young wife.
• 12:41
  And I said, How is it you have the courage to be here?
• 12:44
  And he said, I can't leave my people.
• 12:46
  When they started threatening their children, they finally had to leave.
• 12:50
  So I I think to the point, and we'll get into more about the Fallen Gong because even when I went, Steve, and that was around, oh my goodness, I went several times to China, uh, probably around 2004 or five, I can't remember the dates exactly.
• 13:07
  People said, Well, you be careful of those fallen gong because they're cult.
• 13:12
  And here I'm watching them in a nice park in Hong Kong, and all they're doing are exercises, and they were very peaceful.
• 13:21
  Yeah, well, you there you have it.
• 13:23
  You just you have your own personal experience of what I would call a full spectrum covert influence operation aimed at undermining, minimizing, and defaming Falun Gong, right?
• 13:40
  So that should tell us how serious the CCP views this group as a threat to their legitimacy.
• 13:49
  Uh, and we can unpack who they are and why it has gotten to that point.
• 13:53
  But to your point, as a journalist here in Washington, um, I talked to a lot of people, and you are not the first one.
• 14:00
  I was actually having lunch last week on Capitol Hill with a former British member of parliament, and the issue of Falun Gong came up.
• 14:08
  He was he's been retired for over a decade.
• 14:11
  And when we were talking about it, he said, you know, I was approached by the Chinese ambassador in London, and he started telling me uh how bad this group is and that they're a cult and not to deal with them.
• 14:22
  And I cannot tell you how many people I've talked to, and not just politicians, you know, you were a Senate-confirmed uh member of the Radio Free Asia uh overseeing Voice of America, and you know, you can rest assured any government, quasi-government institution that is in some way, shape, or form related or dealing with China has been approached on this issue uh from the Chinese Communist Party to defame this group.
• 14:51
  And you know, the other incident, and and when we we we have a lot to talk about when uh, you know, I was giving you that quote, if it makes you react, it's propaganda, if it makes you think it's journalism.
• 15:04
  When I was uh I went to Turkey to meet with the Uyghurs, and I had been told, oh, you know, here, look, read these articles.
• 15:13
  The Uyghurs there, they're they're terrible people, they're anti-American, they're this, they're that.
• 15:18
  And I thought I'm gonna go check this out myself.
• 15:21
  And I went to Ankara, and and this is again about 20 years ago.
• 15:26
  And here I meet with these group of older men, and they had served in World War II.
• 15:33
  They loved the United States of America.
• 15:36
  They were so strongly pro the United States.
• 15:39
  And I think to myself, how does propaganda develop the credibility?
• 15:46
  And what are the media sins that journalists need to be aware of?
• 15:52
  Uh, you know, I I talk about there's a golden rule.
• 15:55
  And that golden rule for a journalist is to seek the truth and report it.
• 16:00
  But the key word there is one of the key words of the fallen gong, and that's truth.
• 16:07
  You're so right.
• 16:08
  And and what has happened uh to the Uyghurs is indeed uh very sad state of affairs.
• 16:14
  You know, the CCP uh uses some you know so-called terrorist incident that may have taken place in Beijing or elsewhere with the Uyghurs.
• 16:23
  We don't even know if that's confirmed or not.
• 16:26
  And they take one incident and weaponize it against an entire ethnic group in Northwest China.
• 16:33
  And what I can tell you is uh they are now subject to uh detention centers, uh labor camps, concentration camps, and this treacherous crime of forced live organ harvesting.
• 16:47
  Now, had this issue of organ harvesting when it was first uh exposed back in 2006 by uh two actually renowned Canadian gentlemen.
• 16:58
  One is a uh famous human rights attorney named David Madis, and the other uh the Secretary of State for uh foreign affairs at the time, uh Mr.
• 17:08
  David Kilgore, who is since uh passed away.
• 17:11
  Um, they came out with unequivocal evidence that this organ harvesting was taking place.
