Saturday, May 12, 2007
globalization and inequality
Set of scales with white family on one side and black people on the other.
Artist: Eales, Stan Catalogue
Ref: sea0057
Subject: globalization Politics
What is on the picture? A big set of scales with different people on both sides. Obviously this shows the inequality between people from different countries and different races. But think beyond it, the people shown in this cartoon can also represent the developed countries and developing countries or less-developed countries. So the inequality is not only about incomes, but also about power. With the effect of globalization, the order of the world is now changing. But who will then benefit more from globalization? Seems to be the developed countries.
During the process of globalization, the world tends to have a unified system with no boundaries between nations. Many international organizations had been set up which link different nations together, and countries are more dependent on each others. With the increasing competition in free market, increasing immigrations, spread of information and pressure of international organizations; countries receive huge impacts of globalization.
The most obvious impact is that with the free market system, government now has less power control over its economics. Capitals go after profits, thus, there have been more and more competitions. It tends to be harder for some developed countries to have high revenue from tax, high welfare and high wages as it will increase the costs and deduce the profits. However, developing countries then have to reduce taxation and wages as far as possible in order to attract foreign investment. The strong economic power of developed countries then is linked to their political power of controlling the flows of capital. And lowering labor wages means that the developing countries cannot really improve their living standards and the governments face more hazards as they cannot control the economy by macro controls such as changing currency.
Secondly, as a result of advance transportations, many people then tend to go to the first world countries such as the US. And indeed, many developed countries want to attract foreign talents. For example, the US is considering changing its maximum number of foreign professional from 115 thousands to 200 thousands. The developed countries need to face issues such as illegal immigrations. And countries like the US still need to revise its immigration laws. For developing countries, they face another serious problem-the loss of citizens and manpower. Since there is strong attraction of higher living standard in DCs, it is hard for governments to keep talents. And the development of one nation’s economy does affect the situation of losing talents. In 1970s, there are about 190 thousands Chinese students studying overseas in US, and only 40 thousands of then went back to serve. However, because of China’s increasing economic power and political position, now more and more students go back to their motherland. Then how about those LDCs？It will be much harder for them to keep manpower due to their weak economic powers and the foreign talents policies of many developed countries. And thus, globalization brings more advantages to the DCs.
Lastly, the increasing power of media and international governments lead to the increasing pressure on governments. Therefore the difference of local business and international business is deducing. Nations need to share their powers. It also allows country to stand for their right. However, is the power equally shared? We could see that compare to other countries, developed countries such as the US, UK and many other westerns tend to be more dominant. Although many countries and even many Americans went against the Iraq War, Bush’s administration still made their decision against the pressure. Then if we look at the case of North Korea and Iran, it is definitely harder for them to go against the international pressure and the military threat by the US.
Yes, globalization definitely affects the countries all around the world. However, it seems that the strong economic power and current political / economic system gives developed countries more advantages compare to developing countries and LDCs. It is impossible to stop the globalization waves, so LDCs still need to open up to the modern technology and economic system. In order to raise their positions in the current system, they will need to make a lot of changes base on their current local system. And international organizations certainly should consider the rights of the LDCs which are weaker than DCs.
Bibliography(In Chinese :p):
http://hi.baidu.com/zyjlr/blog/item/0c119ecad5eb2c87c9176856.html
http://www.teamdo.com.cn/blog/user1/2520/archives/2005/18615.html
http://www.people.com.cn/GB/channel7/498/20000619/109584.html
[[your political expert Liu Sha]]
; i'm lovin' it
