Living in the greater Los Angeles live entertainment marketplace, I have for years been seeing ads for Shen Yun, the Chinese dance troupe show that’s kindasorta like Stomp meets Cirque du Soliel. The ads have always been very colorful, and I’ve always gotten a somewhat “culty” vibe from them, a vibe that was vindicated a couple of years ago when I learned of their connection to Falun Gong. I have no particular brief against (or for) Falun Gong, although the dance company’s reticence about the connection has always struck me as suspect. Nor do I view the CCP as being a particular threat to me as an American, at least not in the way I view Russia. But there appears to be a new wrinkle in Shen Yun’s marketing strategy.
For the first time, their ads contain the tagline China Before Communism (as in: this show depicts Chinese culture from before Communism in China was a thing, not in the sense of China Before Dishonor! or China Before the Rest of Asia!). This, as much as the blurred affiliation with Falun Gong, triggers my cynic reflex. The show, as far as I can tell, has ALWAYS been made up of elements that predate the CCP, but they’ve never before made a point of mentioning the fact in their marketing materials, suggesting to me that they’re not against communism per se, so much as opposed to the current crowd at the top of the CCP. Or perhaps, they’re hopping onto the anti-China bandwagon that was launched when the America-hating fuckstick was befouling the Oval Office with his presence, and betting that this approach would be a more effective way of drawing in the marks.
What does anybody else think? The floor is open for discussion (although the floors at Cafe Society, Great Debates, or Politics and Elections might be more appropriate floors. I invite correction from the mods).
(N.B. It’s possible that they’ve been mentioning the “Before Communism” thing in other markets for years; I wouldn’t know.)
They appear here in Chicago at least once a year, and are currently using that sort of language in their ads here, too, which they hadn’t in the past. This is from their website which is promoting their performances in Chicago, which wrapped up last weekend:
I don’t know anything about Shen Yun, but I’ll point out that the Falun Gong also runs the far-right rag The Epoch Times, which is massively pro-Trump, among other things.
The whole edifice is political, so injecting some of that into Shen Yun seems wholly expected and consistent with past behavior. As for their overall strategy… I have no idea.
I noticed that tagline in this year’s ads as well here in San Francisco.
My cynical self wants to say that pre-Communist China was never like that either, and that those kinds of displays are just made up to stimulate a fake nostalgia, but I don’t know absolutely that this is true. I wonder which 5 seconds of time during post-Imperial* China that they are harking back to – the early 20’s maybe? Before 1925 when Sun Yat-Sen was still alive? Before the massively corrupt and authoritarian Nanjing government was established? Before the Japanese incursions?
*Surely they are not harking back to Imperial China? Would they?
I was upset to see that they were at the Kennedy Center in DC, which I know is not really a government venue but seems to legitimize them, giving them US government sanction.
Here’s one of their beliefs that most bothers me:
"While practitioners are instructed to be opaque about [founder] Li’s teaching with the uninitiated, what can be found about Falun Gong’s beliefs is a bit concerning. Li has claimed that alien life forms intend to displace humanity with clones and that scientific development is the result of alien interference. He has further claimed that race-mixing in humans is an alien plot to drive humanity further from God and that heaven is racially segregated. Li apparently so despises miscegenation that he has been recorded as saying: “When a child is born from an interracial marriage, that child does not have a heavenly kingdom to go to.”
While I saw this in a few places, and even repeated it myself, when I looked into it I had trouble actually making the connection. I couldn’t find any kind of primary source to validate it. Is it possible this is just a rumor?
How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine.
Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire.
ISTM that “Communist” is essentially a pejorative at this point in American culture (arguably always has been).
So I can understand a tagline like that.
While China isn’t actually very communist now, certain right-wing sources make a point of saying *Communist* China because of the baggage of the word. Because most of the Authoritarian or Fascist actions of the CCP are things they would be cool with in the US and elsewhere (e.g. Hungary, Russia). Calling them Communist is an easy way of cementing that they are the bad guys.
So anyway the tagline is just saying “Don’t worry; you’re not a Commie if you watch this!”
The racist stuff about interracial relationships is fuckdumb though ofc.
Not that I subscribe to his beliefs in the least, but since I’m a mixed-race person and also in a mixed-race marriage, he sees me as part of an alien plot, and he despises me and my kids.
But really, it’s a subject that some people just don’t get. I’ve had to deal with dismissals like “you’re being too sensitive” or “I don’t understand why it should bother you”.
Communism is to economic system as antisemitism is to language family. The words have an etymology only vaguely associated with current meaning.
It has been a long lime since the largest-by-far ruling communist party – of course, that of China – rejected the idea of a mixed economy. North Korea isn’t far behind there:
I have condemned what the Chinese government is doing to the Uighurs and their culture many times on this forum.
However calling it “Communism” is neither accurate nor makes it any better or worse.
That’s why a lot of media here in Europe doesn’t bother to mention “Communist” all the time, because why would you? But in the US, it’s still the McCarthy boogieman, so it gets a *lot* of emphasis.
And, as I say, it’s also a useful distinction for those who would like to paint China’s repression and lack of human rights as evil, but Russia’s repression and lack of human rights as just good ol’ fashioned “strength”. (FTR I condemn both…this is not a whatabout).
There are five countries with ruling communist parties: China, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, and Laos. I mention it in connection with those.
As to whether there is anything differentiating the five, from other dictatorships, one thing I’m noticing is official atheism.
As for Shen Yun, I haven’t seen it but would like to someday. This is not because I expect to be won over to their POV. I understand the show to have political content and think the thread subject tagline fairly prepares the audience for that.