China’s global economic development strategy has focused on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the recently launched Global Development Initiative (GDI). China’s economic activities associated with these initiatives has provided investment in infrastructure projects and digital connectivity in numerous countries and foster multilateral cooperation on issues like sustainability, climate change, and poverty alleviation. However, these initiatives have also sparked debate over debt sustainability and environmental concerns with many arguing that these elements of China’s economic statecraft are designed to enhance its strategic influence. This paper explores the question of how BRI and GDI investment influences the information environments of recipient countries. China has actively sought to shape media environments as part of its broader strategy to project soft power, promote strategic messaging narratives, and safeguard its geopolitical interests. We argue that BRI and GDI activities change the information environments of participating countries to further PRC strategic messaging narratives of non-interference, sovereignty and territorial integrity, peaceful coexistence, and multilateralism/opposition to hegemony Our research design utilizes natural language processing to create event-data on PRC strategic messaging narratives to determine to what extent that BRI/GDI activities lead to increases in promulgation of these narrative themes. We predict that as BRI/GDI investment increases PRC strategic messaging narratives become more prevalent in the media landscape (traditional and social) in recipient countries.