Huan Yu
2011/12/2
Eng191
Global communication is a new word; but also a very common word in today’s world. What does global communication mean? In my point view, it is a kind of cooperation and exchange between different countries and between different races. In the past several years, the global communication has changed globalization a lot. In 21century, a new era in the human calendar, globalization is flooding almost every corner of the earth. And nowadays, we call the earth the global village. All the countries in the world have a tight relation between each other, no matter in what kind of fields. And due to the global communications, changes have been taking place in everywhere on earth over the years after global communications. The global communication has great impact on everyone. In this essay, I will mainly look into the changes in China, America and Malaysia.
In the 1990s, economic globalization has become the new trend to dominate development of world. Globalization has significant influences on the changes of the world’s political and economic structures. In essence, economic globalization is the globalization of market institution. No doubt, economic globalization has influenced the economy of China. China, in modern times, faces the problem of lacking water and has strength in the industry of manufactures. First, the problem of water is the one big issue that China must solve. Without globalization, China has two solutions to this problem, the first one is sea water desalinization and the other on is South to North Water Diversion Project. In my view, both of these two solutions are expensive. Also, in the long term, both of the solutions are not good for the economy of China. So it is the problem makes the Chinese government feel headache. Then, what is the solution? With the help of globalization, the solution is to guide the lake water in Lake Baikal which is located in Russia into the south part of China. In this way, the entire south part of China has enough water. At the same time, this solution also has positive effects on the global environmental issues. It says on world geography that there is almost 60 tons of high quantity nature mineral water annual flow into ocean without any benefits. Also, by the way of guiding water into China, there are some positive effects for the extremely cold weather condition which is not suitable for human to live in Siberia. Actually, it is to not cause waste and to cause positive effects on the global environmental issues. This solution achieves two aims at once.
On the other hand, in 1980s, China has strength in the industry of manufactures. By the end of 1978, China has its economic reform which is known as reform and open. This reform can be seen as the first time for China to get in touch with globalization. In 2001, China became a part of the Word Trade Organization (WTO). This is the signal of that China officially caught up with the globalization. In January of 2007, the economics of China has been integrated into the global economy. This is the process of China to realize globalization step by step. In the view of China’s export industrial structure, labor intensive products occupy the main part of the whole export products. It is imaginable how big the impact of China to the manufactures in developed countries is when China got touch with globalization. In 2005, the WTO cancelled the rule of limit quantity for Chinese textiles. Thus, Chinese textiles swarmed into the world market. This showed the power and energy of China’s economy to the world. China has become the biggest word’s manufacturing work. Plenty of cheap and fine products are sold to everywhere around the world. For this point, I have lots of personal experiences. More than 50% of products in the supermarkets are made in China. The newest iPhone: iPhone 4s is made in Shenzhen in China. As China exports so many cheap and fine products to the world market that China has cause the crowd out role to other countries’ manufacturing industries. In the adjustment process of optimize the global allocation of resources, different manufacturing industries from different countries will move to China. As China can produce cheaper and better products than other countries do. Once these cheap and fine products have been produced, the whole world shares these products. On this point, the globalization can promote China to innovate the development mode and also can increase the employments in China.
Along with these positive effects, globalization also has some side effects on China. First, the monopoly of technology and the holdings of direct investment by foreign companies have caused the threats to industrial Safety and industrial update. The privileges to foreign companies have restrained those local companies that share the same trade with foreign companies in a large degree. Even some markets of China have been monopolized by the foreign companies, such as the market of drinks, the market of mobile phones and the market of toothpastes. The second side effect might be the foreign debts. In recent few years, the foreign debts are growing at a high speed. This problem can have lots of potential dangers and we must pay attention to. The uncontrolled scale caused by too many foreign debts; the debt repayments caused by unsatisfactory usage of foreign debts; the shortage in monitoring foreign debts and all of these problem have showed us the potential dangers of foreign debts. Another side effect is the unreasonable structure of foreign trades in some areas with high presence of foreign companies. A lot of enterprises closed down in the financial tsunami in Pearl River Delta region and this has strongly proved the side effect of unreasonable structure of foreign trades. So we need to recognize and treat globalization comprehensively and correctly.
America, as one of the biggest and most developed country in the world, has a tight connection with globalization. Even for a long time, globalization also has effectively meant “Americanization”. In other word, others countries involve in globalization in the world adjust to American more. So, American had little to adjust to in globalization when it was the same as Americanization. One of the most obvious changes is that American companies have migrated most of their manufacturing jobs to foreign countries where it is cheaper to do business, for example, China is one of these countries. What is more? Service and technical jobs are currently operating a large exodus to foreign labors too. And this is what called outsourcing and offshoring. This phenomenon just like a double-edged sword, both have positive and negative effects. For positive effects, people in American can have the nice products with lower prices. Also, because of cheaper labors and cheaper resources, companies in American that have migrated most of their manufacturing jobs to foreign countries can earn more profits than before. But just as I said, this also has some negative effects. As American companies have migrated most of their manufacturing jobs to foreign countries and service and technical jobs are also operating a large exodus to foreign labor, there are fewer and fewer work positions for American people. This results in the low employment rates. As we all known, there is an inverse connection between employment rates and crime rates. As a result of that more and more people can’t find works to feed their families, they have no choice but to earn money in some illegal ways. Then the crime rate goes up, and this has caused a threat to the social security.