• 17:17
  Now, hold that up because we'll we'll continue with that when we take a little break because we have so much more to cover with Steve Lance, who is the investigative journalist who has put together this film called Unbroken, the attack on the Shenyun dancers by the CCP and the role of the New York Times.
• 17:37
  So much to cover.
• 17:38
  Stay with us here on the National Security Hour.
• 17:43
  I'm Blanquita.
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  Welcome back to the National Security Hour and the America Out Loud Network.
• 21:31
  I am very honored to have a dear friend of mine who is a brilliant journalist, an investigative journalist, and an ethical guy.
• 21:38
  I'm talking about Steve Lance, who is the bureau chief for the Epic Times NT.
• 21:44
  And I have to say that he has put together this movie that is a must watch.
• 21:50
  It's like a documentary of the attack on the Shenyun dancers, a Chinese, uh a Chinese dance group that really celebrates the history of China before the CCP.
• 22:03
  And Steve Lance, tell me how you started putting this powerful documentary together, and what was the really the motivation that made you realize it had to be done.
• 22:16
  Yeah, that's a great question, uh BQ.
• 22:18
  So Shenyun is actually uh an American company, and they're based in uh New York State, and their story is really an American story.
• 22:28
  It's a it's a it's an inspirational uh story that you know some might say is very similar to uh the founding story of our country, which is these are a group of people that came to the United States and seek uh seeking a uh a better life, a freer life, um, and and and really um you know trying to flee uh tyranny and religious persecution uh inside of China.
• 22:54
  And so when they finally arrived here, they uh acquired a profound love and respect for the ideals that uh our country was was made of.
• 23:03
  And and so Shenyun is is really a product of uh something it's it's it's American in that sense.
• 23:11
  Of course, their uh tagline uh is China before communism and the uh the program uh displays uh traditional Chinese culture uh to the world.
• 23:23
  Uh, but it's it's it's really something um, you know, special.
• 23:28
  But you know, when you think about it, Steve, uh we celebrate looking at historical times in the history of culture.
• 23:37
  I mean, go to the museums in New York.
• 23:40
  We look at the Bullshoy ballet, we look at other kinds of outlets.
• 23:45
  We celebrate jazz, we celebrate every kind of traditional experience that takes us to a particular time.
• 23:54
  And in Chinese history, we don't have a lot of examples of what the art form of especially in the area of dance was like.
• 24:05
  What I I gather the problem is is that it has a tie to the fallen gong, which is such a threat to the CCP.
• 24:14
  The thing that's very terrifying, and I want you to talk about this because I was reading about it today.
• 24:20
  There have been over 15 hoax bomb threats that have literally shut down the the performances of the Shenyun.
• 24:31
  Do you think that has tied to the CCP?
• 24:34
  Is it a response from the publications?
• 24:37
  How do you make that out?
• 24:39
  Well, in our film Blanquita uh uh unbroken, the untold story of Shenyun, um, where we track uh there's two main themes.
• 24:49
  One is we actually embed with some of the Shenyun dancers, particularly there's two brothers, Jesse and Lucas Browdy, um, and and we we follow them, and we get to learn their process, their training regiment, um, and and we follow them on tour.
• 25:04
  And at one point, we're with them in Taiwan, and the bomb threats come and they evacuate the theater, and the uh the dogs come in and they're sniffing around and they leave, and of course, it's a hoax.
• 25:18
  All of these uh bomb threats have been hoaxes used to terrorize the group and the people that want to come and watch them perform.
• 25:25
  But what made this one a little bit different was that in this particular instance, the Taiwanese um intel services actually track this threat back to China, back to mainland China, and not just back to China, but to Xi'an, uh a big city in central China to a Huawei facility, which is the state-run uh telecommunications uh company that everybody knows is banned inside of the United States.
• 25:53
  And so uh to your question, yes, they have been traced back to China.
• 25:57
  You know, the Brownie, the Brownie sons are, well, their father is Levi Browdy, who is, I gather, the executive director of the Fallen Dafa Information Center.
• 26:08
  Uh, he's been a leading voice exposing the persecution.
