Asia, Africa and Latin America Unite

South-South cooperation in the 20th century

One of the most lyrical of Mao era slogans is ‘Asia, Africa and Latin America unite and defeat American imperialism’ (亚非拉团结起来，打倒美帝国主义). It has all the elements of a good revolutionary slogan: solidarity between underdogs, kinship of the colonized and oppressed, and the violent toppling of the number one power.

Now that socialism and communism have finally been abandoned by everyone except the old school dictators in North Korea and Cuba, talk of Third World unity is more often seen in terms of encouraging mutually beneficial trading relationships. It even has a new name: South-South cooperation, where ‘South’ is the current vogue term for Third World, sounding a little hipper than the prosaic ‘developing countries’.

South-South cooperation in the 21st century

This attitude was on display at the margins of the G8 Summit in St Petersburg, where the leaders of six giants of the South met for their own summit on July 16. The developing nations and leaders deemed important enough to cop a invite the the G8 summit were:

– Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) President Denis Sassou-Nguesso

– Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

– Brazilian President Lula Da Silva

– Chinese President Hu Jintao

– Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada

– South African President Thabo Mbeki

The talk seemed to revolve around these themes:

– Moving the Doha Round of WTO negotiations forward;

– Deepening South-South cooperation and trade;

– Tackling communicable diseases;

– Africa’s development;

– Energy security.