...The Chinese government’s repression of journalists at home is well known. Less visible is how that machinery now reaches far beyond its borders—and what that means for the environment.

An Inside Climate News investigation has identified more than a dozen journalists who have faced retaliation for reporting on environmental destruction and human rights abuses tied to China’s ventures in African countries, likely a stark undercount. Many of those cases involve projects under Beijing’s $1.3 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, a massive investment effort into mines, ports, railways, pipelines and other infrastructure in mostly poor countries. 

When a project carries political weight for both the Chinese government and local authorities, that’s often when repression happens, according to Sarah Cook, author of the UnderReported China newsletter who has studied the country’s media influence operations for more than 15 years. 

“If there are muckraking journalists or whistleblowers who might expose environmental issues, it could potentially be in the interest of both the local actors and the Chinese-linked ones to put a stop to that,” Cook said.

That suppression hides or sanitizes environmental and human rights abuses, even as Chinese President Xi Jinping promotes the Belt and Road Initiative as a model of “green” development and positions China as a global climate leader...

Zimbabwe is another nation where China has exported telecommunications equipment and surveillance technology, with companies like Huawei and CloudWalk providing facial recognition systems and enabling extensive monitoring of journalists. Beijing is also training other nations’ security forces, including coaching units that protect regimes and enforce authoritarian control, according to a recent report from an international affairs think tank...