• 26:13
  I'm sure that this had to be just more than heartbreaking, but very fearful for him for his son's own safety, and they're amazing dancers, those young guys.
• 26:26
  Indeed.
• 26:26
  Uh, yeah, Levi uh Browdy, as you mentioned, executive director of the Fallen uh DAFA Information Center, uh very significant NGO that has been tracking the persecution since the very beginning, since 1999 when it first happened.
• 26:43
  Uh many of the confirmed reports of torture and murder uh and and various things that have gone against uh Fallen Gong have been reported and tracked through uh Levi's um organization.
• 26:57
  And so he has felt the full weight, him and his entire family of this massive uh country, which is that of China, uh coming down on him.
• 27:07
  And then in the film, uh we see, you know, uh just how hard it is.
• 27:12
  You know, there's ups and downs.
• 27:13
  That's very emotional uh to to you know get a bird's eye view of what his life is like as he's on one side of the earth as boys on another dancing and bomb threats are coming in while he's trying to mitigate and stop the persecution uh back here in the U.S.
• 27:29
  Yeah, I was looking at the history of the New York Times and if they'd ever targeted any other uh dance groups.
• 27:38
  Apparently they have with a New York City ballet, uh, the Dallas Black Dance uh theater, the um Mark Mireth Dance Group back in 2025, but not to the extent that they have gone after the Shenyun.
• 27:56
  Have you have have you or any of the leadership like Levi or others tried to make an appointment with the New York Times to sit down and find out why are they going after you so hard to get them on the record?
• 28:12
  Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, um, you know, Levi and the folks at Shen Yun have been in contact with the New York Times and have uh presented, and that's one of the things we talk about in the film, various pieces of evidence and information that are counter to some of the narratives uh that they've been putting out there, one of which is medical treatment.
• 28:34
  The New York Times has tried to paint a picture that uh these dancers are denied medical treatment.
• 28:41
  And we went to Shenyun's headquarters to their training facilities and spoke directly with the vice president of Shenyun, and what she gave us a uh a bundle full of uh medical documents from MIR MRIs, uh surgical procedures, and then we actually went to New Jersey to meet and interview their lead orthopedic uh specialist and doctor.
• 29:09
  And he said that the New York Times never even reached out to him.
• 29:13
  And so clearly there's no interest in hearing Sheny.
• 29:17
  So well, they're basing it.
• 29:18
  I would I would suspect, I can't, again, I can't say for sure, but I would allege that they're basing that on the fact that they talked to quite a number of people that say they either worked with a Shenyun or they knew about what was going on.
• 29:35
  And uh, but are they people that you are aware of, or were they angry for one reason, or do you have any insight into that at all?
• 29:44
  That's a great question.
• 29:44
  And to your point, yes, that's exactly what's happened.
• 29:47
  Like in any company, if you were to go to Google uh that employs thousands of people, which Shenyun does, um, you would see that there's gonna be one or two uh folks that are.
• 30:00
  Disgruntled.
• 30:00
  There's disgruntled employees everywhere.
• 30:03
  And when you you really there, it's such a complicated string of things that you have to really um distill and understand.
• 30:12
  This is also an Olympic grade competitive art that is just simply not meant for everybody.
• 30:21
  Nobody's saying that it's a walk in the park, right?
• 30:24
  But to accuse this group of um abusing their people, it's just you know, it's sheer nonsense after what we witnessed with our own eyes.
• 30:34
  Now, take, you know, okay, you have some disgruntled folks, but the disgruntled folks that the New York Times has interviewed.
• 30:42
  We have gone and researched, and they have all very close ties since leaving Shenyun back to Beijing.
• 30:52
  And so that is a uh a very concerning red flag.
• 30:57
  Um, that, you know, one and one of them was actually uh somebody who, when she left Shenyuan, we have um evidence and record of her talking to her professor, saying how much she loved it there and how she wanted to come back.
• 31:13
  It wasn't until she got married to somebody who had ties to the Beijing Academy of Dance, uh, which is an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, uh, that all of a sudden um she came out on the record to uh defame Shenyun to the New York Times.
