Bribery Attempt Exposed Chinese Influence Network in US; In-Depth Journalist Reveals the Real Target

He was attempting to bribe this IRS agent to try to get him to revoke Shen Yun Performing Arts' nonprofit status. Little did he know that IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent. And that subsequently led to, you might be familiar with the mayor of Arcadia. Her case stemmed from John Chen that was able to open up that investigation and lead to her indictment. For years, a performing arts dance company touring American stages with huge success has also faced protests, threats, and waves of critical press coverage. Was it ordinary scrutiny or something else? Today we're joined by Steve Lance, NTD's Washington Bureau Chief and host of Capital Report, who served as executive producer on the documentary, Unbroken, the untold story of Shen Yun. In this episode, we'll explore what his investigation found, the claims connecting foreign influence operations to the campaign against the group, and what he reveals about how outside pressure can work through American institutions. This is Bay Area Innovators, and I'm your host, Steve Vispas. Steve, welcome to Bay Area Innovators. Steve, thank you so much for having me. Well, great to have you here. So you're running the Washington, D.C. Bureau. You're also hosting Capital Reports. And we recently just came back from San Francisco where we had the red carpet screening of Unbroken, which you're the executive producer. Why did you make this movie? Well, it's such an important topic, and having a general understanding of Shen Yun performing arts over the years, I've seen the performance and many times it's beautiful. And I thought that I really understood it. And then I started to see that the New York Times took a sort of a peculiar interest in the group. It was maybe one article attacking them, two, three, then four, five started to roll around, and it really caught my attention. It's an extraordinary amount of editorial attention for the New York Times to give to anybody, let alone a performing arts group based in New York. And so we decided to do a little bit more digging and reach out to Shen Yun to hear their side of the story. And we were pleasantly surprised how gracious they were to open up their doors to us, to their campus, where they train, their facilities. As you can see in the film, if you haven't seen it yet, you'll see we traveled around the world with them to multiple theaters. And we had no idea what this would actually come to be. To be honest with you, we thought that it was just gonna be a special report or a news report in the beginning. And then it sort of took on a life of its own. We just started asking for a little bit of access and were granted and more and more. And we're very grateful to Shen Yun for really opening the doors and the Browdy family for letting us into their life for about a year. It wasn't easy for them, but that's how important this story was for them to tell. And so we're seeing the effects of that. As you mentioned, the San Francisco screening, talking to the folks afterwards, and the stories of folks that have introduced Unbroken to people and then they go and see a Shen Yun performance after seeing it. So it's been really rewarding and I'm really happy to be here. Now, there are some surprising elements in the movie. And the first one that comes to mind was there were protests in New York against Shen Yun and people are passing out these flyers about not seeing Shen Yun and all that. And there's some investigation to see who's behind those protests. And can you talk about that? Because that stood out for me. Yeah, so the scene that you're talking about was actually opening night for Shen Yun at Lincoln Center. The Lincoln Center performance is sort of the crown jewel of the tour. Broadway, New York City, cultural mecca, performing arts hub. And so it was about, we were there to interview some of the performers and get some backstage footage as they're warming up on opening night. And about an hour before the performance, we noticed a protest, sort of people with the sandwich boards and handing out leaflets. And they were on the sandwich boards quoting the New York Times articles. And then they were passing out leaflets from the New York Times articles. And it was sort of odd. So we just approached them and asked them. And as you can see in the film, they had no idea what they were handing out. They were acting a little bit dodgy. There was a Chinese gentleman sort of lingering in the shadows, didn't wanna be seen on camera. He was the one that was replenishing their material. And so it was a very interesting encounter that sort of led us down this trail where we started to investigate who these folks were. And we started to link some sightings of them in another part of New York City over in Flushing, there's a big Chinese population there. And there was another person, a Chinese gentleman that was handing out the same flyers and had the same billboards or boards, sandwich boards. And somebody, one of our investigative folks was able to get him on camera asking him why he's there and who's paying him. And he actually spilled the beans, a gentleman named Michael Chu. And so we got him on footage going back to Michael Chu's office, that's where he supplies the boards. And he is a known entity or quantity connected directly to the Chinese Communist Party's various United Front groups. One of our investigative reporters at the Epoch Media Group, you're with Epoch Times, I'm on the NTD side. Joshua Phillip was very