Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 begins in Kunming

The Global South Media and Think Tank Forum 2025 opened in Kunming, Yunnan Province, uniting hundreds of scholars, officials and journalists to strengthen the voice of developing countries on the global stage.

The theme of the five-day forum is "Empowering Global South, Navigating Global Changes".

This is the second edition of the forum, which is co-hosted by Xinhua News Agency, the Communist Party of China Yunnan Provincial Committee, and the People's Government of Yunnan Province. It was first held last November in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

About 500 representatives from more than 260 institutions across 110 countries, including Bangladesh, as well as international and regional organisations, are participating in the forum, reports Xinhua.

The agenda focuses on building consensus on peace, identifying new drivers of development, broadening cooperation, and advancing dialogue among civilisations.

Journalists, scholars, government officials and entrepreneurs are among the participants.

Experts and intellectuals attending the forum point out that Global South countries have long been in a weak position in the international public opinion arena.

UNB Executive Editor and Executive Director of Cosmos Foundation Nahar Khan, who is attending the global forum on Saturday, said the Global South stands at a turning point.

"Our stories can no longer be defined by hegemonic voices. They must reflect the diversity, dignity, and dynamism of our own perspectives," she said.

"My hope for the Global South Media and Think Tank Forum is that this gathering empowers us to shape narratives from within that are led by unity, guided by vision, and carried forward with courage," Nahar said.

The global participants at the Forum have their common aspiration to turn the Global South's rising economic weight -- representing 40% of global GDP and 80% of world growth -- into an equally powerful voice in the fields of international discussion and communication.

Within five days of meeting, participants will brainstorm and contribute their wisdom to translate the forum theme, "empowering the global south, navigating global changes," into tangible solutions for practical projects.

Plenary sessions will alternate with focused workshops on peace-building narratives, AI-driven newsrooms, heritage preservation, and other topics, according to Xinhua.

The event also marks the formal launch of the Global South Joint Communication Partnership Network, which features more than 1,000 media outlets, think tanks, and other institutions across 95 countries and regions.

Often, as objects of observation, narration, and shaping, their voices have been drowned out, their stories distorted, and the truth behind them obscured.

Professor Cheng Manli from Peking University's School of Journalism and Communication noted that a common task for Global South countries is to break the existing international public opinion pattern and discourse monopoly, and to establish their own subject status and discourse advantage.

"The fate of the Global South should not be determined by others but shaped by us. We need strategic unity, long-term vision, and political courage," Aires Ali, former prime minister of Mozambique, told Xinhua.

"The Global South is not only a geographical concept but also a voice, a force, and a history full of struggle and hope. It is our common responsibility to make this voice heard, respected, and cherished by our people and the entire international community."

His view is echoed by Khalid Mubarak Al-Shafi, editor-in-chief of Qatar's Peninsula Newspaper.

"We are in need of strengthening unity and building consensus among nations to achieve peace. We must work together to foster mutual understanding and respect, rejecting all forms of violence and discrimination," said Al-Shafi.

Participants also stress the importance of building partnerships between media outlets and think tanks.

UNB Executive Editor and Executive Director of Cosmos Foundation Nahar Khan, who is attending the global forum, on Saturday, said the Global South stands at a turning point

"Knowledge must inform narratives, and narratives must reach people," Narine Nazaryan, director of the Armenian state news agency Armenpress, told Xinhua.

Nazaryan called on media and think tanks from the Global South to create platforms that "bring academic insight and journalistic reach together, so that civilizational dialogue moves beyond declarations and becomes daily practice."

"The Global South is home to many cultures and traditions, each with its own way of understanding the world," Ambreen Jan, Pakistan's federal secretary and vice minister of information and broadcasting, told Xinhua.

"The bridges we build today, with our friends in China and with all countries in the Global South, can carry practical solutions to the challenges we share," she said.

With unilateralism and protectionism continuing to gain ground in recent years and certain countries worshipping power and status and embracing the law of the jungle, humanity needs new worldwide public intellectual goods to respond to the fundamental challenges confronting us all, a think tank report has said.

The report, titled "Answering the Questions of Our Time: The Global Significance and Practical Value of China's Public Intellectual Goods," was released Saturday by Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with Xinhua News Agency.

"The world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, and the existing system of global public intellectual goods is increasingly unable to address today's global issues effectively," it said.

Elaborating on the contemporary need for global public intellectual goods, the report said that there is a serious deficit of public intellectual goods in today's world. "Behind the worldwide deficits in peace, development, security, and governance lies a profound deficit of ideas."

Take global governance for instance, the report argued that in the face of a series of global challenges -- geopolitical conflicts, climate change, food crises, public health threats, and digital security threats -- the current system of global public intellectual goods has proven to be visibly inadequate.

"Climate change offers a telling example: certain major powers have withdrawn from international agreements, and some developed countries have repeatedly shifted positions on burden-sharing, financial support, and technology transfer, severely undermining the effectiveness of collective action," it said.

Confronted with such complex challenges, there is an urgent need for new public intellectual goods with greater foresight, inclusiveness, and innovation to renew the guiding principles and practices of global governance, it said.

On cultural conflicts and crises of belief, the report argued that new cultural public intellectual goods must address the profound questions of humanity's relationship with society and with nature, promote dialogue and mutual learning among civilisations, and foster coexistence, thereby laying a solid foundation for shared values for all humankind.