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Behind promises of better life through globalization
By Wan Lixin |
00:00 UTC+8 September 4, 2010
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GLOBALIZATION has become a buzz word around the globe.
When an expert or a student begins an article with "In this globalized world of ours ..." you are supposed to know we are in for something big, and feel lucky we were born just in the nick of time for the glorious present and the glorious days ahead.
Only our computer spelling check system still deems "globalize" as suspect -- it hasn't quite arrived.
As the initial euphoria greeting the signing of some documents baptizing China as "globalized" subsides, investment bankers are ever more ready to shower us with such epithets as "rising," "emerging," or "miraculous."
If someone asks a Chinese to compare the globalized China with the China of 20 years ago, what would he see?
We were poorer at that time. In other words, we had less money.
As a consequence, we had fewer cars, fewer brands, and fewer advertisements.
Are we more affluent, or merely more wretched?
I would probably cite transport containers as archetypical of globalization.
In suburban Shanghai the newly opened outer ring road is chiefly dedicated to containers trucks rushing to and from the ports.
The financial crisis caused a brief letup in the intensity of the rumbling on the road, raising alarms, so a generous stimulus package was bestowed and now the rumbling has exceeded the pre-crisis level.
But the impacts of globalization can be felt more deeply.
During my recent visit to my village home in northern Jiangsu Province, I met our long-time neighbor, who is in her 60s.
Her husband and her two sons were all working at a construction site in Qingdao, Shandong Province, nearly 200 kilometers away, and her two daughters-in-law were working long hours at small local factories, leaving her alone to care for four grandchildren aged between 3 and 14. Throughout our visit, the 14-year-old boy was almost invisible because he spent the whole day before a TV set.
Who is going to take care of the farm fields?
I even forgot to ask that question because I was so distracted by an nearby road being built to the sea, and multi-storied buildings going up along a highway.
Only wealthy villagers are allowed to build along the road, and their houses draw exclamations from passengers and drivers, "Oh, my, they are rich."
And who is going to take care of food?
Of course, in this globalized world we can cleverly outsource that miserable job to the United States, or Brazil.
For our old village neighbors, the price of rice, wheat, and edible oil would be -- and already is -- set by Wall Street, rather than a nearby village where there is a market every five days.
Recently China is seeing record high grain prices.
As a result, the mooncakes we are to munch on later this month are getting more expensive.
People's Daily blames this on cascading effects from international grain price hikes, reducing arable land (which is not international), depleting water resources, etc and etc.
The paper admits that high grains prices do not benefit the peasants.
Statistics from the Agriculture Ministry showed that during the first seven months this year China's imports of grains increased by 66 percent, and imports of maize jumped 56 times!
Be consoled by the arguments of those still ardently spreading the gospel of globalization.
In "Money, Markets & Sovereignty," by Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds, we can revisit some of the arguments we have been familiar, and slightly fed up with.
Globalism is the belief that the exchange of goods, services and ideas is a net positive for humanity, and the authors trace this belief back thousands of years.
But I prefer to see today's examples as more relevant.
Take Foxconn for instance. It crams tens of thousands of cheap laborers into a small, semi-military zone, where their surplus value is extracted to the full to churn out state-of-the-art e-gadgets, which then travel halfway around the globe, and remain extremely cheap -- until they are branded Apple or Nokia.
Where is the net positive?
Today those who hold the capital (even when borrowed) write the rules of the game.
Global capital flows running independent of national supervision lead to market volatility, currency collapse and greater disparities.
China's government, after many false starts, is fighting a last-ditch battle to rein in its sky-high home prices, but recent media reports suggest that international capital is undercutting government efforts by providing much-needed funding to beleaguered real estate developers.
The picture is apparently so rosy for real estate that many cities are seeing fresh leaps in homes prices.
Meanwhile, wealthy Chinese from Chinese mainland are snapping up real estate in Hong Kong and London, fueling new bubbles.
