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Alison Stewart: This is all of IT on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Happy Tuesday. It's Giving Tuesday, a day to support the nonprofit organizations that mean a lot to you. We hope that WNYC is one of them. A gift to WNYC. It supports independent journalism and conversations like the ones you hear every day on All Of It. If you haven't given to us yet this year, please do so now. Go to wnyc.org or call 888-376-WNYC. Now, let's get this hour started.

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You've seen ads for Shen Yun Performing Arts on the subway and on billboards. The performance troupe advertises a show celebrating, quote, China Before Communism. Just last week, a former Shen Yun dancer filed a lawsuit accusing the group of using child labor. The lawsuit is the latest development set off by investigative reporting from my next guests. New York Times reporters Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld spoke to former Shen Yun dancers about their experiences with the dance group, and with Falun Gong, the religious movement behind Shen Yun.

These former dancers alleged that Shen Yun worked dancers with a grueling tour schedule and a culture that is discouraged, seeking medical treatment for injuries, and then there was the emotional abuse. They allege that if they tried to quit, Falun Gong leadership often threatened them. This is really a local story. The Falun Gong compound is located in Orange County, New York, and Shen Yun often performs at Lincoln Center. It's scheduled to run at the David H. Koch Theater next March and April. We reached out to Lincoln Center and we did not get a response by airtime. Joining me now to discuss the reporting are Nicole Hong. Hi, Nicole.

Nicole Hong: Hi.

Alison Stewart: And Michael Rothfeld. Hi, Michael.

Michael Rothfeld: Hello.

Alison Stewart: Listeners. We would like to hear from you. Have you been to a Shen Yun performance? What did you think? Do you know anyone who used to be a Shen Yun dancer, or maybe you're a former dancer yourself or have been affiliated in some way? We are taking your calls, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also text to us at that number as well. Michael, when did you first decide that this was worth looking into Shen Yun and Falun Gong?

Michael Rothfeld: Last year, towards the end of the year, a little more than a year ago, someone reached out to us who had some inside knowledge of this movement and told us about various problems that they felt there were with Shen Yun and Falun Gong, both relating to some of the performers who started as children there and grew up on this compound going to school and performing and under what they really said were abusive conditions. It was very compelling, what we were told was happening there, and so from then we started to investigate and look for other people to see if this was true and corroborate what we had heard.

Alison Stewart: Well, there are two stories here or the two separate parts of the story. The Falun Gong part of the story and the Shen Yun part of the story. Let's start with Falun Gong, Nicole. What are the tenets of Falun Gong? It's a Chinese religious movement, and it's behind Shen Yun.

Nicole Hong: It's a spiritual movement that started in China in the early 1990s. It was founded by this guy named Li Hongzhi, so his last name is Li. It's this self-improvement meditation and exercise practice. Their core tenets are truth, compassion, and tolerance, but there are also aspects of the practice that are more mystical and supernatural. For instance, Li tells his followers that advanced practitioners can see through walls and levitate. As the years progressed, he also added some apocalyptic elements, suggesting that there's an end of days coming. As a result, the major spiritual mission for his followers is to save people by telling them that Falun Gong is good.

Alison Stewart: I want to ask about Li. He's described in your reporting as going, he was a grain clerk initially. How do you go from being a grain clerk to being the leader of followers, millions of followers?

Nicole Hong: A lot of his backstory in China is pretty murky, and it's very difficult to get primary documents on that because they're in China, but what we do know is that his movement took off at a time when a lot of these ancient energy-based exercises were becoming very popular in China. It was called the qigong boom at the time. He rose along with this broader movement. It was a very tumultuous time in Chinese history. We spoke to a lot of the early followers who said that they were looking for a moral compass, just like a blueprint for how to be a better person. He was able to offer that.

Alison Stewart: Michael, how does the Chinese government view Falun Gong?

Michael Rothfeld: Well, they've banned Falun Gong in China and have persecuted their followers. There was a big protest in 1999 where a lot of people were beaten in China. That's the signal moment in the persecution of the Falun Gong. Li fled China a couple years before that and was not there when that happened, but that has galvanized the movement ever since then for the last 25 years. Truthfully, the fact that the Chinese government still is very threatened by his popularity because it's an authoritarian regime, and they have tried to stop Shen Yun shows in the United States. People have been arrested recently. There was a case where some people here were trying to get the IRS to look into Shen Yun and Falun Gong. That's a real threat to them.

