Officials from the Chinese Consulate in Vancouver met with a city hall official in April to pressure the city to not allow Shen Yun to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which is owned by the City of Vancouver.
The news comes as local Shen Yun presenters say the company is facing an aggressive campaign of intimidation and interference by the CCP, which includes hoax bomb threats and other tactics to pressure venues to cancel the shows.
The Queen Elizabeth Theatre was also a target of hoax bomb threats prior to Shen Yun’s April 8–12 run, but the theatre allowed the shows to proceed after the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) confirmed the threats were not credible. The VPD’s Cybercrime Unit determined that the phone number associated with the email account from which the threats were sent is based in China.
Shen Yun was formed in 2006 by leading Chinese artists with a mission to revive China’s traditional culture that was diminished under communist rule. The company’s artists are practitioners of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation practice based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance that has been persecuted since 1999 by the atheistic CCP, fearing the practice’s popularity.
Meeting
The Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which has hosted Shen Yun for years, is owned by the City of Vancouver and operated by the Vancouver Civic Theatres.A City of Vancouver spokesperson told The Epoch Times that during the early April meeting between city staff and Chinese officials, “a range of cultural topics were discussed, including the Shen Yun production.”
“Staff may, from time to time, meet with representatives of consulates for information-sharing purposes. These conversations are high-level and do not involve policy decisions or commitments,” the spokesperson said, adding that the city doesn’t “censor or limit lawful freedom of expression within its venues.”
The spokesperson added that city officials collaborate with local police regularly to ensure safety at the venues owned by the city.
Although the spokesperson wouldn’t get into what Chinese officials were asking for specifically regarding Shen Yun, sources who spoke to Global News said the consulate wanted the shows to be cancelled.
Former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart said it’s very serious that the Chinese Consulate is now directly targeting the civil service with its interference activities, adding that the mayor and the city council should take the issue very seriously.
“What’s worrying to me is the level of interference. Taking pot shots at politicians is one thing, but starting to infiltrate within the civil service and directly intimidating civil servants, I haven’t heard of that before,” Stewart, who is now an associate professor at the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy, told Global News.
“So this is perhaps an emboldened move by the consulate, if they are actively going in and trying to change city operations, bypassing politicians, bypassing political avenues, and doing this internally.”
Stewart, who has been outspoken about Beijing’s rights violations and supports Taiwan’s independence, was himself a target of the CCP in Vancouver’s 2022 mayoral election, in which he lost his bid for re-election. The revelation came amidst heightened media scrutiny into Chinese interference in Canadian democracy that, amid pressure by opposition parties, led to the federal government mandating a public inquiry into foreign interference in 2023.
The Epoch Times contacted the Prime Minister's Office, Global Affairs Canada, and Public Safety Canada for comments regarding the new revelations in Vancouver, but didn’t immediately hear back.
Joel Chipkar, a spokesperson with the Falun Dafa Association of Canada, said the Chinese Consulate's attempt to interfere with Shen Yun in Vancouver is "part of a blatant interference campaign in a host state by a foreign regime to silence critics here in Canada."
“There was never a doubt in our minds that theatres here in Canada were being pressured by the Chinese Communist Party to cancel Shen Yun, ” Chipkar said. “We now have a smoking gun.”
Chipkar said the association applauds Vancouver Civic Theatres for not caving in to the CCP’s pressure tactics. He called on Canadian officials to publicly condemn the CCP’s transnational repression against Shen Yun and Falun Dafa in Canada, as well as declare the Chinese Consulate officials responsible for the interference efforts as persona non grata and have them expelled.
Foreign Interference at All Levels
The foreign interference public inquiry said in its final report in 2025 that Beijing is the “most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions.” It added that foreign interference activities target all levels of government and civil society groups in Canada.
Prue, previously an Ontario MPP for 13 years, said the Toronto Chinese Consulate sent him a letter last year after the city had raised a Falun Dafa flag asking him to stop supporting Falun Dafa.
“I have never been told by a foreign authority or anyone in Canada to stop saying what I believe is true,” Prue said on April 30, as his town once again raised the Falun Dafa flag in a public ceremony.
Interference With Shen Yun
As well as bomb threats, there have been many other attempts to interfere with and undermine Shen Yun that organizers say are linked to Beijing, including slashed tires on the buses carrying the artists and smear campaigns.Shen Yun organizers say the company has been targeted more than 150 times over the past two years by fake bomb threats in an attempt to have its shows cancelled.