Dance troupe, Shen Yun, says China may be behind bomb threat against Anthony Albanese’s residence

Almost exactly a year ago, one of Washington’s biggest performance centres, the Kennedy Centre, was evacuated after a bomb threat was made against a Chinese dance troupe known as Shen Yun.

On Tuesday, a similar threat against Shen Yun forced Anthony Albanese to flee from his Canberra residence, The Lodge.

The two events suggest the Prime Minister has been inadvertently dragged into a global campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to stamp out one of the few persistent internal challenges to its rule.

Almost anyone using the internet over the past few months might have come across ads for Shen Yun, traditional Chinese dancers described as “absolutely the number 1 show in the world” and “5000 years of civilisation reborn”.

What most people may not realise is the dance troupe was created by the Falun Gong, a quasi-religious group that opposes the Chinese Communist Party from inside and outside China.

The New York-based dancers, who begin an Australia tour on Wednesday at the Gold Coast, are part of a global public relations campaign designed to undermine the CCP.

Persecution

China’s rulers take the threat seriously, and have persecuted Falun Gong members since 1999.

Members face harassment, arrest, detention and long prison terms. Some have been killed in custody and had their organs removed before and after execution for medical patients, although the Chinese government denies organ harvesting, according to an official British report updated last month.

Falun Gong publicises the bomb threats to draw attention to its conflict with the CCP. A newspaper associated with the group, the Epoch Times, was the first to report the dance company received Chinese-language emails that claimed nitroglycerin explosives had been placed around The Lodge.

Secure block

Emails sent on February 10 and on February 22, given to the Australian Federal Police on Tuesday, stated “blood will flow like a river”. “If you insist on proceeding with the performance, then the Prime Minister’s Lodge will be blown into ruins,” one said.

Even though it seemed unlikely saboteurs could have snuck onto a highly secure block of land within sight of one of Canberra’s busiest highways, the threat was taken seriously enough to whisk the Prime Minister to safety for a few hours.

The source of the threat is of acute interest in Canberra, where the Labor Government has concentrated on improving relations with China after a chill set in during the pandemic.

A violent threat to the Prime Minister’s residence by a foreign power would be extreme act, according to a former top intelligence official, Ross Babbage.

“If this has been instigated by someone or some organisation closely affiliated with the Chinese government, that’s a very serious issue indeed,” he told The Nightly.

Threats around the world

Last year, on February 23, the Kennedy Centre in Washington was evacuated in the cold of winter.

While marketed as more cultural than political, Shen Yun performances include enactments of organ harvesting and persecution of Falun Gong members, who practice a form of meditation and exercise and are considered even by some anti-Communist Chinese as a cult.

“Whoever is sending these threats is doing so in a co-ordinated manner and likely has ties back to Beijing,” a Falun Gong executive said after the Kennedy Centre incident.

No explosives were found the Kennedy Centre or The Lodge.

There have been other bomb threats too, including at a theatre in Vancouver in March, 2024, across the US, in France, Italy, Poland, England and Taiwan, according to Falun Gong. In the US, Shen Yun advertises so heavily that comedians have started joking about being stalked.

It is difficult from the outside to assess how serious the threat is to Shen Yun. There are no reports of any dancers being assassinated or injured, although three people have been charged in Canberra with spying on a Buddhist group banned in China, Guan Yin Citta, on behalf of the Chinese government.

The intelligence services will take any threat to Mr Albanese’s life extremely seriously, which means the Shen Yun bomb hoax is likely to receive far more scrutiny than it would otherwise.