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89 based in Canada, where he indicated that last year he received a large investment from the PRC. Since then, Mingjing has significantly modified its editorial stance, switching its focus from politics to real estate, immigration, and investing. Part of the reason for this modification appears linked to the disappearance in China of the wife of one of Mingjing’s reporters after Mingjing aired interviews with a dissident Chinese businessman.*° Beijing has also moved to tighten the ideological consistency for these papers. In 2001, the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs and the China News Service began a biannual conference, the Forum on the Global Chinese Language Media, hosting representatives from hundreds of Chinese-language periodicals from around the world. Kicking off the first conference in 2001, Guo Zhaojin, the president of the China News Service, said a key goal of the meeting was to persuade participating Overseas Chinese media to use copy from the China News Service instead of reports from competing Chinese- language news services from Taiwan or from the West.*t The conference also appears to serve as a platform for Beijing to convince critics to modify their tone and to ensure that overseas Chinese-language newspapers follow the Party’s line. Essays released during the conferences praised the censorship of views opposed by the Party and stressed the necessity of, in the words of one piece in 2015, “properly telling China’s story” (echoing Xi Jinping’s instructions). And Beijing’s efforts have had some successes. Ranked the number-five Chinese website in the United States, http://backchina.com was once an independent media voice like Duowei. But in 2017, its editors attended the ninth forum in China, and since then backchina’s reporting has become far more positive about the PRC. In 2006, the China News Service started holding an Advanced Seminar for the Overseas Chinese Language Media, for select groups of editors and reporters from overseas; a seminar in 2006, for example, focused on the correct reading of “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” while a workshop in 2010 concerned China’s policies in Tibet and Xinjiang. At the thirteenth Seminar in 2015, He Yafei, then the assistant director of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, argued that overseas Chinese media needed to promote the Belt and Road Initiative and essentially embrace the role of becoming a mouthpiece of the CCP promoting China’s national strategy.” Beijing also dispatched Chinese officials overseas to instruct Chinese-language media on how to “correctly” report the news. As the Beijing 2008 Olympics approached, Politburo member and head of China’s Olympic Committee Liu Qi met at the PRC consulate in New York Section 6 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020548