Entity Type: China-led Multilateral Coordination Mechanism

The Belt and Road Journalists Network (一帶一路記者組織合作平台), or BRJN, is an international platform that the 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, founded in Beijing in 2019. The ACJA launched it at the Belt and Road Journalists Forum together with journalist organizations from countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. According to a 2026 description published by the propaganda office of the CCP’s Jiangsu Provincial Committee, the network serves representative journalist organizations in more than 120 countries and regions, covering some 1.7 million journalists, and has become an important bridge for “externally promoting” (對外宣介) the Belt and Road Initiative. The ACJA has presented the network’s work in the context of the Party’s international communication goals. The ACJA’s own chronicle of media events for October 2023 listed the network’s annual forum alongside Xi Jinping’s instructions on propaganda work, which called for “strengthening international communication capacity” (加強國際傳播能力建設). The network holds an annual forum hosted by the ACJA and provincial propaganda offices. Its presidium chairmanship rotates among foreign members, including Belarus’s state-aligned journalists’ union and Cambodia’s Club of Cambodian Journalists. Such ostensibly representative structures are a key characteristic of China-led global initiatives whose driving purpose is advancing PRC foreign policy goals. The network also runs the “International Home of Journalists” (國際記者之家) program, which recruits foreign journalist associations as members. Through its website, pressbridge.net, and social media accounts branded “Home of Journalists,” the network publishes coverage of ACJA-organized roundtables, press trips and salons for foreign journalists.

Established in 2000, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (中非合作论坛) functions as China’s primary multilateral mechanism for engaging with 53 African nations, excluding only Eswatini which maintains ties with Taiwan. While Beijing presents FOCAC as a partnership of equals guided by its “Five Nos” policy—including non-interference and no political conditions on aid—critics note these principles often serve China’s strategic interests in securing resources and diplomatic support. Since 2018, FOCAC has been explicitly folded into China’s Belt and Road Initiative, with Beijing making headline-grabbing financial pledges ($60 billion in both 2015 and 2018) that combine loans, investments, and limited grants, though actual disbursement figures remain difficult to verify independently. The FOCAC Office is located within the Department of African Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

The South and Southeast Asian Media Network (南亚东南亚媒体联盟), or SSAMN, is a Chinese government-led media cooperation alliance established on January 31, 2024, in Beijing through joint leadership of China Daily Asia Pacific and the Yunnan International Communication Center for South and Southeast Asia (云南省南亚东南亚区域国际传播中心) — one of scores of international communication centers (ICCs) founded in China since 2018 as part of a national push to incorporate provinces and cities into the CCP’s external propaganda strategy. According to state media reports, the network has attracted over 40 overseas and 50 domestic media organizations, reporters’ associations, and news agencies from countries in or related to South and Southeast Asia. SSAMN says that it facilitates cooperation through resource sharing, technological innovation, and people-to-people exchanges, with activities including annual meetings in Kunming, joint project initiatives, and collaborative content production leveraging Yunnan Province’s strategic position as a gateway to South and Southeast Asia.

The European University Cyprus (Ευρωπαϊκό Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου), or EUC, is a private research university founded in 1961, with campuses in Cyprus and Germany. The university has seven faculties, including Medicine, Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine, Sciences, Business, Law, and Humanities.  Since 2015, EUC has been a member of the World University Alliance for the Belt and Road Initiative, a China-led global alliance involving more than 170 universities — an academic extension of China’s signature BRI.