• 31:29
  You know, those dancers are the most amazing.
• 31:32
  I mean, I grew up with a in a family of artists, and my sister was an amazing professional dancer.
• 31:38
  A little different though, she was flamenco in Tango, because you know, I'm a Latina, you know how it goes, Steve.
• 31:44
  But the main thing is I've never seen dancers that are that limber, other than the Olympics.
• 31:51
  And um, I mean, I remember walking by and the backstage where some of the dancers were just you know, sitting around, and you know, they have their legs over their heads and they're thinking nothing of it.
• 32:03
  And you know, they have a strong dedication to it's it's a combination to this great beautiful dance, but also incredible athletics.
• 32:15
  I mean, this is you know, you'd see people like this, as I mentioned before in the Olympics.
• 32:21
  Exactly.
• 32:22
  And that's the thing, you know.
• 32:23
  I have as I've watched uh a Shenyon performance before, but when you go there as an audience member, you know, it's really artistic, right?
• 32:32
  It's colorful, it's beautiful.
• 32:34
  You can see the skill, but you're not really focused on it.
• 32:38
  But when we had the opportunity uh to embed with them and you know, watch them train.
• 32:44
  I still remember on their opening night at Lincoln Center, uh, before the performance a few hours before being on stage as they're going through their training regimen and seeing them lift their legs up over their head and almost lit.
• 32:57
  And just the focus, uh, the flexibility, the determination, it's really um something to behold.
• 33:06
  And really, Steve, when you think about it, we cannot minimize the fact that this is a profession.
• 33:12
  These are uh people that have the dedication as every professional artist has in that capacity, whether they're dancers or writers, they're singers or performers that are actors, they're disciplined.
• 33:27
  I remember seeing uh Mikhail Orishnikov, and you know, he would take those leaps in the air.
• 33:35
  Well, that does not happen unless you have a great dedication to working out.
• 33:43
  Even my own late uh children's dad, who was a brilliant cornetist, despite the fact that he would play every night, would practice eight hours every day to keep the omburger.
• 33:57
  So the idea that uh they would try to make this look like it's too tough.
• 34:02
  You can't have that kind of performance without that discipline.
• 34:06
  You're absolutely right.
• 34:07
  And and that was you know one of the biggest takeaways for me, you know.
• 34:11
  Recently, uh, some of the interviews that we oh, sorry.
• 34:17
  Recently, some of the interviews that we conducted with uh some of these folks, it's not just about the skill that they're already at.
• 34:25
  One thing that I found sort of fascinating was that they're never satisfied.
• 34:31
  These are like fierce competitors that you know, not only do they want to be in the top physical condition to be able to perform at the highest level, they're constantly honing their techniques because at the same time as it being sport in terms of flexibility, endurance, and strength.
• 34:49
  There's also an artistic level in and fine-tuning each movement.
• 34:53
  And um it was really, you know, uh such an eye-opening experience to see the blend of physical athlete with a magnificent world-class artist and combining those uh into into one.
• 35:11
  It's it's really well, and it's and it's a beautiful thing, but above and beyond the dancers, you have the costumes, you have the music, you have the sets, and it's an incredible artistic experience that is incredibly unique.
• 35:27
  And um, I wanted to ask you as we're going along here about how the audience can see this documentary, Unbroken, the untold story of Shenyun.
• 35:39
  We have a lot to cover in our next session, but it's a very important that they know how to be able to take a glance at this and understand it, watch it.
• 35:49
  Right now is a great opportunity to watch it for free for a limited time.
• 35:53
  I would uh advise your audience to go to unbroken Shenyun, S-H-E-N-Y-U-N.com uh for a limited time, maybe another month or so, and then it will be available on all streaming platforms from Amazon, uh, Apple TV and beyond.
• 36:12
  Repeat that again.
• 36:13
  Somebody sitting there saying, I didn't get my pen out fast enough.
• 36:18
  Fantastic.
• 36:19
  Unbroken Shenyun, S-H-E-N-Y-U-N.com.
