ACJA Co-Hosts 2024 Belt and Road Journalists Forum

From August 26 to September 1, 2024, the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA, a Chinese Communist Party-led professional association that serves a key role in implementing press control policies, co-hosted the 2024 Belt and Road Journalists Forum with the propaganda office of the Chongqing CCP Committee (中共重慶市委宣傳部). It was the first edition of the annual forum held outside Beijing. Nearly 100 leaders of journalist organizations and media representatives from 50 countries and regions joined organized reporting tours of Chongqing before the main session on August 31, which Mo Gaoyi (莫高義), then a deputy head of the Central Propaganda Department (中央宣傳部), addressed. ACJA president He Ping (何平) urged media to build a “new narrative framework” transcending ideology and social systems**, a common reference to the CCP’s view that a global narrative more favorable to China and less dominated by the West is essential.** He also called on media to champion the community of shared future for mankind. The forum expanded the International Home of Journalists (國際記者之家), a network proposed at the 2023 forum, awarding certificates to 14 foreign journalist organizations, though Chinese state media gave varying counts. The forum also appointed 16 consulting experts to the network, and journalists from Argentina, Bulgaria, China and Egypt used the occasion to launch a “Media Ambassadors Initiative” (媒體使者倡議). In October 2024, Ghana’s Ghanaian Times published a laudatory feature on the forum, highlighting foreign participants’ praise for Chinese media.