HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020549.jpg

90

with representatives of the Chinese-language press to lay out China’s demands for their
coverage of the event.⁴³

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.⁴⁴

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 60,000.⁴⁵

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.⁴⁶ 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