• 36:25
  We're talking with my wonderful friend Steve Lance.
• 36:28
  He's a brilliant investigative journalist.
• 36:30
  He's the host of the Capitol Report, and of course, has put together this great documentary about the Shenyun dancers and the controversy with the New York Times.
• 36:41
  But when we come back, I want to focus on why the fallen gong are the targets of the CCP.
• 36:51
  And we'll give you an insight on that too.
• 36:54
  Uh what's going on behind the scenes that you may or may not be aware of.
• 36:58
  I'm Blanquita Cullum.
• 37:00
  Stay with us.
• 37:00
  We'll be back with more on the National Security Hour on the America Out Loud Network.
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• 38:46
  Welcome back to the America Out Loud Network.
• 38:50
  And I'm lucky to come.
• 38:51
  This is the national security hour.
• 38:54
  We really value the freedom of expression.
• 38:56
  And we really are big supporters of accuracy and journalism.
• 39:02
  This has been my career since really I've been 19 years old.
• 39:06
  And I'm delighted to have a good friend, Steve Lance, who's put together a brilliant uh documentary called Unbroken, The Untold Story of Shenyun, which has been a target of the New York Times for a variety of reasons.
• 39:21
  And I'm trying to understand it better.
• 39:24
  But Steve, as we come back in this last segment, I want people to understand why the controversy about the Falun Gong exists in China with a CCP and why they pose such a threat to them.
• 39:40
  So it's a very important question.
• 39:42
  And I guess it goes back to the beginning, right?
• 39:46
  So what is Falun Gong?
• 39:48
  It's an ancient Chinese spiritual discipline with five sets of gentle um meditative exercises, sort of like Tai Chi.
• 39:56
  And it was introduced in 1992.
• 39:59
  And it's
• 40:00
  Spread like wildfire all throughout China.
• 40:02
  It wasn't regional, it wasn't ethnic.
• 40:04
  It was part of what you would call the main Han ethnicity inside of China.
• 40:08
  So you had people in the central government practicing, uh, farmers, uh, it really crossed all social boundaries.
• 40:17
  And people started to, you know, get miraculous health benefits through it.
• 40:21
  And so it spread word of mouth.
• 40:24
  And by 1998, in six short years, uh, the CCP's own internal census and estimate found that roughly 70 to 100 million people were practicing.
• 40:34
  And that was just a huge number at the times.
• 40:38
  There were only 60 million communist party members.
• 40:41
  So despite it being uh benign and peaceful, uh, the dictator at the time, Zheng Zhermin, um, he he banned it.
• 40:49
  And he systematically started to round up the practitioners and sent them to forced labor camps and imprisonment and uh eventually escalating into um organ harvesting.
• 41:02
  And along with that, there was a lot of propaganda that they put out to defame it.
• 41:06
  They labeled it as an evil cult.
• 41:08
  They say that practitioners killed themselves, that they were crazy.
• 41:12
  And because Falun Gong is an unfamiliar name to most, especially in the West, it's not like the Tibetan Buddhists or the Uyghur Muslims that everybody knows who a Buddhist is like what is this Falun Gong, right?
• 41:25
  So everybody was sort of apprehensive.
• 41:28
  Although there were some good uh reports from the Wall Street Journal and a few others initially, by and large, uh mainstream Western media never really understood it and reported on it uh in such a way that would have helped reduce the persecution and raise awareness uh for the world's people to speak out against the persecution.
• 41:48
  And the and the organ, which resulted later in organ harvesting because the majority of the followers are pretty healthy people.
• 41:56
  They don't smoke, they don't eat badly, they have a good lifestyle, and they became uh a source of profit for the CCP after they were in prison.
• 42:06
  That's exactly right.
• 42:08
  And and that was in large part because of the silence that was there, it allowed it to escalate uh to that point.
• 42:15
  The persecution started in 99, the mass organ harvesting really started to take shape and was exposed in 2006.
• 42:24
  And you know, what sort of makes, you know, to your initial question about why are they so concerned about Falun Gong, it's because Falun Gong, if you really peel back and look at what it is, it's deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture.
