Globalisation 阅读材料.doc

Winners and Losers Globalisation is defined by the spread and integration of people, goods, finance, knowledge and culture across the planet. Each of these dimensions of globalisation has advanced since the dawn of civilisation, at a pace determined by the available technologies for transport and communications. Motherboard of a laptop ©Greenpeace InternationalAccelerated now by microchip technology and the efficiency of container shipping, globalisation has drawn attention to itself on account of its far-reaching consequences.The impact on ordinary households is most apparent in high and middle income countries. Most everyday goods are imported from a single country, China; simple enquiries about banking or insurance may involve a call centre in India; a globetrotting executive can sustain family intimacy through social media tools. These illustrations of globalisation are broadly positive in their effect on individuals, creating space for personal fulfilment, stimulating wealth and encouraging cross-cultural experience. At national level, the economic opportunities presented by globalisation have been responsible in part for the success of countries such as China, Vietnam and Brazil in achieving significant poverty reduction. But most low income countries have been less fortunate and there is rising concern that the global poor have been left behind in the slipstream. Whereas sharply rising volumes of foreign trade and investment over the last twenty years have transformed standards of living in industrialised countries, the number of sub-Saharan Africans living in extreme poverty has risen. Whereas internet technology has revolutionised our capacity for knowledge and interaction, swathes of South Asia and Africaprovide no electricity, let alone computers. Whereas the global supply chains of our supermarket culture deliver exotic year-round affordable foods, over 900 million people in the developing world experience hunger. Contemporary globalisation is therefore linked with widening global inequality. The continuing post-colonial search for an effective development model for the losers of globalisation reflects the anxiety of the winners. Washington Consensus The sequence of major wars and economic depression that marked the first half of the 20th century induced a profile of inward-looking states with closed economies. The relative stability that evolved after 1945 boosted confidence. By the 1980s, most of the wealthier western economies had lifted capital controls, enabling foreign ownership of business assets. Strong leadership of US president Reagan and UK prime minister Thatcher shaped the emerging ideology of economic management. This favoured a diminished role for government through privatisation of state-owned enterprises, downward pressure on social spending alongside deregulation of barriers to foreign trade, investment and capitalist enterprise. These principles of “neoliberal” or “open market” economics became known as theWashington Consensus. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 added countries of the former Soviet Union to the western template, its greatest moment of triumph. Even the major surviving communist regimes in China and Vietnam had by then introduced doi moi (open door) policies as a gesture to market discipline. Within this short space of time, the world’s major industrial and banking corporations had been presented with what they desire above all else – a massive increase in the size of the market. Many of these entities quickly built up revenues which exceeded the entire economies of individual developing countries. Exclusion from Globalisation Such was the dominance of the Washington Consensus that it was imposed on the poorest countries through the 1980s as a condition for World Bank and IMF support. As an economic template for development, the Consensus proved to be a disaster.Government spending on health and education was curtailed and state support for agriculture and industry dismantled. Utilities were privatised without recognising the needs of poorer customers. Into the new millennium, the results were painfully clear. Whilst developed economies gorged on booming international trade and investment, global poverty remained trapped in a parallel expanding universe. India hosts both global industry and global poverty © bbjee (flickr)Economic growth in Africa has been relatively strong in recent years but has tended to create urban elites, whilst rural livelihoods remain primitive. India too has had very considerable success as a participant in the globalised economy, yet over a third of the world’s extreme poverty remains located in that country. If China’s success in poverty reduction is removed from global figures for the period 1981 to 2008, the number of people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day has risen. This is a poor advertisement for globalisation. Those who describe our wor。