familiar with his dealings, has been following him for a long time. So we went and interviewed Josh to find out more about him. So what was the reaction from, did you talk to the Shen Yun dancers, to the Shen Yun staff? What was their reaction when they found this incident? And there's others too in the movie that happened, but how did they feel about it? Well, I think because of the way the Chinese Communist Party operates with these covert influence operations, they're covert, they're asymmetric. They might leave a breadcrumb here and there, but there's no fingerprints usually. And so it's very hard to track anything. From a counterintelligence perspective, it makes these types of operations really hard to even go after. So now we have tangible evidence and can put it together, but it's so complicated as you can see in the film, there's so many moving pieces. So it was actually a big challenge a lot of material didn't make it in to not overwhelm the viewer and to be able to sort of simplify it and make sense out of it all. So I think that we were all very grateful that we were able to do that. Well, I watched it three times at least and I understand more each time because indeed it's not easy to portray this kind of connections that happen. Now, what happened after that? After you discovered this incident, I think there were others that connected with the Chinese Communist Party, right? Yeah, so there was a leaked memo that was right around, I think, 2022 coming out of the MSS, which is the Ministry of State Security, equivalent to China's version of the CIA. And it was basically a blueprint of everything that we had just discovered. Wow. Yeah, including down to the very name of a YouTuber who they were validating and wanted to put wind in his sails, a gentleman named Yu Chao. And this is somebody who took to YouTube prior to the New York Times series of 12 hit pieces against Shen Yun, claiming that he had always wanted to be a spy, saying this openly. Meantime, you have this leaked memo from China mentioning him to involve him in their influence operations. And he was boasting about being the primary source for the New York Times upcoming reports that had not been released yet. So how would he know that they were coming if he wasn't involved? And so, yeah, a lot of things sort of came together. We were talking about these covert influence. I think another way to describe it is a full spectrum covert influence operation where China literally just throws the kitchen sink at its target and to see what works and see what sticks. And there were so many moving pieces and there continue to be to this day because actually, we like to say that this isn't just about Shen Yun. In fact, this is a blueprint of how they can operate and they're actually operating like this, whether it's in the IP space, using lawfare to tie up our tech companies and other various organizations. They've really mastered this, unfortunately. And not to mention AI, which is now booming everywhere around the world and China is a big player in that. Now, there is one part of the movie that really stuck with me and I wanna ask you to talk about it is I think there's a directive from Xi Jinping himself where he says use the American institutions against, maybe not the exact words, but against the America themselves. So can you talk about that? How does that play into their whole thing? It's actually very insidious. I believe the line was procure grain from the enemy. Yes. And what that means is use the enemy, in this case, the United States, use their own institutions to turn them on themselves. And so what we have seen through our investigation in this one case study is that through those directives, actually down to the identical process that took place using influencers to turn the United States government on the Falun Gong community and Falun Gong related entities, Shen Yun being one of those, they've done that. There was a case we mentioned in the film of John Chen. Yes. He was a Chinese spy who attempted to approach who he thought was an IRS agent. Little did he know that IRS agent was an undercover FBI agent. And he was attempting to bribe this IRS agent to try to get him to revoke Shen Yun Performing Arts nonprofit status. And that's one example of them leveraging our institutions. These are institutions that we put a lot of trust and faith in in our country to do what's right. And so fortunately the FBI was ready for that. And that subsequently led to, you might be familiar with the mayor of Arcadia out here, Ms. Wong, I believe it was. Her case stemmed from John Chen. There was a series of other associates that he had that were working in tandem with that mayor. And so that was able to open up that investigation and lead to her indictment. Now the New York Times published, was it 12 articles soon after this campaign from Beijing started? And I think you called the New York Times to ask him some of the specific questions. How far did you get into communicating with them? Well, unfortunately they didn't want to answer any of our questions. Which, you know, I think they were very reasonable. In the film you saw the question posed to him asking if he had reached out to any of the treating physicians to the Shen Yun performers. One of the big claims that the New York Times had in their reporting was that some of these dancers were being denied medical treatment. And so that was something that, you know, when I first saw that actually, that, you know, caused me to think, if this is true, we should ask about it, right? That would be the right