• 42:40
  And it crosses, as I mentioned, ethnic and minority lines inside of China.
• 42:46
  It wasn't regional, it wasn't in the Northwest like Tibet and uh you know the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
• 42:54
  It was it permeated throughout all of Chinese society.
• 42:57
  So by you know, nature of that, it just sort of posed in the dictator's mind at the time a greater threat because more of the Chinese people were learning it and it resonated because it was traditional in in their culture, and so that's why they have uh cracked down on this group so viciously.
• 43:15
  And we're talking with Steve Lance, who is the executive producer, the investigative journalist behind this very powerful documentary called Unbroken, the Untold Story of Shenyun.
• 43:29
  And then it takes me back to the question, the big why then.
• 43:33
  So, okay, fine, you you might take these folks and imprison them because they're a threat to the communist party, or you want to harvest their organs, but why the focus on targeting the Shenyun program, it would see fairly benign.
• 43:49
  It would seem something that would bring people more interest into what's going on in China.
• 43:54
  Well, Blanquito, what the Falun Gong community uh did is essentially they took matters into their own hands, and uh one might call it the largest uh peaceful resistance movements on the face of the earth.
• 44:08
  100 million people being severely persecuted and completely nonviolent.
• 44:14
  And so because you know there weren't many people that were calling for an end to it, uh, the persecution, they went and created uh their community in the United States, a performing arts group called Shenyun, and then some other folks from the community created a media group called NTD and Epoch Times with the sole mission, uh each slightly different but similar origins to simply let people know about what's happening in China, not to convert, not to proselytize, uh none of that, but just to let people know this is a good, decent group of people that are being wrongfully persecuted and now sadly having their organs torn out of their bodies uh for profit by their government.
• 44:57
  And people should know that there are many people like me who work with you who are not Falun Kong.
• 45:04
  I'm a Roman Catholic, and a lot of people of different faith backgrounds work with the Epic Times and NTD in a variety of capacities, but I think the majority of us have something that we hold dear in common, and that's human rights, because it doesn't become a political thing.
• 45:23
  It's not right versus left, it's right versus wrong.
• 45:27
  And in every culture, you know, we have a golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• 45:34
  And many of us who are Christian just got through Easter, and that was really the example of Jesus Christ.
• 45:41
  So it's offensive to think that these human organs are being harvested from people that are being sold, and performances like Shenyun are being denied.
• 45:54
  The question I have here on this too, we talked about this at the beginning, Steve.
• 45:58
  Uh and again, I repeat I'm speaking to the great Steve Lance.
• 46:02
  Uh, if you haven't seen the Capitol report, you need to on NTD and Epic Times.
• 46:07
  And he is the uh brilliant guy behind Unbroken The Untold Story of Shenyun, that documentary.
• 46:14
  But Steve, you know, the I I guess what concerns me uh with these over 150 hoax bomb threats.
• 46:24
  Have there now been theaters that just refuse to carry Shenyun because of the fear of uh a catastrophe that could be posed to their to the people that attend their performances?
• 46:37
  Well, to that question, it has uh seemed to have escalated to a much more alarming uh state of affairs.
• 46:44
  For the most part, um, you know, everybody who received these threats, all the different theaters around the world from the Kennedy Center and Washington, D.C., where I am, to the Taiwanese uh theaters and and beyond the city.
• 46:57
  And most recently, I think it was Toronto.
• 46:59
  It was as recently in Toronto.
• 47:01
  Well, well, that's the one that's actually very concerning.
• 47:03
  Every other uh event up until this point in Toronto recognized it for what it was.
• 47:09
  They took the threat seriously, they got the local authorities to come in, they did the sweeping, no there were no credible threats, they realized, and the show went on, right?
• 47:19
  Maybe with enhanced security, bomb sniffing dogs, or perhaps some magnetometers to you know make the audience feel at ease.
• 47:27
  But the show went on.
• 47:28
  In Toronto, they actually shut down the remaining five shows in Toronto.