Alison Stewart: Nicole, what do you think is important for people to understand about Falun Gong?

Nicole Hong: It's one of these things where the way we approached our reporting is that two things can be true at the same time, right? This is a movement that has been persecuted. They are the victims of transnational repression to this day, as Michael said. At the same time, in our reporting, particularly through the lens of Shen Yun, which is kind of the crown jewel of their business empire, right? This is a dance group that is sitting on more than $265 million in assets, right? That this is a group that we have found is engaging in concerning and what their former members describe as abusive and coercive practices.

Alison Stewart: Who joins Shen Yun, Michael?

Michael Rothfeld: It's primarily the children of devoted Falun Gong followers, and they send their children to audition at young ages, as young as 11, we found, in their headquarters in Orange county, which is called Dragon Springs. Informally, it's known as the mountain. That's almost like a biblical reference where you go up to the mountain and Li Hongzhi lives there. He's a God. He's holy. They want their children to go to join him on the mountain and to be near him, and they believe that's a great honor. They're children. In a way, it's like any child who's brought up in a religion, you do what your parents tell you, but over time, as they got older, they started to think for themselves, many of them, and say, well, hey, what's going on here? Why am I here?

Alison Stewart: Nicole, how are the religious beliefs of Falun Gong tied to dance productions? It's a leap.

Nicole Hong: A key message that they repeatedly tell Shen Yun performers is that they are on this urgent mission to save people before the coming destruction, the coming end of days. That to do that, they need to perform a flawless Shen Yun show, because the idea is people will be saved if they are convinced that Falun Gong is good and that the Chinese government is bad.

Li has said the most powerful and effective way to convince people of this is to have them watch a Shen Yun show. It really is important in their religious belief system. For a lot of the young performers, particularly when they're children, they fully buy into this. As a result, they're pushing themselves to their physical and mental limits because they see themselves as part of this kind of higher mission.

Alison Stewart: Michael, in your research, did the dancers, the ones you spoke to, did they truly believe in Falun Gong?

Michael Rothfeld: Many of them did. Yes. In fact, I think most of them did starting out. It was also very hard for them to leave and to actually speak to us and many of them eventually to use their names in our article, but there were things that happened that caused them to have doubts. For instance, they were discouraged by peer pressure from getting medical care for injuries. There was a violinist who hurt his shoulder and he was told that Li Hongzhi put his hands on his shoulder and on his body and said, “Now you're healed.” Of course, he wasn't healed. When it didn't heal, his peers told him, “Hey, that's just because you don't believe. That's why you're not a good enough believer and that's why your injuries didn't heal.” Those sorts of incidents and many others caused some of these people to have doubts.

Alison Stewart: My guests are New York Times reporter Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld. We're discussing their reporting into the alleged abusive practices of Shen Yun Performing Arts Group, including a lawsuit filed last week by a former dancer. You talked about the mountaintop where they lived up in Orange County. How does Falun Gong control the dancers’ exposure to the outside world? People who live on the mountain, the mountain.

Michael Rothfeld: They tell them they can't use cell phones, they can't access outside media, they're not really allowed to watch movies or listen to music. In fact, no music after 1900 is permitted to be performed or listened to. They can only watch things or read things that are approved by Falun. Gong. Many of them do sneak some of this stuff and they have illicit cell phones and we were told there were searches of their rooms to find these things, but yes, it's very controlled environment.

Alison Stewart: I was going to say, I don't know if you can truly do that. If you can keep somebody from the outside world. From the people you spoke to, Nicole, when did they first have a realization that maybe something was wrong?

Nicole Hong: Like Michael said, for some of them it was when they suffered some type of injury that just would not get better and caused long-term damage. That's when they started to lose their faith in the power of Li to heal them. For other people, it was just getting older and seeing what happened to people who did quit the organization. They are often ostracized. They are publicly denounced and attacked. You're supposed to cut off contact with them after they leave. For other people, that was when they started to have doubts of like, why are we treating people this way?

