"In April, China quietly launched a new media group: The Belt and Road News Network (BRNN). The BRNN’s mission is to boost “understanding, friendship and cooperation, and form a normalized mechanism for collaboration,” across the participating countries and regions of China’s multi-billion dollar connectivity project. Concepts of dialogue, the exchange of ideas, information, and products, and innovation feature prominently in BRNN materials. The BRNN is likely an outgrowth of ideas posited by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the first Belt and Road Forum in 2017. In the concluding portions of his address that year, Xi said “We will also develop a network for cooperation among the NGOs in countries along the Belt and Road as well as new people-to-people exchange platforms such as a Belt and Road news alliance and a music education alliance.”Two years on, the platform is headquartered in Beijing and chaired by the People’s Daily, China’s largest newspaper group and the official outlet of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. According to the network’s charter, the BRNN’s council consists of 14 members from China and 26 others from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eurasia (Bangladesh, Belarus, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Tanzania, U.A.E, U.K. and Zambia)..."