From yesterday to today, we have discussed many issues related to the Non-Aligned Movement and the New International Economic Order. Here, I would like to revisit the history of the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1970s, the New International Economic Order, and the New World Information and Communication Order.
Let us briefly recall the background.
The New International Economic Order was proposed by Non-Aligned countries during the oil crisis of the 1970s. The diplomatic victory of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries was also a material one—it revealed that the goals of economic development in the Global South were inseparable from cultural and informational communication. In response to the outdated system of the so-called “free flow of information” promoted by the Global North, the Non-Aligned Movement put forward the demand to establish a New World Information and Communication Order. This initiative was also supported by the Soviet Union at the time.
Several key moments mark this history. In 1973, the Fourth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement adopted the Algiers Declaration, which for the first time addressed issues related to mass media. It stated that imperialist influence extended beyond the economic and political spheres into the cultural and social domains and called on Non-Aligned countries to take coordinated action in the field of mass communication.
In 1976, a ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement was convened in New Delhi, where the New Delhi Declaration on the decolonization of information was adopted. The declaration rejected Western media theories that upheld liberalism as supreme. It argued that the so-called “free flow” of information was, in reality, a one-way flow and a manifestation of imperialist monopoly. It highlighted the severe imbalances in global information circulation and pointed out that the concentration and monopolization of information mirrored the dependent-dominant relationships of the colonial era. Non-Aligned countries were victims of this imbalance and therefore demanded the right to information. They also recognized that realizing this right required a solid material foundation.
In 1977, the Non-Aligned Movement leveraged UNESCO to establish the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, aiming to narrow the communication gap among developing countries and promote a more balanced global information exchange. This was a significant institutional breakthrough achieved through UNESCO.
This movement ultimately failed in the 1980s. One major reason was the recovery of Western countries from the oil crisis. After Reagan and Thatcher came to power, they implemented neoliberal policies and launched a counter-campaign by the Global North against the New World Information and Communication Order. For example, the World Press Freedom Committee issued statements arguing that UNESCO’s decisions would lead to government control over press freedom and were thus anti-liberal. Most notably, the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew from UNESCO in 1983 and 1985, respectively, prompting the organization to back down from its earlier positions. The U.S. later rejoined in 2003, only to withdraw again in 2017 after UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. This brief historical trajectory shows that neoliberalism ultimately defeated the political vision and efforts of the 1970s Non-Aligned Movement to promote a new information and communication order—across both the Global North-South and East-West divides. In this sense, the movement failed.
Following this failure, critiques emerged from both the right and the left. From the right, it was argued that the movement harmed global press freedom by shielding authoritarian regimes. Western media launched widespread negative coverage and smear campaigns. Another criticism was that the movement condemned only American imperialism while remaining silent on the Soviet Union, given the support it received from the latter. Hence, it was viewed as an attempt to politicize UNESCO and as a communist attack on press freedom. Another criticism pointed to the leftist scholars involved in promoting the movement, arguing that they focused too heavily on top-down, state-led policies while paying too little attention to grassroots participation. As a paradigm of international communication, it was limited by a nation-state framework that focused on relations between countries while overlooking class analysis within them. This has been a key criticism from the left.
In fact, the theoretical foundation of the New World Information and Communication Order movement lay in concepts of cultural imperialism and media imperialism—ideas that have been largely dismissed in the context of globalization. In the era of globalization, audiences are seen as active participants capable of resisting media content and producing alternative meanings. As a result, much of cultural studies has shifted its focus to the ways in which such resistance takes shape. One-way information flows are now widely understood to have been replaced by more diverse and complex forms of communication.
Given today’s conditions, we must ask: Is it possible to rebuild a 21st-century Non-Aligned Movement and a New World Information and Communication Order? The global communication landscape remains deeply unequal and unjust. Neoliberal globalization, along with widening wealth gaps, increasing North-South polarization, and political crises erupting within advanced capitalist countries in Europe and North America, has only exacerbated the situation. In this sense, the historical mission of the 1970s Non-Aligned Movement remains unfulfilled and unresolved.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe accelerated the tide of globalization—a trend that has been reversed by the rise of China. After the U.S.-China trade war, the United States began a process of “de-globalization.” As the saying goes, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” It is under such conditions that we come to see the underlying logic of the so-called rules-based international order: new forms of imperialism and colonialism. Therefore, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism continue to serve as the shared foundation for a renewed Non-Aligned Movement and the pursuit of a 21st-century New World Information and Communication Order. Today, I would like to raise an open question: Is it possible to reconstruct a foundation of consensus for a renewed 21st-century New World Information and Communication Order—one grounded in a revitalized anti-imperialist and anti-colonial vision?