Alison Stewart: We got a text and I'll get you to respond. It says, “Shen Yun is a cult. Just because it's against China, the US Government supports it. It's reversing--“ Wait, sorry. Yes, it's a cult. Let's start there. Is it a cult when you think about the definition of a cult?

Nicole Hong: I guess what I'll say to that is the group has vehemently denied being a cult. That's a word that the Chinese government has used against them in Chinese state propaganda for many decades. The group itself, they've gone back and forth in terms of identifying as a religion in court documents. They have previously said they are a religion. The entity that comprises of the compound in Orange County is registered as a religious organization. That's how I would respond to that.

Michael Rothfeld: Just to add, some of the people we spoke to who were in it, they believe they were in a cult. They say they were in a cult. We don't use that language, but one of them was given a satirical video to watch about the definitions of a cult. Some having a strong leader and some of the indoctrination techniques. He identified with it and actually showed it to some other people. When he was found out, he got kicked out for showing that video around.

Alison Stewart: We got a text that says, “In Northeast Queens where I live, they are now a part of the memorial parade every May. The group is absolutely not connected in any way to past wars of American military was involved, nor have any association with local schools or scout troops that usually march. When I asked the parade organizers one year about this incongruity, I was told they're great dancers. Really? I was also told to take my complaint to local elected officials.” Did you run into that at all?

Nicole Hong: No, although we know that they're very active in parades all around the country. I mean, we've spoken to people who have participated in the Falun Gong marching band, for instance. It's all part of their spiritual mission to spread the message of Falun Gong and convince people to get on board with their belief system.

Alison Stewart: Let's Talk to Maggie. Hi, Maggie. Thanks so much for calling.

Maggie: Hi. Thanks. I live near Middletown, New York, and I'm just curious about the Falun Gong's presence here, because it seems to be growing. Recently, there's a building that The Epoch Times sold to the Falun Gong to a website company called Gan Jing World. There's also this fancy department store that opened in downtown Middletown, which is a kind of rundown downtown. It totally doesn't fit into the character of the town. When I went in there, they started to talk to me about their beliefs. It just seems like more and more little like a coffee shop is being bought by the Falun Gong. There's a lot of flyers with the dancers. I'm just curious what the Middletown, New York, connection is.

Michael Rothfeld: Well, Middletown is probably about 20 minutes from Dragon Springs, the Falun Gong headquarters, and so it's not necessarily the organization itself that's doing all the things you're talking about in Middletown, but their practitioners. I mean they are connected, but many practitioners have settled there because it's so close to what they consider to be this holy place.

I know that the town officials in Middletown were very supportive of a lot of the investments that have happened as a result of the Falun Gong presence there, and including the Gan Jing World building that you mentioned, which is like their version of YouTube, except it's called means clean world in Chinese, and so it doesn't allow any kind of erotica or violence or anything like that.

Alison Stewart: Nicole, I mentioned at the top of the segment the emotional abuse that some of the Shen Yun dancers received. Would you share what some of the. What they were told by people who they worked for, people who led the movement?

Nicole Hong: Yes. I think one of the biggest things is that it really was difficult for them to quit. We know that many of the people we spoke to, when they tried to leave, they were threatened with having to repay the amount of scholarships they got to go to school in the compound. Everyone there gets full tuition, room and board, and they’re basically told, “Okay, if you leave, you need to pay back the value of the scholarships that we gave you, which is tens of thousands of dollars for each year that they were there. That's an example of the kind of coercive tactics that they use.

For the female dancers in particular, there's also a lot of control around their physical bodies. In our article, we talk a lot about how much they controlled their weight, monitored their eating, publicly posted their weights for their peers to see, were berated if they did not lose a sufficient amount of weight, things like that.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk a little about the lawsuit that you wrote about last week. One of the former dancers you spoke to filed a lawsuit last week accusing Shen Yun Performing Arts of forced labor and child trafficking. What's been the response to the lawsuit, Michael?

Michael Rothfeld: Well, they didn't respond when we wrote about it. We asked them for comment. They did. Shen Yun that has posted a response, I don't know if it was yesterday, but very recently, online, and accused her of basically being a communist agent and as well as her husband. She has a dance studio in Taiwan and they've accused her of having that funded by the Chinese government and essentially repeated all of the criticisms of our reporting in this response, which is basically that we've cherry picked a handful of former performers and just told a story that's been influenced by the communist government, which I will say is not the case.