• 47:36
  And so uh, and that's with no credible threat.
• 47:39
  And so a lot of questions being asked uh, you know, in terms of why the theater did that, are there, you know, perhaps ties uh on the back end to uh China in some way, shape, or form.
• 47:51
  We don't know, but we're looking into it.
• 47:53
  We've heard maybe there are.
• 47:54
  Um they maybe have gotten, you know, they may have received threats privately that they didn't want to reveal to the public, saying, don't go there again.
• 48:04
  We're we're not finished.
• 48:06
  And what I can tell you, uh Blanquita, is uh many theaters, many theaters throughout the world have received pressure from the CCP prior, not just the bomb threats.
• 48:16
  We're talking dossiers defaming Shenyan.
• 48:19
  Um I actually talked to somebody at the Kennedy Center, uh high-ranking official at the Kennedy Center who was summoned by the Chinese embassy here and was specifically told not to have Shenyun.
• 48:31
  Of course, he didn't capitulate, he said this is America, sorry, but just to show you the level that the CCP and the extent to which they're going to to suppress the show is really uh unbelievable.
• 48:44
  You know, I think uh one of the things that Frederick Douglass talked about, the no right was deemed by the founding fathers of the government more sacred than the right of free speech, but also the significant importance of having that press be thorough, be honest, be unbiased to be able to give people the facts to tell them the truth.
• 49:10
  And sometimes, you know, I I know Steve from the many years I've been in broadcasting.
• 49:16
  Uh sometimes the audience is taken for granted, and they're deemed as gullible and uh and really uh open to accepting propaganda.
• 49:28
  I still believe that the audience is smarter than that, and I'm hoping to goodness that they are.
• 49:34
  You mentioned again earlier that there is an opportunity for the audience to see your great documentary free.
• 49:45
  Tell us about this.
• 49:46
  How can they do this?
• 49:47
  How can they see unbroken?
• 49:49
  Absolutely.
• 49:50
  So for a limited time, um, you can go to unbroken Shenyun.com and you can stream it there, and you can also
• 50:00
  Stay tuned.
• 50:01
  We're going to be building out the website in the very near future with added special clips behind the scenes, some of the full interviews that we conducted.
• 50:10
  We talked to many great experts on the matter.
• 50:14
  And so that's going to be sort of a great ecosystem to really understand this very important subject on a much deeper level.
• 50:22
  Unbroken Shenyun.com.
• 50:25
  You know, Steve, I've I've noticed that NTD and Epic Times does have a very broad focus, not just on news and not just on dance, but also in singing and composing and art and have a number of competitions throughout the year, so that this classical form of art and dance and music is not lost.
• 50:52
  And we're talking not just for the Asian community, but overall the classical form of music, etc.
• 51:00
  is not lost.
• 51:02
  You you nailed it, and you bring up another important point, uh, a few actually.
• 51:07
  Um, and and that is first of all, Shenyun, although, as we said, classical Chinese dance, China before communism.
• 51:15
  If you were to go to a Shenyun performance, you would see it's actually predominantly made up audience members of people of that, you know, that country, so mostly Americans uh attending in the United States, mostly Koreans or Japanese.
• 51:29
  Not it's not just uh like an ethnic performance for Chinese.
• 51:34
  Uh to your other point about these competitions that uh new Tang Dynasty television or NTD uh on the English side, as we call it, uh puts out, it's really rooted in sort of our founding um fabric, which is that of our sister media epoch times um, you know, uh slogan, which or tagline, which is truth and tradition.
• 51:57
  And so everything that we're trying to do is really revolve it around uh traditional values, uh the trish traditional classical arts, uh, so much of which have been lost.
• 52:09
  Um it's it's more of a it's it's a renaissance really that we're focused on.
• 52:14
  Well, you know, I I think about as a young kid, I was an art student at UT.
• 52:18
  And you learned a bit differently back then.
• 52:22
  It's like the dark ages now when I look back, but we had to learn the classical form of painting and drawing and history because they didn't want us to just take the easy way and just say, oh, well, this is modern art.
