Name: Exposing the CCP's Global Persecution Campaign Against Shen Yun: Jared Madsen
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T06:47:37.000Z
Duration: 27 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Traditional Chinese culture is, you could say is the biggest threat, the existential threat to communism.

Transition words & phrases

Because communism is officially atheist, it doesn't want you to believe in anything outside of communism.

But traditional Chinese culture is the opposite of atheism.

Coming up on British Thought Leaders, Jared Madsen talks about how the Chinese Communist Party persecutes performing arts company Shen Yun.

We grew this off of blood, sweat and tears.

Eighteen years later, we grew this great company.

And when you have all these other interferences, like we need to have 24,7 security of our buses, no other company has this extra expense.

The Chinese Communist Party has put all these blockages in our way and recently they've been, there's been bomb threats.

Jared says Shenyun is just the beginning.

As the CCP increases oppression in the West.

They are trying to use us as almost a litmus test to see how far they can go with, with all of their different tactics.

It's going to go to many different aspects within the US and my guess would be many different countries around the world as well.

Today I'm delighted to be sitting down with Jared Madsen, master of ceremonies at Shenzhen.

I'm sure a lot of people have heard of Shen Yun, but maybe some haven't.

Can you start by giving us an introduction?

That's the art form that we use in the show.

So these are dance pieces, but they take us through different dynasties in China.

We see stories in China, we, we see ancient battles.

We have a digital backdrop that will really take us to all throughout China.

So basically by coming to this two plus hour show, you get a crash course in traditional Chinese culture.

You get to see all different types of dances, different ethnic dances, folk dances.

You get to learn about different stories.

And each year we actually have an all new production.

So we have new dances, we have new stories.

They're all old stories, but we have new stories each year.

So decades ago, after the communists took over in China, they had many movements.

Right, revolution against their own culture.

Now we have to understand that for thousands of years Chinese people say their culture goes back 5,000 years.

So for thousands of years you had this deep belief in the divine, whether it was Buddhism, Taoism, all different spiritual practices.

Even in ancient times, they would call China the land of the divine.

Again, not just one spiritual practice, all different spiritual practices, very spiritual culture.

Dynasty after dynasty, some were more Buddhist, some were more Taoist.

Then you hit communism, Communism takes over.

It can't be like China before that was accepting of all different ideas and being officially atheist.

They destroyed many aspects of the culture, but especially some of the religious and spiritual aspects.

But since, since the spiritual faith, spiritual practices, you found deep in many aspects of the culture, a lot of the culture was destroyed.

So that's why we say now, if you want to see traditional Chinese dance, you can't really see that in China anymore.

We're the ones who are reviving classical Chinese dance, trying to get some idea of how big Chinese culture is.

It's not just kind of the Han, what's in Beijing, there's so much more.

In terms of ethnicity, there's actually a lot of different ethnic groups in China.

So the Han Chinese are going to be the predominantly dominant, about 90% of the country.

But then you also have pockets of other ethnic groups.

These ethnic groups have dances that are very unique to themselves.

Our main thing is classical Chinese dance, which, to describe classical Chinese dance, you can think gymnastics and acrobatics.

A lot of those moves actually came from classical Chinese dance.

We see those in China for thousands of years.

Right in the Western world, to the rest of the world, all the gymnastics and acrobatics seem like it's only several decades old.

And then as well, you have different ethnic groups.

It's not necessarily attached to a particular ethnic group in China, but

it's also another very different style of dance.

So when you come and see Shen Yun, you're going to predominantly see classical Chinese dance, but

then you'll also see ethnic dances and folk dances.

So you get a wide variety of dance styles.

You come on during the show and present the pieces.

One of the things you say is you can't see a show like this in China.

And there's obviously dance troupes In China.

So I would say say the difference is there's, there's a few differences.

One is going to be that we talk a little bit about.

We have one to two pieces about Falun Gong where it's, it's, it's showing, we're showing 5,000 years of Chinese history, including what's happening present day.

So we'll show one piece that, that talks about the practice and some of the persecution that's going on in China.

But really what we're seeing is 90 plus percent of the show is rooted in traditional Chinese culture.

So nowadays what happens in China is they maybe take some of the Chinese dance movements, they'll combine it with modern dance.

So it's already not even really pure classical Chinese dance.

We're going for pure classical Chinese dance.

And then the, they're not really doing the classical stories, the different dynasties.

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Exposing the CCP's Global Persecution Campaign Against Shen Yun: Jared Madsen

absolutely

practice

journey

ancient