Alison Stewart: You obtained audio recordings from inside Shen Yun?

Nicole Hong: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What insights did these give you for telling your story?

Nicole Hong: They were incredibly helpful. For example, one of the audio recordings was a lecture that Li gave to the students last year. In it he says, “I created the earth.” He says he created the music and dance of mankind. Really using the rhetoric of him as being a God, being a creator. It did give us a lot of insight into just what the dynamic is between him and the performers and how they see him. We were told that when he comes into a room, everyone kind of drops everything to bow to him. A lot of people there really treated him with just extreme reverence and feeling like they could not question any of his teachings.

Alison Stewart: Do the dancers get paid in any way?

Michael Rothfeld: Yes, well, many of them don't get paid their first year, probably most of them on tour, but then they have stipends that get ramped up. It could start very low, like I think $100 a month during the season. It could ramp up to maybe $12,000 for the year or something when they're at the higher end or maybe a little more. It's a very small amount of money and it's certainly not anything approaching a minimum wage.

Of course, Falun Gong, Shen Yun and Falun Gong say this is their students. They're in school, they're learning, this is typical, but the reality is that they are worked as if they are more than full-time employees. The work that they do is in addition to performing, they also load the stages, they carry equipment, some males have at times guarded buses from the communist attacks. While they are in school, it really isn't comparable to any kind of an internship that you might have in other setting.

Alison Stewart: We got a text that says, “Can you talk about its connection to Epoch Times newspaper?”

Nicole Hong: Yes, so Epoch Times is a newspaper that was founded by Falun Gong practitioners around 2000, and similar idea as Shen Yun, actually. The original intent behind Epoch Times is that they felt like mainstream media was not sufficiently covering the persecution of Falun Gong in China. The idea was, okay, let's create a newspaper that will shine a spotlight on this issue and also more generally on China's human rights abuses that people are not paying attention to. Of course, since then, particularly with the first Trump campaign, the newspaper has really taken on this new national prominence. Particularly during the Trump era, Trump's hawkish China message really resonated with a lot of Falun Gong practitioners. Many of them support him.

Alison Stewart: This year, the New York State Department of Labor has opened an inquiry into Shen Yun. Had the state not been aware of this before?

Michael Rothfeld: We don't really know exactly what they were aware of, but it doesn't appear that they did any inquiry into this group, even though they have advertisements that blanket New York and really the entire world. The Labor Department which enforces this law that requires children performers, child performers, anyone under 18 to have a permit and for their employers to abide by certain working conditions relating to education and hours and rests. They, for a long time, haven't done any proactive investigation. They've only responded based on complaints. They said they didn't get any complaints. That may be because many of these people were children. They were from-- so many of them from other countries, and so they didn't necessarily have the awareness or the wherewithal to file complaints, and so nothing was ever looked into.

Alison Stewart: Are there certain protections for Falun Gong and Shen Yun because of its religious organization?

Michael Rothfeld: That may be true. I mean, we're not lawyers, so I mean, I think there are definitely for, in terms of employment for charities, nonprofits, and relating to volunteers, there are some special things that aren't the same as with a regular company and employer. It gets kind of down into the nitty-gritty.

Alison Stewart: Nicole, what questions do you still have about Falun Gong and Shen Yun?

Nicole Hong: I think just looking at, well, number one, Shen Yun has a lot of money. Where is this money going? What is the purpose of having all this money? Then I think we're also just interested in the broader empire. They run a lot of different businesses and entities. Some of them are public about their affiliation with Falun Gong, others are not. That's something else that we are interested in.

Alison Stewart: Anything else you think is important for people to know about either group, Michael?

Michael Rothfeld: Well, I mean, we're still reporting on it, so we're going to have more work coming out. I think one thing, Mr. Li is in his 70s, so it's unclear what will happen with this group if he dies. I assume he will, but I mean since some say he's a God, but I assume he will pass away and then at some point it will be interesting to see what happens.

Alison Stewart: It's fascinating reporting done by Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld from The New York Times. Thank you so much for sharing your reporting. We really appreciate it.

Nicole Hong: Thank you.

Michael Rothfeld: Thank you for having us.