A congressional hearing on Chinese government interference was abruptly evacuated Thursday when a fire alarm sounded just as witnesses began describing Beijing's campaign to silence critics on American soil, an incident that underscored the very tactics being discussed at the forum.
The evacuation at 4 p.m. from the Rayburn House Office Building came as Mark Yang of the Falun Dafa Information Center was detailing how Chinese operatives target Shen Yun Performing Arts, the New York-based dance company that has faced over 130 documented interference incidents across 38 countries, according to federal prosecutors and human rights groups.
"INCREDIBLE: We were ordered to evacuate in the middle of a CCP Transnational Repression forum (being live-streamed) in the Rayburn Congressional House Office Building, right when powerful testimony exposing the Chinese regime was being given," Jan Jekielek, senior editor at The Epoch Times and the forum's moderator, posted on social media platform X.
U.S. Capitol Police later attributed the evacuation to "an electrical issue that has been fixed," but the timing drew immediate attention from participants and observers who noted the forum was specifically addressing Chinese methods of disrupting opposition voices.
The incident occurred amid an unprecedented escalation in Chinese government operations against Shen Yun and other organizations critical of Beijing. Federal prosecutors have charged 78 individuals with transnational repression crimes since 2020, while bomb threats against Shen Yun venues surged to 51 incidents in the first 50 days of 2025 alone — exceeding all of 2024.
"The FBI will not tolerate CCP repression," FBI Director Christopher Wray said after the conviction of John Chen and Lin Feng, two Chinese nationals sentenced to federal prison in 2024 for attempting to bribe an undercover agent to revoke Shen Yun's tax-exempt status. Chen received 20 months, Feng 16 months.
The targeting of Shen Yun, founded by Falun Gong practitioners in 2006, represents just one facet of what congressional investigators call China's "destructive political warfare and influence operations." The performing arts company, which presents traditional Chinese dance and music with themes critical of communist rule, has become a particular focus of Beijing's ire.
Recent media coverage of Shen Yun has intensified following a November 2024 lawsuit by former dancer Chun-Ko Chang alleging forced labor and trafficking. The New York Times, Bloomberg News, and The Washington Post all prominently featured trafficking language in their coverage, with headlines describing accusations of "Forced Labor and Trafficking" and "child labor accusations."
The lawsuit alleges children were recruited as young as 12, subjected to forced labor conditions, and had passports confiscated. The New York Department of Labor has opened an investigation into the company's labor practices.
This wave of negative coverage coincided with documented Chinese interference operations, raising questions about potential connections. Freedom House research shows China spends an estimated $10 billion annually on external propaganda, with over 3,400 media workers from 146 countries receiving Chinese government training.
The China-United States Exchange Foundation, founded by Tung Chee-hwa, a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has hosted prominent American journalists on fully-funded trips to China. Documented participants include Ezra Klein of The New York Times, Steve Clemons of The Atlantic, and Catharine Rampell of The Washington Post, according to CUSEF newsletters.
Some journalists who participated in these programs subsequently produced content warning against "decoupling" from China and praising Beijing's climate policies. CUSEF, which spent $794,101 on lobbying in 2015 including $270,000 to the Podesta Group, is registered as a "foreign principal" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The most dramatic example of Chinese influence operations emerged with the September 2024 arrest of Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul. Federal prosecutors allege Chinese officials provided Sun with $4.1 million in real estate and luxury vehicles, including a 2024 Ferrari, in exchange for blocking Taiwan representatives from meeting governors and removing mentions of Uyghur persecution from official speeches.
Physical attacks on Shen Yun have also escalated. Costa Mesa police documented a 7-inch slash on a tour bus tire in March 2024, cut in a pattern designed to cause highway blowouts. Bomb threats traced to the Huawei Xi'an Research Institute area in China have targeted venues including the Kennedy Center and theaters across multiple states.
"We tell them it's not legal to let Shen Yun Performing Arts apply for permission," Zhang Jiafan of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul openly stated about efforts to block performances. A South Korean court later ruled such cancellations illegal.
The interference extends beyond Shen Yun. Chen Jinping pleaded guilty in December 2024 to operating a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan's Chinatown, one of 102 such stations investigators have identified in 53 countries. Operation Fox Hunt, Beijing's campaign to forcibly repatriate dissidents, resulted in Quanzhong An's sentencing to 20 months in prison plus a $5 million penalty in March 2025.
During Chinese President Xi Jinping's November 2023 visit to San Francisco for the APEC summit, the FBI investigated 34 documented cases of harassment and assault by CCP supporters against protesters from Chinese, Hong Kong, Tibetan, and Uyghur communities.
Election interference has also intensified. Chinese "Spamouflage" operations deployed over 8,000 fake social media accounts targeting the 2024 U.S. elections, while hackers in the "Salt Typhoon" campaign breached phones belonging to Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in October 2024.
For Shen Yun, which performs for over a million audience members annually across 200 cities, the campaign represents an existential threat. Senior members of the organization are making themselves available for media interviews for the first time to address what they call a coordinated assault on artistic freedom.
"This is about more than one performing arts company," said a spokesperson for the Falun Dafa Information Center. "It's about whether democratic societies will allow authoritarian regimes to export censorship and intimidation to our shores."
As Thursday's evacuated hearing participants filed back into the Rayburn building after the all-clear, the irony wasn't lost on anyone. Whether coincidence or not, the disruption had perfectly illustrated the climate of suspicion and fear that Chinese transnational repression has created on American soil.
