Thammasat University students interested in political science, history, international relations, diplomacy, sociology, economics, technology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 4 June Zoom webinar on The Future of Globalization: A History.

The event, on Tuesday, 4 June 2024 at 2pm Bangkok time, is presented by Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of globalization.

According to the event webpage:

Abstract

We are in an era in which globalization — the connection of countries through trade, finance and ideas — appears to be in retreat, as geopolitical tensions force governments to prioritize economic security and to try to “de-risk”. Yet this is not the first time when globalization has been said to be reversing. By looking into history, we can understand what factors will truly determine the future course of globalization.

Program

Lecturer

Bill EMMOTT

(Ushioda Fellow, Tokyo College)

Commentator

SHIMAZU Naoko

(Professor, Tokyo College)

Moderator

Takeo HOSHI

(Director, Tokyo College)

Globalization is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place. Globalization also captures in its scope the economic and social changes that have come about as a result.

The TU Library collection includes a number of examples of published research by Dr. Emmott.

In February 2024, Dr. Emmott posted a blog online that suggested: Taking shots at globalisation is cheap but wrong.

Some excerpts:

[A]s inequality and job insecurity increased during the 1990s and 2000s, governments should have been introducing measures to mitigate this trend. That is what had happened many times during the postwar decades: as competition and innovation threatened to divide society, public efforts were made to counter or at least soften those divisions. But during the 1990s and into the 21st Century, too many governments either failed to act to manage these impacts or introduced policies that made things worse.

The important question to ask is: why? One answer is probably that they didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late. Another is a traditional problem for democracies: powerful companies and groups of billionaire owners lobbied against policies to manage inequality and insecurity, often using their political donations to enforce their desires. Democracy was being bought, by big industrial and, now, especially technology companies.

What about globalisation, then? Draghi is correct to say that free trade can work properly and sustainably only when there are agreed rules to govern it and agreed methods to enforce those rules and to settle disputes. Yet the reason why the foundation of the World Trade Organisation in 1995 was celebrated was precisely the fact that under the WTO at last trade was going to be governed by a dispute settlement system, according to agreed rules.

When China joined the WTO and yet paid huge subsidies that did not follow those rules, this was clearly a problem, as Draghi said. The right question to ask is why other governments, including those of the United States and the European Union, did not enforce those rules. Was it, as some Americans claim and as Draghi hints in his speech, because they expected globalisation to turn China into a rule-obeying democracy? Or was the reason in fact a blend of complacency and, again, the pressure of powerful lobbies who wanted to make billions in the Chinese market?

The fact is that globalisation, and with it the general economic phenomenon that this fancy word glamourised, namely competition, is getting unfair and misleading criticism. The problem facing liberal democracies results from the failure of governments to take action to deal with inequality and insecurity, inaction that is entirely a domestic political matter, not one to do with trade, China or indeed globalisation.

Yes, as Draghi says, globalisation is changing, partly thanks to geopolitics and the war in Ukraine. But it is not going away. Plenty of countries are benefiting from new patterns of production and trade, including India, Indonesia and all of South-East Asia, which are now growing more rapidly than China. Capitalism is always inventive, and technology facilitates that inventiveness even further.

Where Western liberal democracies have a problem is in the distortion of their political systems by concentrated corporate power, but also in the high level of their public debts. With such high debts, and with ageing populations requiring more health care and social spending, they are going to find it hard to manage inequality and the impact of technology. That is where they need to find solutions. To blame globalisation serves to divert attention from the real problems. Which is why populists like to do so.

Last year, on the website of IMD Business School for Management and Leadership Courses in Lausanne, Switzerland, an article was posted:

Globalization in 2024: the clouds are clearing

Globalization is under fire in many nations, no doubt about it. International commerce – and indeed the whole idea of economic openness – has been challenged by a long series of massive shocks ranging from Brexit and President Trump’s tariffs to the pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian war, battles in the Levant, and rising geoeconomic tensions.

Newsfeeds are filled with headlines about de-globalization and the adoption of inward-oriented trade and industrial policies. But the headlines can be deceiving. The facts are that global trade in goods – as a share of global income – has recovered from COVID-19 lows, even if it has not reversed its downward trend. Digitally enabled trade in services, by contrast, never faltered, even in the depths of the pandemic, and continues to power ahead. As we head into 2024, my research suggests that trade in goods will continue to stagnate while trade in digitally enabled services (e-services) will continue to boom.

A stabilization of US-China geoeconomic tensions

The US and China are now strategic rivals in the economic, political, cultural, and military spheres. But neither wants this intense competition to lead to WWIII. The US is actively trying to prevent China from acquiring technology that would counter the US’s military edge and promoting the diversification and de-risking of the American supply. This involves encouraging more production in the United States while hindering production in China of a narrow range of goods, most notably including the highest-end semiconductors, technology related to quantum computing, and advanced AI that has military and surveillance uses. Apart from these goods, the Biden administration is not pursuing policies aimed at hindering China’s economic prosperity.

China’s retaliation to date has been very measured – limited to requiring export licenses for a few inputs that are critical to semiconductor production (gallium, germanium, and graphite). These are best seen as a ‘shot across the bow’ of the US restrictions aimed at preventing China from developing the capacity to produce or purchase the very highest-end semiconductors.

Both sides are trying to cool down the conflict. As one White House official put it, “The United States and China are in an intense competition, and we believe the best way to manage that competition is through equally intense diplomacy.” Biden and Xi met for the first time in about a year on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in November 2023, sending a signal that they are committed to working out how to cooperate where they can. I hedge my conjecture with a famous Lenin quote, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Great power rivalries are usually stable but beware that things can go south quickly. […]

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)