One thing is sure: A globalized world is full of bubbles.
When an expert or a student begins an article with "In this globalized world of ours ..." you are supposed to know we are in for something big, and feel lucky we were born just in the nick of time for the glorious present and the glorious days ahead.
Only our computer spelling check system still deems "globalize" as suspect -- it hasn't quite arrived.
As the initial euphoria greeting the signing of some documents baptizing China as "globalized" subsides, investment bankers are ever more ready to shower us with such epithets as "rising," "emerging," or "miraculous."
If someone asks a Chinese to compare the globalized China with the China of 20 years ago, what would he see?
We were poorer at that time. In other words, we had less money.
As a consequence, we had fewer cars, fewer brands, and fewer advertisements.
Are we more affluent, or merely more wretched?
I would probably cite transport containers as archetypical of globalization.
In suburban Shanghai the newly opened outer ring road is chiefly dedicated to containers trucks rushing to and from the ports.
The financial crisis caused a brief letup in the intensity of the rumbling on the road, raising alarms, so a generous stimulus package was bestowed and now the rumbling has exceeded the pre-crisis level.
But the impacts of globalization can be felt more deeply.
During my recent visit to my village home in northern Jiangsu Province, I met our long-time neighbor, who is in her 60s.
Her husband and her two sons were all working at a construction site in Qingdao, Shandong Province, nearly 200 kilometers away, and her two daughters-in-law were working long hours at small local factories, leaving her alone to care for four grandchildren aged between 3 and 14. Throughout our visit, the 14-year-old boy was almost invisible because he spent the whole day before a TV set.
Who is going to take care of the farm fields?
I even forgot to ask that question because I was so distracted by an nearby road being built to the sea, and multi-storied buildings going up along a highway.
Only wealthy villagers are allowed to build along the road, and their houses draw exclamations from passengers and drivers, "Oh, my, they are rich."
And who is going to take care of food?
Of course, in this globalized world we can cleverly outsource that miserable job to the United States, or Brazil.
For our old village neighbors, the price of rice, wheat, and edible oil would be -- and already is -- set by Wall Street, rather than a nearby village where there is a market every five days.
Recently China is seeing record high grain prices.
As a result, the mooncakes we are to munch on later this month are getting more expensive.
People's Daily blames this on cascading effects from international grain price hikes, reducing arable land (which is not international), depleting water resources, etc and etc.
The paper admits that high grains prices do not benefit the peasants.
Statistics from the Agriculture Ministry showed that during the first seven months this year China's imports of grains increased by 66 percent, and imports of maize jumped 56 times!
Be consoled by the arguments of those still ardently spreading the gospel of globalization.
In "Money, Markets & Sovereignty," by Benn Steil and Manuel Hinds, we can revisit some of the arguments we have been familiar, and slightly fed up with.
Globalism is the belief that the exchange of goods, services and ideas is a net positive for humanity, and the authors trace this belief back thousands of years.
But I prefer to see today's examples as more relevant.
Take Foxconn for instance. It crams tens of thousands of cheap laborers into a small, semi-military zone, where their surplus value is extracted to the full to churn out state-of-the-art e-gadgets, which then travel halfway around the globe, and remain extremely cheap -- until they are branded Apple or Nokia.
Where is the net positive?
Today those who hold the capital (even when borrowed) write the rules of the game.
Global capital flows running independent of national supervision lead to market volatility, currency collapse and greater disparities.
China's government, after many false starts, is fighting a last-ditch battle to rein in its sky-high home prices, but recent media reports suggest that international capital is undercutting government efforts by providing much-needed funding to beleaguered real estate developers.
The picture is apparently so rosy for real estate that many cities are seeing fresh leaps in homes prices.
Meanwhile, wealthy Chinese from Chinese mainland are snapping up real estate in Hong Kong and London, fueling new bubbles.
One thing is sure: A globalized world is full of bubbles.
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