thing to do. And when I, you know, went to Shen Yun's training, you know, facilities and saw, you know, these are state of the art, very clean, and you could just totally see that everybody there was, you know, very healthy, happy, and it wasn't contrived, it wasn't fake. You know, you can tell if that was the case. You know, I like to joke around, you see, when you watch the film, you can't fake those smiles, right? And so that was exactly what I saw, and you could feel it. And so after talking to the vice president of Shen Yun, Ying Chen, and looking at a treasure trove of documents showing treatment, whether it was, you know, MRIs, surgeries, MCLs, I mean, you name it. I mean, these are, it's not that they don't get injured, right, of course, these are professional athletes dancing at an extremely high level. So injuries are prone to happen. The question is, what do you do about them? And, you know, I was shocked to see, I asked Ying Chen if, she showed them to the New York Times, and she said, we gave them to them prior to their reporting, and then offered that to them, and they, you know, didn't wanna hear it. They didn't wanna hear it, and we also spoke to one of the treating physicians. He's a world-class physician, trained at New England Baptist for orthopedics, anybody knows, in Boston, Massachusetts. That's where the Boston Celtics get treated, a really well-known good doctor in New Jersey that treats these folks, and, you know, I asked him point blank, I said, did the New York Times ever reach out to you? And he said, no, they didn't. And I just found that very interesting. I think you were asked today, during the panel discussion in San Francisco, about how is it that the New York Times can be controlled, or at least it seems that they are being controlled in some way by the Chinese government. How can that be? I know, it's hard to believe, right? It's such an American institution that has- And it's very powerful. Why would they even need their help if they're the biggest newspaper in the country? Well, you know, that's a good question. There's a lot of people that do business in China and want access to that, you know, over a billion people population. A lot of people see dollar signs when they see, you know, the Chinese market. And what they will do to get into that market is sometimes against their, you know, their conscience. And, you know, the New York Times has a very big Chinese language edition. They also maintain a substantial Beijing bureau. The executive editor of the New York Times made his chops before he became executive editor in the early 2000s as the Beijing bureau chief. And so I'm sure that he is very well-connected there. I don't know what those connections may amount to, but it's something that is, you know, something we should acknowledge. And there's also different advertisements. There's something called an advertorial where, you know, the China Daily, the state-run media inside of China can buy advertisements in overseas publications, and they pose as editorials, but there's a little fine print that calls them an advertorial. And if it's a full page, that can cost, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, and that all adds up. So there could be some type of monetary interest involved. You also have folks that, you know, might be, you know, something that we call agents of influence. One of the co-authors on these articles, her name is Nicole Hong. Her father, George Hong, we did some digging. This wasn't in the film, but it's worth mentioning, is, you know, connected to the Chinese Communist Party's United Front work department in an overseas scholar capacity. And so when you're connected at that level, typically there's a line that gets towed because they do, the Chinese government looks at Shen Yun and Falun Gong as public enemy number one. And so sort of the propaganda that comes down trickles through all of these organizations, especially the United Front. So there's a variety of reasons as to why the New York Times could, you know, be towing this line and carrying water for Beijing. Now, one thing you mentioned made me think of an incident that we covered. We covered the biolab that was found in Ridley, California, and another one in Las Vegas. And the owners of the biolab were saying that this is just a regular warehouse, you know, where we keep all these medicines or all these files. But the employees went there, the city officials, the moment they entered the door, they felt this horrible smell. This whole environment gave them a bad feeling. So now you can't replace that immediate feeling. Like you mentioned, you went to Shen Yun and you were greeted by the person and everything was clean and everything was great. Now, in this case, it was just the opposite. You know, it was just this horrible feeling. So those are things that's kind of hard to fake, to say, you know, everything is good, but when you go there, you see this disaster. So it's, can you talk more about your visit to the campus and what else you saw? Wow, yeah, so I had no idea what to expect. And you get a little bit of a glimpse in the film, traditional Tang Dynasty style temples with these beautiful carvings. And it was just, you know, the rolling hills and a drum tower and a bell tower, all part of sort of right there in the heart of Shen Yun's, you know, campus where they study and train. And these are replicas of Tang Dynasty's construction in some way or pretty close, right? From what I understand, I have not seen an actual Tang Dynasty temple, but as it was described to me, that's what