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Activity Type: Promotional or Propaganda Media Event

China-Hosted Journalism Roundtable Discusses Presenting China to Spaniards

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On October 6, 2026, Zhang Hui (張輝), communication director at the China International Communications Group (中國外文局), or CICG, unit that publishes China Today (今日中國), held a roundtable in Madrid with Spanish journalist Georgina Rosa Higueras Rumbao and Juan Antonio Perteguer, whom CICG described as the head of a Spanish business association. The session, titled “Understanding China’s Development Logic and Exploring Opportunities for Cooperation with China” (讀懂中國發展邏輯，探討對華合作機遇), took place at a book-reading exchange on the Spanish edition of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Volume V (習近平談治國理政第五卷西文版). According to CICG, the participants discussed, from an “international communication” (國際傳播) perspective, how to present a “real” China “objectively” to Spanish-speaking audiences. In Chinese state discourse, such language generally signals a push for favorable coverage, set against claims that Western media portray China unfairly. Higueras, a longtime Asia correspondent for El País (國家報), has served as vice president of the Cátedra China Foundation (西班牙知華講堂基金會), whose executive president also spoke at the event. CICG is directly under the CCP Central Committee and managed by the Central Propaganda Department.

Toledo Mayors Join CICG Roundtable in Madrid

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On October 6, 2026, three mayors from Spain’s Toledo province took part in a roundtable on local cooperation with China, titled “Spanish Mayors’ Dialogue: New Opportunities for Local Cooperation with China” (西班牙市長對話——對華地方合作新機遇), held as part of a Madrid book-reading exchange on the Spanish edition of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Volume V (習近平談治國理政第五卷西文版). Manuel Guillermo Fernández Lázaro-Carrasco of Gálvez, Emilio Bravo Peña of Mora and Sagrario Gutiérrez Fernández of Guadamur discussed trade, technology and cultural exchange with China at the local level. All three mayors represented Spain’s conservative People’s Party (人民黨). China International Communications Group (中國外文局), or CICG, and the Chinese Embassy in Spain (中國駐西班牙大使館) guided the wider event. CICG described that event as an effort to spread the CCP’s “innovative theories” in the Spanish-speaking world. CICG is directly under the CCP Central Committee and managed by the Central Propaganda Department.

ACJA Co-Hosts 2024 Belt and Road Journalists Forum

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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.

ACJA Hosts China-Spain Media Roundtable in Madrid

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On May 19, 2026, the International Department of 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, hosted the China-Spain Media Think Tank Dialogue Roundtable (中西媒體智庫對話圓桌會) in Madrid. More than 30 representatives of Chinese and Spanish media outlets and think tanks took part in discussions on media responsibility in the AI era, under a theme linking that topic to advancing stable China-Spain relations. This framing is central to China’s global media engagements, which emphasize the role of media in furthering diplomatic goals rather than news values or professional standards. Wu Xu (吳旭), executive secretary of the ACJA secretariat, urged media in both countries to “jointly tell stories of China-Spain friendship.” The phrase echoes the CCP’s directive to tell China’s story well, which promotes positive coverage of China abroad. After the roundtable, the ACJA International Department signed a memorandum of understanding with what Chinese coverage called the “Spanish branch” of the European Federation of Journalists, pledging a regular cooperation mechanism. The Madrid-based Asociación de Periodistas Europeos, the Spanish section of the Association of European Journalists, later reported that ACJA representatives had visited its premises months before it attended the association’s October 2026 forum in Nanjing as an invited guest. Two days later, the ACJA held a parallel roundtable in Athens on similar themes.

CICG Presents Magazine to Spanish Communist Leader

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On October 6, 2026, Xie Gang (謝剛), vice president of China International Communications Group (中國外文局), or CICG, presented José Luis Centella Gómez, president of the Communist Party of Spain (西班牙共產黨), or PCE, with a copy of China Today (今日中國) featuring Centella’s article on the 90th anniversary of the Long March, the CCP’s foundational 1934–1936 military retreat. Xie, Centella and Chinese Ambassador to Spain Yao Jing (姚敬) met in Madrid ahead of a CICG book-reading exchange on the Spanish edition of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China, Volume V (習近平談治國理政第五卷西文版). In July 2026, Centella had addressed by video a Yan’an event of CICG’s “Together on the Long March” (同走長征路) project, saying the Long March spirit would offer inspiration for building a “community of shared future for mankind,” Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy slogan. CICG, which publishes China Today, is directly under the CCP Central Committee and managed by the Central Propaganda Department.

