Chinese Ambassador Publishes Op-Ed on 20th Party Congress in Zambian Media

On December 6, 2022, Du Xiaohui (杜曉暉), China’s ambassador to Zambia, published a signed op-ed titled “Understanding Universal Human Values Through the 20th Party Congress” (從二十大讀懂全人類共同價值) in four Zambian outlets: the Zambia Daily Mail, the Times of Zambia, the Daily Nation, and The Mast. The article promoted the conclusions of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress — at which Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as general secretary — to a Zambian audience, arguing that China’s political system embodies universal values including peace, development, democracy, and freedom. It presented China’s “whole-process people’s democracy” (全過程人民民主) as a model of genuine democratic governance, framed Chinese foreign policy as inherently peaceful and non-expansionist, and called on China and Zambia to jointly uphold “the democratization of international relations” (國際關係民主化) — a CCP formulation that in practice refers to resistance to Western-led multilateral norms. Du also cited Xi Jinping’s remarks at the 17th G20 Summit in Bali on November 15, 2022 — in which Xi claimed China had suspended the largest amount of debt service payments of any G20 member — to argue that China was Zambia’s most committed partner on debt relief, at a moment when Zambia was in active debt restructuring negotiations.