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Entity Type: Domestic Association or Organization

Media Association of Solomon Islands

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The Media Association of Solomon Islands (所羅門媒體協會), or MASI, is the country’s national association of journalists. In May 2022, MASI called on members to boycott the only press event of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s (王毅) visit to Honiara, protesting restrictions that limited attendance to a few selected local outlets and Chinese media and allowed only two questions. Officials cited COVID-19 concerns, but MASI president Georgina Kekea called that an excuse and framed the boycott as a defense of press freedom. The visit came weeks after the leak of a draft security agreement between the two countries, and three years after Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China. Seventeen months after the boycott, in October 2023, Kekea attended the Belt and Road Journalists Forum in Beijing. She told attendees she hoped to understand the initiative well enough to report accurately on its impact, and voiced hope for “shared prosperity” among participating nations.

Geneva Press Club

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The Geneva Press Club, formally the Club suisse de la presse, is a Swiss association founded on October 22, 1997, with backing from the Swiss Confederation. Its mission is to host visiting journalists and foster exchanges between Swiss and international figures in politics, economics, culture and science. Its founding members included Swiss broadcaster RTSR, La Tribune de Genève and other media groups, alongside private institutions. The club organizes press conferences and debates for the international organizations based in Geneva, and operates from the Domaine de Penthes. Guy Mettan, a former editor-in-chief of La Tribune de Genève, served as its executive director, and Chinese state media have described him as its founder. Mettan is the author of Creating Russophobia. At the 2023 Belt and Road Journalists Forum in Beijing, he praised the initiative for helping to create a “more equitable and multipolar world order.”

Media Trust

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The Media Trust is a Mauritian statutory body established under the Media Trust Act in 1994. It was set up to strengthen the professional capacity of local journalists through training. Its chairperson as of August 2024, Ashok Taluck Beeharry, told the 2024 Belt and Road Journalists Forum in Chongqing that he admired Chinese media’s commitment to public service. The Trust’s ties to Beijing predate that forum. According to research on Chinese influence in Mauritian media, two Media Trust board members attended the Belt and Road Journalists Forum in Beijing in September 2019. That same year, the Chinese embassy donated laptops and a mobile phone to the Trust.

Association of European Journalists Spanish Section

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The Spanish Section of the Association of European Journalists, known in Spanish as the Asociación de Periodistas Europeos, or APE, belongs to an organization founded in Brussels in 1963 to bring together journalists committed to European integration on democratic foundations. The Spanish section was constituted in 1981 and declared an association of public utility in 1985. Based in Madrid, it organizes seminars, luncheon colloquia with senior officials and journalism awards. According to its website, its corporate sponsors include BBVA, Telefónica, Indra and NATO. Diego Carcedo, a former director of Spanish National Radio, presided over the section until his death in April 2026. In October 2026, the APE reported that representatives 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, had visited its premises months earlier. It also said it had attended the association’s 2026 Belt and Road forum in Nanjing as an invited guest. Chinese coverage of an ACJA roundtable in Madrid in May 2026 described a memorandum signed with a “Spanish branch” of a European journalists’ body, which may refer to the APE.

Russian Union of Journalists

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The Russian Union of Journalists (俄羅斯記者協會), or RUJ, is Russia’s largest professional association of media workers. It traces its origins to the Russian Union of Soviet Journalists, established at a congress in Moscow on November 13, 1918. The union in its current form was founded in 1992, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. The paper reported in 2023 that RUJ chairman Vladimir Solovyov sat on the presidential Human Rights Council and advised the director general of the state channel Rossiya 1. The RUJ was a founding member of the presidium of the Belt and Road Journalists Network, a platform led by the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA. At the network’s 2023 forum in Beijing, Solovyov called partnership with the ACJA “one key area of work.” He also said Russian and Chinese journalists were jointly “curbing the dissemination of false information.” In February 2023, the International Federation of Journalists suspended the RUJ over its creation of branches in annexed Ukrainian territories. Russia’s justice ministry registry lists an RUJ branch for Zaporizhzhia based in occupied Melitopol. Solovyov said at the time that the union had “big plans” for international cooperation outside the federation. On May 7, 2026, the federation’s congress in Paris formally expelled the RUJ.