Globalization also has great impacts on education in America. Have you ever image that you or your family members to be tutored by someone in India? It is what happening nowadays. A 14-year-old student in Chicago is tutored in mathematics through the internet by an India tutor. And this tutor is from an India-based tutoring company. This just showed us the globalization in education. Globalization and global awareness have been important and necessary topics for today’s education. Just as some American educators said, the purpose of education is to develop good citizens and productive workers for the future. And the future of America is tightly connected with globalization, as the welfare of the United States is tied to the welfare of other countries by economics, the environment, politics, culture, information, and technology. Therefore, global perspective is one of the necessary curriculums in American schools. Actually, the global education in America is not a new idea. In 1970, an educational philosopher called Brameld formulated the basic principles of the Reconstructionist philosophy of education and which is called for a close relationship between education and culture to help identify and deal with the problems of society. . In the present interdependent world, problems must be shared on a global scale. And Brameld’s most important contribution to global education was the recognition of common purpose. Since then, educators from America have thought more globally and have encouraged their students to think globally. American students find themselves living in a global world; also the educators can’t ignore this factor. The educators have the duty to teach critical global issues that impact the world in class. In this way, students can easier adapt themselves into the global society.
Malaysia is a South Asian country which consist thirteen states. From Aug31, 1957 to 2010, the population of Malaysia had increased to about thirty million. The major components of its population are Chinese, Indian and Malaysian. It indicated that Malaysia is a multicultural country. Since the early immigrants are attracted by the fruitful natural resources and agricultural lands, it had already started its “globalization” process in some way. Malaysia joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and further ratified the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 6 September 1994 (to replace the GATT with effect from 1 January 1995) to show its commitment in accepting the challenges of globalization. By now, globalization has yielded lots of effects to Malaysia. Because of Malaysia’s independence, Malaysia has been one of the most globalized developing countries. And globalization has been claimed to be the major factor to Malaysia’s phenomenal economic development and growth. As Anwar Ibrahim once mentioned, "Globalization has done us a good service, particularly in the economic sphere, a sphere in which the table has been turned, with the denominator fearing the loss of his domination." In order to liberalize trade, Malaysia government offered the privilege of reducing tariffs on 79% of imports in 1992. Also, Malaysia government converted non-tariff measures into tariffs. As a result of these measures, Malaysia benefited from increased manufactured exports and increased the consumer welfare. Also these measures showed Malaysia’s index of trade liberalization decreasing and which indicated the increase in her economic liberalization year-by-year. What’s more? Malaysia also has taken some globalization steps in agricultural market to improve the access of the sector to markets for manufactured exports. One of these steps is to reduce most of the major agricultural products' tariffs by 35%.
On the other hand, globalization also has caused threats to Malaysia’s and other developing countries’ autonomy, both in economic and politic fields. Just as stated by the Mexican President, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon in the recently held World Economic Forum in Davos, "The motives for 'global phobia' had more to do with vested interests and fears of competition than any real altruism or concern for developing countries." Since then, globalization has been claimed to be a headache after the 1997-1998 crisis. Later, globalization also was claimed to result in the increase in income inequality and poverty within the country. And this will result in the collapse of the local small and medium-sized industries. Furthermore, the economic liberalization has indirectly made the economy gradually susceptible to the external shocks. Also because of economic liberalization, it became undermined the expansion of domestic industrial capacity and capability. Malaysia faced trading losses from RM 809 million in 1961 to RM 53,691 million in 1997 and this just showed that terms-of-trade has declined severely. Because of the increase in losses, Malaysia faced a decrease in the export purchasing power and Malaysia reduced the quantity of imports in to the country. And the WTO established the Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) and Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) further deepened the disadvantage of Malaysia to developed countries. The establishment of both Trade-Related Investment Measures and Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights in some ways indirectly eliminated all most the entire investment conditions favoring domestic industries. And they only benefited transnational corporations' interest and leverage. At the same time, TRIPs also strengthened the monopolies of transnational corporations through some technologies. In this way, it increased the technology superiority of the developed nations and limited the transfers of technologies, which is harmful to the development of developing countries.
Globalization as I have described in this paper is a potent force that influences the economic, political, cultural, environmental, and technological systems for all the countries in the world. Based on all the three countries I have talked about, I have learned that globalization just like a double-edged sword; globalization can promote the developments of countries but it will also have some side effects along with the positive influences. So, we need to recognize and treat globalization comprehensively and correctly. And face the challenging of globalization bravely; try to build a better global village.
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