Critical Asian Studies ISSN: 1467-2715 (Print) 1472-6033 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcra20 Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro- Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974 Taomo Zhou To cite this article: Taomo Zhou (2019) Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro- Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974, Critical Asian Studies, 51:2, 166-197, DOI: 10.1080/14672715.2018.1561200 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2018.1561200 Published online: 06 Jan 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 149 View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcra20 CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 2019, VOL. 51, NO. 2, 166–197 https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2018.1561200 Global reporting from the Third World: the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association, 1963–1974 Taomo Zhou School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Originating from the 1955 Bandung Conference, the Afro-Asian Received 19 May 2018 Journalists’ Association (AAJA) promoted international Accepted 10 December 2018 collaboration among journalists in newly independent countries. KEYWORDS Built on an inclusive foundation of peaceful co-existence, the Cold War; Indonesia; China; AAJA contributed to the development of expansive global Third World; journalism 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. Introduction During the Cold War, the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association (AAJA)1 fostered solidarity among journalists from formerly colonized nations. The AAJA’s inaugural meeting held in Jakarta in April 1963 was attended by delegates from forty-seven countries. Prominent participants included Lionel Morrison (1935–2016), a South Africa-born journalist who was a defendant in the South African treason trial,2 Mamadou Gologo (1924–2009), a Malian government minister and physician, Asrar Ahmad (1923–2012), a founder of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, and Mamani Abdoulaye (1932– 1993), an itin- erant poet for the cause of Pan-African unity, and someone who was referred as “the Che CONTACT Taomo Zhou [email protected] School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, 48 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639818 1In Indonesian, Persatuan Wartawan Asia-Afrika, PWAA. 2In December 1956, the government of South Africa arrested 156 people and charged them with participating in a com- munist conspiracy to overthrow the state. This raid stifled political opposition against the apartheid regime, although all of the defendants were found not guilty in the trials that lasted until 1961. © 2018 BCAS, Inc. CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 167 Guevara of Niger.”3 From its office in the five-story Wisma Warta (the Press House) in central Jakarta, the AAJA organized international conferences, offered journalist-training programs, and published its flagship English-language magazine, Afro-Asian Journalist. However, the September Thirtieth Movement (Gerakan 30 September) in Indonesia in 1965 and ensuing nation-wide anti-communist campaign shattered the apparatus of the AAJA, with members of its staff either persecuted or forced into exile. In 1966, Djawoto (1906–1992), the AAJA’s first secretary general, announced its relocation to the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.). From its new headquarters, first at the Peking Hotel and then inside a traditional Beijing courtyard, the AAJA continued its activities, including frequent international exchanges and regular publishing, until its informal dis- solution in 1974. Beyond this tale of two cities, the AAJA’s history is part of a larger story of transnational collaboration among newly independent countries during the Cold War. It originated from the first Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung in 1955. Its early years were influenced by Indonesian President Sukarno’s call for progressive “new emerging forces” to fight against the reactionary “old established forces,” as well as by Indonesia’s ambivalent relationship with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). It relocated to Beijing after the 1966 Tricontinental Conference, which expanded the realm of Afro-Asian solidarity to Latin America. In 1974, the year of the AAJA’s demise, Mao Zedong announced his theory of three worlds. In the same year, the New International Economic Order (NIEO), which proposed a revision of international economic rules in order to empower less developed countries, was adopted as a United Nations (U.N.) resolution. How did the AAJA define the “Third World” differently at different times? What visions for Third World solidarity did the AAJA promote during its eleven years of exist- ence? Why did it manage to weather the political turmoil of 1965 in Indonesia only to quietly unravel in a year (1974) usually recognized as a “triumph of Third Worldism”4 in light of the promulgation of the NIEO? As part of the broader phenomenon of the global movement for social, racial, political, and economic justice among formerly colo- nized nations, or what historian Vijay Prashad calls “the Third World project,”5 was the AAJA a rebellion against the Cold War, or a product of this? I address these questions through an analysis of AAJA publications and an examination of the memoirs and personal papers of its key participants. I reconstruct three phases of the AAJA’s development, each with its corresponding styles of journalistic writing and visual arts expression. During its Jakarta period (1963–1965), the AAJA maintained some of the cosmopolitan outlook of Indonesia’s liberal democracy era (1949–1959), characterized by commercial awareness, cultural pluralism, and artistic vibrancy. After the radicalization of Indonesian foreign policy under President Sukarno, the AAJA adopted a more aggressively anti-imperialist view of international affairs, projecting an idealistic vision of synchronized world revolution. Later, during the first part of its Beijing period (1966–1971), the AAJA became the P.R.C.’s international mouthpiece, fea- turing a rigid reporting format and Cultural Revolution propaganda that accentuated the image of Mao as a world revolutionary leader. In its last two years of existence, due to the 3Boyd-Buggs 1999. 4Rist 2002, 140. 5Prashad 2007,xv–xix. 168 T. ZHOU reorientation of Chinese foreign policy following the Sino-U.S. rapprochement, the AAJA shifted its emphasis from militant anti-imperialism to economic development. Tracing these changes in the AAJA demonstrates the complex and often conflicted ways in which two important actors in the Third World project – Indonesia and China – concep- tualized “the Third World” and formulated media representations during the Cold War. Bandung and a cosmopolitan approach to reporting The Third World made its debut on the international stage at the 1955 Bandung Confer- ence. The term “Third World” had been coined by French demographer Albert Sauvy in 1952 to refer to formerly colonized societies who remained outside the division between the First World – the capitalist bloc led by the United States – and the Second World – the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union. The root of the term was the “Third Estate,” which referred to the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution. Although it had less status than the First Estate of clergy and the Second Estate of aristocracy, the Third Estate led France toward popular sovereignty. In the same fashion, Sauvy suggested that the Third World would be a powerful new force in world affairs.6 Although Bandung was not “the first intercontinental conference of colored peoples in the history of mankind” as Indonesian President Sukarno claimed in his opening address,7 it marked the Third World’s entry into international politics as an independent player instead of “an adjunct of the First or Second Worlds.”8 Strategic pragmatism about and accommo- dation for ideological, cultural, and religious differences formed the cornerstone for col- laboration among the twenty-nine countries represented at the Bandung Conference. Looking to the past, participants were brought together by their shared experience of colo- nial exploitation and racial oppression. Looking to the future, they collectively demanded autonomy for themselves and disarmament by the United States and U.S.S.R. In addition to its political significance, Bandung is one of the very few international dip- lomatic conferences that has entered the realm of popular culture across continents.9 The mushrooming mass media in the early post-World War II era helped bring this event to ordinary people in post-colonial