Nigeria Union of Journalists

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The Nigeria Union of Journalists (尼日利亞記者聯合會), or NUJ, is Nigeria’s national union of journalists, founded on March 15, 1955, in Lagos. It is a founding member of the presidium of the Belt and Road Journalists Network, a platform led by the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), or ACJA. Christopher Isiguzo, then the NUJ’s national president, served as the network’s chairman-in-office in 2023. In October 2023, on the sidelines of the network’s forum in Beijing, the NUJ signed an agreement with the Polish Media Association to create a “Nigeria-Polish House of Journalists.” The model mirrors the “International Home of Journalists” program the ACJA proposed at the same forum. The Polish association later joined the network’s second presidium. In 2024, the NUJ signed a memorandum of understanding with the ACJA at its national secretariat in Abuja. Isiguzo said the agreement would bring exchange visits and training. He added that Nigerian journalists would attend a forum in China that August “courtesy of the MoU.” The ACJA delegation, led by Wu Xu (吳旭), also visited Leadership newspaper, whose managing editor thanked the Chinese government for collaboration that included publishing Chinese content across its titles.

Indonesian Journalists Association

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The Indonesian Journalists Association (印度尼西亞記者協會), or PWI, founded on February 9, 1946, is Indonesia’s oldest journalists’ organization. Under Suharto’s New Order regime, it was the only journalists’ union the government recognized. In October 1994, the International Press Institute protested to Suharto that the “state-sponsored” PWI was trying to keep members of the newly formed Alliance of Independent Journalists from covering that year’s APEC summit in Jakarta. In March 1995, the PWI’s Jakarta branch expelled 13 members who had signed the alliance’s founding declaration and pressed editors to fire them, according to Human Rights Watch. The PWI joined the first presidium of the Belt and Road Journalists Network, led by the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), in 2019. At the network’s 2023 forum in Beijing, PWI chairman Atal Depari, who also chaired the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists, called for “accurate, balanced and comprehensive coverage” of the Belt and Road Initiative. Such appeals echo Chinese official discourse, which routinely contrasts “objective” coverage of China with what officials portray as biased Western reporting. The joint declaration adopted at the same forum committed members to “objectively and truthfully report the achievements of the Belt and Road.” In October 2026, PWI representatives took part in a seminar in Nanjing on “elevating the discourse power of the Global South,” a framing drawn from the CCP concept of “discourse power” (話語權).

Sri Lanka-China Journalists Forum

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The Sri Lanka-China Journalists’ Forum (斯里蘭卡中國記者論壇), or SLCJF, is a Colombo-based association of Sri Lankan media workers. It describes its purpose as promoting bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and China, according to a 2011 report in the Daily FT, which dates its founding to 2000. Oddly, the forum does not appear to have a website or a social media presence, and nearly all online references to the organization point back to Chinese state sources. Since 2008, it has published the Sinhala-language magazine Mahajana Cheenaya (People’s China). At the 2011 launch of a new issue, SLCJF President Nalin Aponso thanked the Chinese Embassy for its “continued assistance and timely contributions,” which he said allowed the forum to operate without interruption. The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (中國人民對外友好協會) gave the forum a China-Sri Lanka Friendship Award in 2009. In 2017, Aponso was honored for helping introduce China Radio International to Sri Lanka. At the 2019 founding of the Belt and Road Journalists Network, forum member Shanaka Maliyadda told China Daily that the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會) “is also helping us with media development in many aspects.”

Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires

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The Union of Press Workers of Buenos Aires (布宜諾斯艾利斯新聞工作者聯合會), or UTPBA, is an Argentine press union founded on September 25, 1986, when, according to the union, thousands of press workers voted in its first election. A former union leader has written that it was formed by merging two earlier Buenos Aires press organizations. The UTPBA holds the presidency of the Latin American Federation of Journalists, according to a profile published by the Belt and Road Journalists Network, a platform led by the official All-China Journalists Association (中華全國新聞工作者協會), which renders the union’s name as “Union of Journalists of Buenos Aires.” UTPBA Secretary General Lidia Fagale was the network’s first presidium chair in 2019, and the union’s website carries the network’s logo in its header. In July 2021, the union published a letter from Shen Haixiong (慎海雄), president of China Media Group (中央廣播電視總台), thanking Fagale for her congratulations on the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party. In January 2023, Argentina’s labor ministry transferred bargaining rights for press workers in the city of Buenos Aires to the rival Sindicato de Prensa de Buenos Aires. The ministry found that the UTPBA had not shown it had any dues-paying members.