HONG KONG — Sometimes “Goodnight Moon” just won’t do the trick.

So for parents struggling to get their little ones to rest their eyes for the night, China’s state propaganda apparatus has a suggestion: Tell your child about President Xi Jinping’s ambitions to extend China’s political and economic power across Asia and the Middle East.

China Daily, a state-controlled media organization that aims primarily at an international audience, began releasing English-language videos this week describing a huge spending and infrastructure push called the Belt and Road Initiative, in the form of a child’s bedtime story. In the two videos released so far, a father uses a windup camel skittering across a map to describe trade across Asia along the old Silk Road, and how China plans to help develop the regions it once passed through.

Mr. Xi’s name is, of course, dropped prominently.

“They’re building new things like highways and railways and airports, and even pipeline and internet cables,” says a father trying to put his daughter to bed.