Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974

Abstract

ABSTRACT Originating from the 1955 Bandung Conference, the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association (AAJA) promoted international collaboration among journalists in newly independent countries. Built on an inclusive foundation of peaceful co-existence, the AAJA contributed to the development of expansive global information networks, lively intellectual traffic, and rich visual arts among Afro-Asian nations. However, the cosmopolitanism of its early years was later undermined by the decline of constitutional democracy in Indonesia and a lack of cohesion among Afro-Asian nations. After the September Thirtieth Movement in Indonesia in 1965, the AAJA relocated to Beijing and was mobilized by the Chinese state to promote the P.R.C. as the leader of an embittered Third World’s battle against American imperialism and Soviet revisionism. In the early 1970s, ideological fervor began abating in China. During this time, Mao’s reframing of the three worlds, which was based on developmental measurements, redirected the AAJA’s Third World discourse to issues of modernization until its quiet dissolution in 1974. The history of the AAJA demonstrates the complex and often conflicted ways in which two important post-colonial states – Indonesia and China – conceptualized “the Third World” and formulated media representations during the Cold War.