ACJA Hosts 2023 Belt and Road Journalists Forum

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On October 12, 2023, 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, gathered nearly 100 heads of journalist organizations and media representatives from more than 40 countries and regions in Beijing to mark the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative. Sun Yeli (孫業禮), then a deputy head of the Central Propaganda Department (中央宣傳部), addressed the forum. ACJA president He Ping (何平) urged attendees to jointly tell good stories of Belt and Road cooperation and to sing the “main melody” of peace, development and win-win cooperation. The forum ran under the Belt and Road Journalists Network (“一帶一路”記者組織合作平台), a platform launched in 2019 that describes itself as jointly initiated by journalist organizations in Belt and Road countries, but whose executive vice chairman and secretary-general are ACJA officials. Its joint declaration, Join Hands to Embark on a New Journey of the Next Decade (攜手啟航新十年——“一帶一路”記者組織聯合宣言), called on members to promote friendly press exchanges as a means of advancing political mutual trust and economic ties between states — what it called “friendly exchange” (友好交流). It pledged joint reporting tours to cover Belt and Road achievements “objectively and truthfully”, a formulation that equated objectivity with documenting successes and made no provision for reporting on the initiative’s setbacks or controversies. It also proposed an “International Home of Journalists” (國際記者之家) network. Guy Mettan, a Swiss journalist who has led the Geneva Press Club and authored Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, told the forum the West would try to undermine a multipolar world.

CICG Promotes Spanish Edition of Xi Jinping Book in Madrid

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On October 6, 2026, the China International Communications Group (中國外文局), or CICG, and the Chinese Embassy in Spain held a readers’ event in Madrid for the Spanish edition of the fifth volume of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China (習近平談治國理政), a collection of Xi’s speeches distributed abroad in dozens of languages as external propaganda. Chinese Ambassador Yao Jing (姚敬) said “Chinese modernization” (中國式現代化), a catchphrase Xi has promoted since 2021 to cast China’s development path as an alternative to Western models, was creating opportunities for Spain. He also urged building a “community of shared future for mankind” (人類命運共同體). CICG Vice President Xie Gang (謝剛) said the book would help readers “understand the Communist Party of China.” José Luis Centella, president of the Communist Party of Spain (西班牙共產黨), praised China’s “high-quality development,” and Marta Montoro of the Fundación Cátedra China (西班牙知華講堂基金會) also spoke. A Chinese-language report in China Today, a CICG-run magazine, said the event aimed to spread the CCP’s “innovative theory” in the Spanish-speaking world.

CCP Journalist Association Launches Belt and Road Journalists Network

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On September 28, 2019, 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, launched the Belt and Road Journalists Network (一帶一路記者組織合作平台) at the 2019 Belt and Road Journalists Forum in Beijing. According to China Daily, the ACJA initiated the network jointly with journalist groups in Belt and Road Initiative countries, with the stated purpose of promoting a “Silk Road spirit” (絲路精神) of “win-win results.” Its first presidium, with a five-year term and an annually rotating chair, drew together journalist associations and unions from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Argentina and Nigeria. Lidia Fagale, president of the Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires (Unión de Trabajadores de Prensa de Buenos Aires), became the first chair. Jiang Jianguo (蔣建國), deputy head of the Central Propaganda Department, urged participants to deliver “positive energy,” a phrase closely tied to media control under Xi Jinping. Shanaka Maliyadda of the Sri Lanka China Journalists Forum told the paper that the “ACJA is also helping us with media development in many aspects.”

ACJA Hosts Foreign Media for China-CEE Media Roundtable in Dunhuang

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On May 29, 2026, the “Home of Journalists” program of 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, hosted a media roundtable in Dunhuang, in China’s Gansu province, for journalists, experts and scholars from China and 12 Central and Eastern European countries. Participants included Dejan Jazvić, editor-in-chief of the Federal News Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Maria Nikolaeva Nishandzhieva of the Bulgarian newspaper 24 Hours; Jan Klokočovnik of the Slovenian newspaper Primorske novice; and Ana Maria Alessandra Dobra, a prime-time anchor at Romania’s Realitatea Plus, according to a Xinhua report. The roundtable focused on the media’s role in “mutual learning among civilizations” (文明交流互鑒), the language of Xi Jinping’s Global Civilization Initiative. The ACJA held a similar China-CEE roundtable in Hebei province in 2023, where participants praised the initiative’s significance. China Dailyquoted a Romanian television host on the trip as saying China “is a country that respects its own people.” It reported that the visiting journalists hoped to tell their audiences about a “true, diverse and multidimensional” China, echoing Xi’s 2021 call to present a “true, multidimensional and panoramic” China to the world. The ACJA has also co-organized CEE journalists’ visits to China with the China-CEEC Cooperation Secretariat.