In the nineteen years since Shen Yun Performing Arts was founded, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used every kind of thuggish tactic to disrupt and sabotage its performances. To date, more than 130 incidents of CCP interference with Shen Yun shows have been documented across 38 countries worldwide. In the United States, this sabotage and these attacks have, since last August, escalated into a form of unrestricted warfare encompassing legal warfare, public-opinion warfare, and other tactics.

Most shocking of all, Shen Yun's February 20 performance this year at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was targeted by a CCP-linked hoax bomb threat -- an act that has clearly crossed into terrorism.

Why is the CCP so fanatically bent on suppressing Shen Yun? Not everyone in the West fully understands the reason.

As is widely known, the CCP is the largest totalitarian regime in the world today, and it views any thought or culture independent of its official ideology as a threat to its rule -- especially voices that directly criticize, expose, or resist it. The CCP therefore bans any thought or culture that diverges from official ideology and refuses to recognize any independent cultural form or activity. It spares no effort in suppressing voices that criticize, expose, or resist it, seeking to destroy them utterly even when they exist outside China. Shen Yun, whose mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture and present the China that existed before the CCP, has built an ever-growing and widespread influence in the Western world. This has not only struck a deep nerve with the CCP but also poses a powerful challenge to its destruction of traditional Chinese culture -- making it, arguably, the voice the CCP finds most threatening and fears most. This is why the CCP spares no effort to suppress Shen Yun.

At present, although the CCP's sabotage and attacks on Shen Yun have drawn the attention of Western society, many people have not yet fully recognized that this suppression in fact constitutes a threat and a challenge to Western democracy.

This is neither an exaggeration nor alarmism.

What is democracy? Is not one of its basic principles the protection of freedom of belief and freedom of speech? As is well known, in Western countries led by the United States, as long as you obey the law, any religious belief and any speech has a legitimate right to exist; any person or group may promote and spread their beliefs and voice their own views and opinions, and no one has the right to forbid others from doing so. Yet the CCP's sabotage and attacks on Shen Yun are aimed precisely at stopping Shen Yun from promoting traditional Chinese culture and from exposing the CCP's bloody persecution of Falun Gong, in hopes of completely eliminating Shen Yun's and Falun Gong's voice and influence in the Western world. If this is not trampling on the West's freedom of belief and speech, what is it? If this is not a threat and challenge to Western democracy, what is it?

The CCP's sabotage and attacks on Shen Yun extend its persecution of Falun Gong practitioners on Chinese soil overseas -- both a transnational form of repression against overseas Falun Gong practitioners and an important part of the CCP's broader strategy of infiltrating Western countries in order to undermine Western democratic systems from within. As a result, the victims are by no means limited to Shen Yun Performing Arts and overseas Falun Gong practitioners; they also include the people of Western countries, and the very institutional foundations of Western nations are being threatened.

As Brian Taef, CEO of the American company Millennial, has pointed out: "If foreign dictators use tactics to infiltrate our media, suppress dissidents, and shape public perception, the foundations of our republic will be threatened." "What has happened to Shen Yun is not just a China issue -- it's an American issue too. If we allow a foreign adversary to decide who can and cannot speak in this country, we are no longer a free nation. If this continues, the consequences will be severe. As American journalists become tools for suppressing those who challenge the CCP, freedom of speech will suffer. If the media can be weaponized against an organization like Shen Yun, what's to stop the same tactics from being used against ordinary Americans?"

Faced with the CCP's transnational suppression of Shen Yun, Western nations confront a stern test: whether to defend the values of Western democracy and the free world, or to allow the CCP to dictate what the public may and may not hear. Western governments and peoples must never allow the CCP to run amok on their own soil, using whatever means necessary to sabotage and attack Shen Yun. This is not only to protect the human rights of Shen Yun and overseas Falun Gong practitioners, but also to resist the CCP's infiltration and subversion of Western society and to safeguard Western democratic institutions.

Encouragingly, the CCP's despicable sabotage and attacks on Shen Yun have already drawn strong condemnation from across Western society.

On March 17, in response to the bomb threat against Shen Yun's Washington, D.C. performance, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt stated clearly: "Interference will not be tolerated. This administration takes this very seriously and will hold those responsible accountable. We firmly condemn any violence or threat of violence against American institutions."

On February 6, British Member of Parliament Jim Shannon condemned the CCP for extending its persecution of Falun Gong overseas, calling on the British government to launch an urgent investigation to protect Falun Gong practitioners and Shen Yun from interference.

On February 21, in response to the CCP's interference with Shen Yun, U.S. Representative Lance Gooden of Texas wrote on X: "The CCP has shamelessly issued bomb threats against Shen Yun around the world multiple times. Yesterday's hoax bomb threat at the Kennedy Center was merely the latest act of intimidation." Gooden also said: "The CCP's sabotage will ultimately fail. Shen Yun will continue to show people an authentic Chinese culture untouched by communism."

Diana London, a veteran American political strategist and Newsmax columnist, has keen insight into the CCP's global influence strategy. She has advised President Trump to counter the CCP's legal warfare against Shen Yun and its infiltration of American influence through legislation and public support. If Trump were to heed Diana's advice, decisive action by the U.S. government to strengthen protection for Shen Yun, expose the CCP's propaganda tactics, and legislate against its legal warfare would not only defend Shen Yun but also set an example for democratic values worldwide.

As Diana put it, this battle is a contest between freedom and tyranny, and its outcome will shape the global landscape of the 21st century.