How Shen Yun Tapped Religious Fervor to Make $266 Million

The dance group has accumulated enormous wealth, in large part by getting followers of the Falun Gong religious movement to work for free and pay its bills.

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• Shen Yun Performing Arts, which stages hundreds of shows around the world each year, features dance pieces that spread the religious message of Falun Gong.Credit...The New York Times

By Michael Rothfeld and Nicole Hong

The reporters examined thousands of pages of records, including internal communications, and interviewed dozens of people about the finances of the dance group Shen Yun and the Falun Gong religious movement.

Over the past decade, the dance group Shen Yun Performing Arts has made money at a staggering rate.

The group had $60 million in 2015.

It had $144 million by 2019.

And by the end of last year, tax records show, it had more than a quarter of a billion dollars, stockpiling wealth at a pace that would be extraordinary for any company, let alone a nonprofit dance group from Orange County, N.Y.

Operated by Falun Gong, the persecuted Chinese religious movement, Shen Yun’s success flows in part from its ability to pack venues worldwide — while exploiting young, low-paid performers with little regard for their health or well-being.

But it also is a token of the power that Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, has wielded over his followers. In the name of fighting communism, and obeying Mr. Li’s mystical teachings, they have created a global network to glorify him and enrich his movement.

Under Mr. Li’s direct leadership, Shen Yun has become a repository of vast wealth for Falun Gong, often accumulating money at the expense of its loyal adherents, a New York Times investigation has found.

It has raked in funds through ticket sales — nearly $39 million in 2023 alone — but also by using religious fealty to command the free labor of its followers. It has received tens of millions of dollars more in ways that may have crossed legal or ethical lines, The Times found.