This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

It is advice new parents are unlikely to hear from childcare gurus. If you can’t get your children to go to sleep, just talk to them about the policies of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

But that is the message the China Daily, a state-run broadsheet, is pushing this week as Xi prepares to welcome world leaders to Beijing for a two-day summit celebrating a Chinese infrastructure drive some call the biggest development plan in history.

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In a series of propaganda videos trumpeting Xi’s awkwardly named “Belt and Road initiative”, Erik Nilsson, an American journalist at the newspaper, appears and tells bedtime stories about the scheme to a child who is introduced as his daughter Lily.

“Time for bed, sweetie,” Nilsson tells Lily in the first video, before launching into an explanation of how Xi’s $900bn infrastructure crusade is an attempt to create a modern-day Silk Road.

“It’s called the Belt and Road initiative,” Nilsson beams as his daughter fiddles with a stuffed camel. “This forum is a chance tell the world about the Belt and road – like I’m telling you.”

“They’re building new things, like highways and railways, and airports and even pipelines and internet cables,” he continues before turning off the bedroom lights.

In the second instalment of the newspaper’s “Belt and Road bedtime stories”, Lily learns that Xi’s initiative is “not just about roads and rails and airports to move stuff – it’s also about people and cooperation”.

“What kind of cooperation?” Lily wonders. “Lots of kinds,” her father, who is known for his Panglossian, state-funded takes on Chinese politics, replies enigmatically.



“Its China’s idea – but it belongs to the world,” continues Nilsson as he parrots one of the key lines Beijing’s propaganda department has been pushing before the summit on 14-15 May which will be attended by leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan.

Finally, pre-slumber indoctrination session over, it’s time for lights out. “Look, sweetie, it’s time to go to sleep,” Nilsson says.



The China Daily’s bedtime story videos are not the only ones in which Beijing’s spin doctors are using children to tell a story adults have struggled to explain to the world since Xi unveiled the Belt and Road initiative in 2013.

In a video posted on China Daily’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts – all of which are blocked in mainland China but used to spread Beijing’s message overseas – a girl pretends to strum a ukulele as she leads a chorus of children who have been assembled to sing the party’s praises.

“The ‘Belt’ connects the lands, the ‘Road’ moves on the sea, the promise that they hold, is joint prosperity,” the children sing. “We’re breaking barriers/ we’re making history/ the world we’re dreaming of/ starts with you and me.”

The videos are a radical departure from the traditional propaganda banners and billboards that still adorn streets across China, urging passersby to “unswervingly follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics” or “express sincere thanks for the loving care shown by the party central committee with comrade Xi Jinping at its core”.



James Millward, a Georgetown University historian who has studied the Belt and Road initiative, said the childish imagery being used to promote the project was “China’s way of saying that people shouldn’t be afraid of its rising economic and diplomatic and political influence in the region”. “They are really trying to soften [China’s] image with happy, cheerful, ukulele-playing children.”

But not all China Daily readers were impressed. “Cheesy imperialist propaganda,” one critic wrote on the newspaper’s Facebook page. “What a joke.”😂😂😂