This reconstruction faces new tasks and challenges. One of them concerns academic knowledge production: Is a united front of Global South intellectuals possible? This is also a central theme of our forum. We have repeatedly heard, especially from the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement, a strong emphasis on Gramsci’s thought. On the first day, we also discussed Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art—specifically the relationship between intellectuals and society, peasant movements, and the connection between socialism and rural struggles. The connections between these themes underscore the importance of building a reciprocal system of knowledge production among intellectuals in the Global South—or, put differently, establishing a coordinated and interlinked framework for mutual engagement and collaboration. Another crucial task lies in media practice: Can South-South media networks and information flows be built in a way that allows us to truly see and hear one another—rather than relying on the media machines and monopolistic structures of Western capitalist countries to realize our so-called “mutual learning among civilizations”?
Another critical issue, also raised repeatedly in our discussions, is that of media sovereignty. This unfolds across several levels. The first concerns the nation-state: Do today’s sovereign countries have the right to develop their own media industries? Media industries are, at their core, tied to industrial development. For example, the international success of Chinese social media platforms was made possible by state investment in telecommunications infrastructure as part of the country’s broader industrialization process. China’s “Village-to-Village Connectivity” project—which included telecommunications, railways, and highways—laid the groundwork for media breakthroughs. Industrial development serves as the foundation for the growth of national communication industries, as the construction of telecommunications infrastructure depends on the accumulated gains of industrialization. Also, there are media sanctions. Today, we see transnational social media platforms imposing restrictions on information related to certain nation-states—this, in effect, amounts to a sanction on sovereignty. When a social media platform targets a sovereign state in this way, it is essentially replicating the logic of political sanctions imposed under the guise of global hegemony. Media sanctions, therefore, are not just about information control; they reflect deeper questions of media sovereignty. How should we view these unilateralist media sanctions carried out by social media platforms? This is a critical issue we must confront when discussing the broader concept of media sovereignty.
The success of social media platforms does not rest with capitalists but with the labor and contributions of countless media users. The world is built by laborers, and media platforms are no exception. The real question concerns the ownership of the outcomes of this labor: How can media platforms serve the people? How can their benefits be shared by the people? In this sense, democratizing social media platforms is key.
In yesterday’s discussion on media sovereignty, we also talked about state media—and particularly the legitimacy of CGTN. Everyone agrees that China is crucial to today’s global development. If we acknowledge that importance, then it is only natural to ask: Where is China’s voice? How does China see the world—and itself? If not through state media, then through what medium should that voice be expressed? Therefore, the issue is not that CGTN is a state media outlet, but whether, as a “party newspaper,” it truly follows the mass line. Does it follow the mass line domestically and internationally? Has it overcome formalism and bureaucracy? These are the most critical questions.
Amid global capitalist encirclement and hostility, China’s state media must, of course, defend national sovereignty—and I see no issue with that. What truly matters is how we understand the role of China’s state media—its function in domestic governance, and in international communication. The solution we envision lies in the revival of a new Non-Aligned Movement. Today, Professor Wang Hui also spoke about the possibility of such a revival. The key question is: How can we, under this new framework, gradually reconstruct phased systems of connection? These may involve international organizations—such as UNESCO—but breakthroughs at the level of UNESCO alone are far from sufficient. That limitation was one of the reasons the New World Information and Communication Order movement failed in the 1970s. What we need is to build phased systems of connection that span sovereign states, civil society, political parties, enterprises, education—and the list goes on. Only through such efforts can we shape an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial vision capable of breaking entrenched monopolies.
Thus, the essential vision of a 21st-century New World Information and Communication Order also reflects the core mission of the Global South International Communication Forum: to provide a platform for exchange and collaboration among progressive media outlets committed to documenting historical truth, advocating peace and development, and opposing information warfare. Together, we aim to explore a new path for international communication—one that serves the broadest masses of people worldwide and truly follows the mass line.