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.
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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.
“So it’s just about moving stuff around?” she asks.
“That’s a big part of it,” he says. “But there’s a lot more.”