it is. And, you know, I've been to Taiwan, I've been to Japan, I've seen temples, I've never seen anything like these. It was just, yeah, it's really a remarkable property. That they have there and their training facilities, state-of-the-art, they had, you know, an orchestra concert hall. They have a full theater inside where, you know, the dancers are able to rehearse on a, you know, a theater stage where they would, you know, when they tour. And yeah, it was really a remarkable experience for me to see how the, you know, performers are treated, what their day-to-day life is like. That day, I actually had a consultant, a film consultant with me, who had never been introduced to Shen Yun, didn't really know much about any of their operation. And, you know, he was taking the tour with us and we were there on background and, you know, trying to get a better understanding for, you know, the organization. And I remember, because we weren't there to film, we were in the cafeteria and we had just got lunch and we bumped into Jesse and Lucas Browdy, the two boys in the film. And, you know, it was just like a big, hey, you know, what are you doing here? You know, and, you know, that bright smile. And I remember walking away from them and looking at the consultant and saying, you know, so much for abuse, you know, you can't fake that smile. And he was just like 100%. Yes. Yeah. What do you hope to accomplish with the screening here in San Francisco? Where, of course, there's maybe 40% Chinese, very large Asian community in San Francisco and a lot of influence from China and from the Chinese government. Yeah, I mean, to that exact point, you know, one of the most historic and famed Chinatown sections in San Francisco, on the flip side of that, we have seen, you know, the Chinese Communist Party's influence in the state of California, particularly around government officials. There have been known spies tied to at least two, maybe three, actually, the number keeps going up the more I think about it, prominent elected officials here in California. So I think, you know, the Falun Gong community is a, you know, really a minority community that needs to be protected. And the Chinese Communist Party has gone to great lengths to try to prohibit that and subvert their efforts in getting the word out about their loved ones being persecuted. And so, you know, as we saw in Shen Yun in the film, over 90 performers have either been persecuted themselves or have family members that have been directly persecuted. So I think just simply raising awareness, cause that's a big part of it, right? The whole reason why Shen Yun exists is really an awareness campaign, whether you look at it from the persecution of their brothers and sisters that practice this peaceful meditation practice or raising awareness about what traditional Chinese culture looks like and what China before communism looks like. And so to really support that in a city that has, you know, you said 40% Chinese, that's just a huge population. And there's a consulate from what I understand in a Chinese consulate in San Francisco that has gone to great lengths to try to muddy the waters when it comes to these issues. Now, Silicon Valley, of course, is the heart of technology. And there's all these entrepreneurs and startups and tech and AI. What advice would you give to them as far as watching out for the CCP to either steal technology, you know, things we kind of see almost every day. We see people getting caught stealing technology and giving it to the Chinese government. I've started my time at NTD going on 20 years ago. And one of the projects that I started on was doing some investigations into Chinese student and scholar associations. These are sort of rebranded or called different names, but essentially it's a CSSA, Chinese Student and Scholar Association. Almost every Ivy League school, whether it be Stanford, Yale, Harvard, has one of these Chinese student clubs. And I'm not saying that everybody is. But based on our investigations back then, there are deep ties in those Chinese groups to the Chinese consulates confirmed. And so a lot of those students go on to not necessarily go back to China. They go on to work in some of our biggest tech companies. And if they were doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party while they were at our universities, then usually a leopard doesn't change its spots or a tiger doesn't change its stripes. I don't know how the expression goes, but I think, you know, they'll continue. And, you know, it's something that we have to be aware of. Sometimes it's not just stealing technology. Sometimes it's tweaking algorithms to do certain things that the CCP, you know, might want people to think a certain way about a certain thing. It's very easy. You know, next thing you know, a smart search is popping up this about somebody in the Google tab or, you know, other results are popping up that aren't favorable to certain things. We see that with TikTok as well. Very, very big concerns about the algorithms. Speaking of innovation, you're hosting the Capital Report on NTD. How do you navigate the political spectrum? In these days, it's very difficult to stay, you know, kind of focused or stay neutral. How do you do that task? That's a really good question. So, you know, I think it's our starting point. Our starting point is to try to respect our viewers, respect their intellect, and don't tell them what to think and realize what our proper role in the matter of newsgathering is, which is to find the information, give them as much