People’s Daily and Zambian Media Conduct Joint Reporting on China-Africa Cooperation

On July 29, 2024, the People’s Daily (人民日報) and several Zambian media outlets conducted a joint reporting visit in Lusaka under the theme “China-Africa Cooperation in the New Era” (新時代中非合作) — described as the first such joint reporting exercise between Chinese and Zambian media conducted on Zambian soil. Journalists from the People’s Daily, the Zambia Daily Mail, and the Daily Nation visited the Lusaka Park of the Zambia-China Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone (中贊經貿合作區), described in the People’s Daily report as China’s first economic and trade cooperation zone in Africa. According to the People’s Daily, as of June 2024 the zone hosted nearly 90 Chinese enterprises with total investment exceeding 2.7 billion US dollars, and cumulative sales revenue of more than 28 billion US dollars. The joint visit was framed in the People’s Daily as an exercise in “telling the story of China-Zambia and China-Africa cooperation in the new era” (講好新時代中贊、中非合作故事) and “telling the story of high-quality Belt and Road Initiative co-construction” (講好高質量共建一帶一路故事) — formulations that echo Xi Jinping’s directive to “tell China’s story well” (講好中國故事), first issued at the 2013 National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference. The report was published in the People’s Daily on July 31, 2024.