• 52:37
  I'm gonna slap it, slap it on a canvas, and this is art.
• 52:41
  Even those great artists that you would think of, like Rothko and De Kooning and all these other artists, they had been trained in the classical sense to be able to understand the value of the design and the meaning of the expression of the colors, etc.
• 52:59
  And this is something that I've noticed that uh the Shenyun dancers do, the competitions value.
• 53:06
  All right, so I'm gonna, as we have a couple of more minutes with you, I want to hear a little bit about the Capitol Report.
• 53:13
  Now, you're you're right here in Washington, DC, and we're just a couple of blocks away.
• 53:20
  In fact, from your office, we can practically see inside the office buildings in the United States Capitol.
• 53:29
  Give us your sense of what's gonna happen in the next couple of weeks.
• 53:35
  Well, there's a lot going on.
• 53:36
  Congress is back in session after that nice two-week recess.
• 53:40
  And to your point, yes, we are right literally uh across from the Capitol, the belly of the beast, uh, if you will.
• 53:48
  We could have a watermelon seed spinning contest, and it would hit the grounds.
• 53:55
  Indeed.
• 53:55
  Indeed.
• 53:56
  Yes, we uh we have a uh we're situated uh at a beautiful building with a rooftop that oversees the Capitol grounds.
• 54:04
  And uh it's gonna be interesting.
• 54:06
  Uh there's a lot on the uh on the docket, uh, a lot of hearings that are coming up, uh, a lot of budget and money requests.
• 54:15
  We obviously have the war in Iran.
• 54:17
  Uh, we have the Department of Homeland Security uh that needs to be funded, and there is not a lot of partisanship.
• 54:24
  It's not like human rights.
• 54:25
  Like you said, human rights, that's one of the few issues that we can get both sides of the aisle on uh to agree and come together on.
• 54:33
  But uh a lot of the other stuff that's um you know taking place throughout the country has unfortunately become very hyperpartisan.
• 54:41
  Absolutely, and we're hoping that we'll see the successful passage in a in a bipartisan way of the uh stopping the fallen gong organs harvesting act to be able to make sure that that bill passes.
• 54:55
  I think it's what is it, 817 or something like that that is up for consideration very soon.
• 55:01
  And uh and we'll be watching you on your great show, the Capital Report to make sure.
• 55:09
  Tell people uh exactly what time you're on.
• 55:12
  It's East Coast time, but it's all over the country.
• 55:14
  And even if you're listening to this abroad, you can certainly uh watch it on the uh on the network.
• 55:21
  Give us a little info.
• 55:23
  Absolutely.
• 55:24
  Uh you can watch Capital Report uh five days a week, Monday through Friday, hard news of the day, uh, great interviews, uh great reporting.
• 55:34
  It's at uh we air live at 7 p.m.
• 55:37
  Eastern time.
• 55:38
  Uh we have reporters uh on Capitol Hill at the White House, uh breaking news and and and getting it out there in the most uh raw traditional uh format that we can for And now you have like 30 seconds to remind everybody, my good friend Steve Lance, Unbroken, the Untold Story of Shenyun and how do they see it right now free.
• 56:02
  Absolutely.
• 56:03
  Please visit uh unbroken Shenyun uh.com, and then as soon as you pop open that homepage, it'll direct you right to the film where it is free uh for a limited time.
• 56:14
  And um we would love to hear from you as well.
• 56:17
  There's a contact us uh page, and uh would love to hear your thoughts.
• 56:21
  And if you love it, uh give it a thumbs up on YouTube and um leave a review.
• 56:27
  Well, that's wonderful.
• 56:28
  Steve Lance, my good friend, wonderful to have you on the program, and thank you all out there for listening.
• 56:34
  We value you more than you know.
• 56:36
  We are very appreciative of the America Out Loud Network.
• 56:40
  We'll see you next time.
• 56:40
  I'm Blanquita Cullum.
• 56:42
  This is the National Security Hour.
• 56:44
  Have a good one.