information as we can for them to make up their mind and come to their own conclusions. You know, there's so many things happening in the world. You can only, in a short news segment or a news package, put so much in there. So, you know, there has to be an honest approach in terms of, you know, if President Trump spoke today, what soundbite are you gonna choose? You know, what context are you going to put that soundbite in? That's why I actually recommend everybody, don't watch the news. Go watch, if you're interested in what President Trump said, don't watch the news. Go watch his whole press briefing in context or better yet, read the text from the briefing. Take the emotion out of it, right? It doesn't matter if you're left or right or, you know, a lot of people nowadays like to consume news through their own prism, right? And whether it's a conservative media outlet or a Democrat left-leaning media outlet, a lot of it is emotionally driven. And so we really try to make a great effort to give both sides a voice and have robust discussion, robust debate, and really take the emotion out of it, not tell the viewer what to think, but just give them both sides of a topic and let them come to their own conclusion. What would you say has been one of your biggest challenges doing the work you're doing at NTV? Well, you know, we are non-profit in every sense of the word. And we don't have big donors and we're actually proud of that. So that allows us to keep our editorial integrity as soon as big advertisers and donors come into it, you know, the discussions start to, you know, lean one way or the other. So that's a big challenge, I have to say. I'm really proud to say that our distribution has started to expand tremendously, Comcast now on the West Coast. I'm not sure if it's here in San Francisco, but a large portion of the West Coast in California and Nevada can receive the NTV signal on Comcast and a variety of other platforms. What does innovation mean to you in independent journalism? When it comes to the traditional way of doing journalism, it's something that we have to get back to. Really getting out there, and it may sound old fashioned and common sense, but so many people nowadays are sort of desk journalists and aren't really going out and talking to people and getting a pulse for what is actually going on. You know, everybody's in their eco chambers. Like I said, you know, people like to watch things that make them feel good and that appeal to their, you know, their own views. But get out there and talk to people. And I think that that's true in journalism, because the more you get out there, the more perspectives you see, you can actually then bring that back to the viewer and give a much broader perspective. So it might not sound innovative, but in a day where things may have regressed in certain areas due to progression or innovation, kind of keeping the basics, sticking with the basics and not forgetting some of those fundamentals. And what would you say motivates you every day when you go to work? What is the one thing that says, you know, you look forward to when you get up and you go to work? I would have to say, you know, because the film is fresh right now and a lot of feedback is coming in, being able to impact people in a positive way. That's been very rewarding. To make something, you know, when you look at what we did with this film, the Falun Gong community has been under tremendous pressure and with, you know, relatively little support. They've gotten, you know, some support here, support there, but by and large for the scope and scale of what's happening to them inside of China, particularly when it comes to media coverage, Western media, I think it could be much better. And not only could it be much better, you take the New York Times in this case, who has really compounded and really try to, you know, put their foot on the head of somebody who's drowning here. I think when you are able to understand what is happening to this group with this particular project, being able to help people and give a voice to the voiceless, that's what we're here to do. And so that's what we constantly try to do. And, you know, I remember I was at an event and talking to a woman as we were going in and she realized where I worked and she was just so grateful. She said, you know, your media outlet was the only one that gave me a voice. And she had a son who was being groomed by a baseball coach and she went on to start legislation under her son's name in the state of Illinois to prevent this from happening. And yeah, nobody wanted to talk to her. And she, you know, one of my colleagues was the one who did, his name's Roman. You might know Roman. He has a show called Facts Matters. And so, yeah, I think that that's a prime example of, you know, the culture of our company. Steve, we thank you so much for your time. Good luck in your future work. Unbroken, again, we just screened it today in San Francisco. You're going to Vancouver? Yeah. And any other future plans, anything that you want to share with us, any other projects? We'll see for now. Unbroken is keeping us very busy. We do have a book that's going to be coming out, hopefully sometime toward the end of this year, early next year. So stay tuned for the Unbroken book. Best of luck to you. Thank you. Thank you for watching another episode of Bay Area Innovators. If you enjoyed this episode and you know someone who should be on our show, please send us an email at sfbayatepochtimes.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you and see you next week.