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87 Another case in point is the World Journal (#5 Bik), for years the premier Chinese- language paper in the United States serving immigrants from Taiwan and only one of the six newspapers owned by the United Daily News (UDN), Taiwan’s most influential newspaper company. The paper once dominated news coverage in Chinatowns across America, and it acted as the voice of the Chinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan. Unlike PRC-controlled outlets, the World Journal did cover events such as the death of the jailed Chinese human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiabo. But the Journal's coverage has shifted in recent years and become more pro-PRC ina variety of areas, such as China’s militarization of the South China Sea and its handling of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Sources at the Journal observe that the paper’s owners in Taiwan are interested in growing their business in China, which may help explain the paper’s evolving editorial stance. For example, in March 2004, the World Journal published recruitment notices on the front page, announcing its intention to establish a mainland news group and recruit reporters in China. In a 2015 essay, an executive*! at Qiaobao, one of the Journal’s main competitors, noted the Journal's shifting editorial stance. “No longer do they only report negative news about the mainland,” he wrote.” According to sources inside the newspaper, Chinese consulates in both New York and San Francisco have pressured World Journal’s local offices not to publish ads related to the religious sect, Falun Gong, which has been outlawed in China. The New York office has already acquiesced in full for the East Coast edition. The West Coast edition now only runs Falun Gong ads in throwaway sections of the paper. Ming Pao is another formerly independent newspaper that has fallen under Beijing’s control. For years, its US edition was popular among Cantonese-speaking immigrants in the United States. In January 2007, the Hong Kong Ming Pao Group announced a $600 million merger with the two largest Chinese-language media outlets in Malaysia, the Xingzhou Media and Nanyang News. The merger was welcomed in Beijing. Guo Zhaojin, then president of the China News Service, said the new company would develop into one of the largest Chinese print media platforms in the world, with more than five newspapers in major cities in North America, Southeast Asia, and Greater China and a daily circulation of more than one million copies. China’s efforts to dominate Chinese-language media coincided with two other developments in the 1990s. The Chinese immigrant community boomed in the United States, as hundreds of thousands of mainland Chinese became US citizens, transforming the complexion of a community that had been dominated by immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Second, Taiwan’s political system Section 6 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020546