A new investigation reveals that the Chinese Communist Party has built a sprawling network of counterfeit websites masquerading as major Western news outlets — all to discredit a New York–based performing arts company.
A report by Graphika, a U.S.-based social media analytics firm, has uncovered a coordinated influence operation spanning 43 domains and 37 subdomains — all registered in China and designed to impersonate trusted news organizations such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian.
“These domains are all based in China, and they’re posing as legitimate mainstream media outlets,” said Jack Bradley, a reporter for NTD’s English-language service.
The operation deploys large numbers of inauthentic accounts disguised as real social media users, working in concert across multiple platforms to flood the information space with disinformation. The primary target: Shen Yun Performing Arts, the globally touring dance company headquartered in New York.
A Five-Year Disinformation Campaign
According to Graphika’s researchers, many of the fake websites attacking Shen Yun were created over the past five years. The investigation also uncovered contracts between various levels of the Chinese government and domestic PR firms to produce and distribute this content. In one case, authorities in the city of Changchun paid a Chinese public relations company more than $15,000 to publish hundreds of propaganda articles and videos across a network of so-called “international media” sites.
The report further identified 41 accounts on X (formerly Twitter) and 3 Facebook pages that acted in lockstep to amplify these fabricated stories. The accounts used randomly generated usernames, stock photos for profile pictures, and had virtually no followers. They posted identical content at the same time — smearing both Falun Gong and Shen Yun. While most of the domains appeared to target Chinese-speaking audiences, some were specifically tailored for English-language readers abroad.
Exporting Repression Beyond China’s Borders
“What’s alarming is that this propaganda campaign leverages the brands of mainstream Western media and Western social media platforms to make fabricated stories appear credible,” Bradley said. “It effectively extends Beijing’s repression campaign beyond its own borders.”
Shen Yun is dedicated to reviving traditional Chinese culture and presenting a vision of China that predates Communist rule. Its performances also shed light on the Chinese government’s human rights abuses, including the persecution of religious and spiritual groups. The company was founded in the United States by practitioners of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), a spiritual discipline rooted in the Buddhist tradition that centers on the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance. The Chinese Communist Party has brutally persecuted Falun Gong since launching a nationwide crackdown in 1999.
The Human Cost
The campaign of repression is not just digital. Leshan, a Shen Yun emcee, offered a stark reminder of the personal toll.
“My first co-host was from Beijing,” Leshan recounted. “Every weekend, state security agents would show up at her family’s door and say, ‘We know what your daughter is doing — tell her to stop.’ We also had an erhu soloist. While she was performing with us, her husband was imprisoned for three years and subjected to torture.”
The investigation underscores the growing reach of Beijing’s transnational repression apparatus, which now extends well into the digital information space — weaponizing the credibility of Western institutions to suppress dissent far beyond China’s borders.