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90 with representatives of the Chinese-language press to lay out China’s demands for their coverage of the event.¥ In a further effort to control the overseas Chinese press, the China News Service established the China News Service Overseas Center, which provides news reports, editorials, and layout for overseas Chinese media outlets around the globe. The idea behind the center was that if Beijing were to provide and package content for overseas Chinese papers, and could convince them to run it, Beijing would then completely control the message.** Given these efforts by Beijing, the space for truly independent Chinese-language media in the United States has shrunk to a few media outlets supported by the adherents of Falun Gong, the banned religious sect in China, and a small publication and website called Vision Times. According to the publisher of its New York edition, Peter Wang, Vision Times was formed expressly to address the issue of the shrinking space for independent Chinese voices in the United States. Since then, it has focused on two areas—human rights reporting and traditional Chinese culture. Wang noted that while some of the staff of the paper may be Falun Gong adherents, the paper is not a Falun Gong operation. Vision Times began its online presence in 2001, started printing a newspaper in 2005, and claims a circulation in the United States and Canada of below 60,000.* WeChat as a Source of News in the Diaspora Community China’s social media giant, WeChat, is another major source of news within the Chinese American community. But it is more than that; for many users in the United States, China, and around the world, WeChat is a digital ecosystem so ubiquitous that it constitutes a lifestyle—a drumbeat that determines the rhythms of the day. In the United States, as in China, WeChat censors news and comments in accordance with rules set by China’s Communist Party. In an analysis of WeChat articles popular in the United States, researcher Zhang Chi found that the most successful pieces skewed significantly to the right of the US political spectrum.* Zhang noted that the right-wing view on WeChat generally embraces a social Darwinist, zero-sum conception of racial politics, with Chinese in America portrayed as beaten down by a system that favors other racial groups and illegal immigrants from Latin America. One popular WeChat channel blamed the wildfires in 2017 in Northern California on an undocumented immigrant. Numerous other channels reported on alleged plans for mass riots and a civil war in the United States led by the leftist group Antifa. When a Chinese jogger was struck and killed Media HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020549