Whether analog or digital, one could hardly escape the advertising offensive for the musical "Shen Yun" in recent weeks. In the promotional videos, group dance scenes are shown - women in silk robes and historical soldiers dancing ballet.

Spiritualistic-religious rites are also shown, but the advertising only hints at this in the text: "Through breathtaking dance and impressive music, the artists of Shen Yun tell of a time when divine beings walked the earth and left behind a culture that inspired generations."1 Spiritualistic nonsense, but so far nothing special in the context of bourgeois culture, if the show did not already make a political declaration in the subtitle: One would be shown "China before communism". This is by no means a matter of staging an entertaining documentary, but rather of propagating a historical revisionist distorted image. In pre-revolutionary China, they say, everything was blissful and then came the communists: "But during decades of communist rule, much of this divinely inspired culture has been destroyed or forgotten."

"China before Communism" - scene from the musical

Not a word, however, mentions the cruel feudal rule that, spiritually blessed, held a stranglehold on the Chinese peasants:"Under the bondage of feudalism they had no freedom of person. The landlord had the right to beat, abuse or even kill them at will, and they had no political rights whatsoever. The extreme poverty and backwardness of the peasants resulting from ruthless landlord exploitation and oppression is the basic reason why Chinese society remained at the same stage of socio-economic development for several thousand years." (Mao Tse-Tung, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939), quoted from: Selected Works Vol. II, pp. 308)

"China before Communism" - foot binding and opium den

Not a syllable about the imperialist exploitation and rape of the Chinese people:
"The imperialist powers operate many enterprises in both light and heavy industry in China in order to utilize her raw materials and cheap labour on the spot, and they thereby directly exert economic pressure on China’s national industry and obstruct the development of her productive forces. [...] Furthermore, the imperialist powers have never slackened their efforts to poison the minds of the Chinese people. This is their policy of cultural aggression. And it is carried out through missionary work, through establishing hospitals and schools, publishing newspapers and inducing Chinese students to study abroad. Their aim is to train intellectuals who will serve their interests and to dupe the people." (Mao Tse-Tung, The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939), quoted from: Selected Works Vol. II, pp. 311f.)

"China before Communism" - Repression against so-called boxers who rebelled against imperialism, including the German one

Who offers the big stage to such a falsifying nonsense is quickly found out. The metaphysical Falun Gong movement, which has been persecuted for two decades by the Chinese revisionists, uses the show as a cultural protest against the Chinese regime. This is habitually and undeservedly called communist by them. Consistently pursuing their fallacy, they play the anti-communist keyboard in this case as well. Combined with the complete denial of imperialist and feudal despotism, they spit more on the oppressed peoples of the world than on the social imperialists in Beijing.

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1 cursive quotes from the advertisement