1. The formation and development of economic globalization have the following reasons.
First, it is the inherent requirement of the development of productive forces. The progress of science and technology and the improvement of economic development level objectively require the deepening of division of labor and the expansion of market scale. This requirement promotes the development of production from domestic interregional division of labor to international division of labor, and the expansion of sales from domestic market to international market. In the process of pursuing economies of scale and division of labor, transnational corporations have formed a pattern of global allocation of resources and transnational coordination of production and operation activities through transnational investment activities, which has promoted the rapid development of intra-industry trade and intra-company trade. For example, Boeing, the world monopoly, has manufactured 4.5 million parts of the B-747 jumbo jet, which are jointly produced by 1 1000 large enterprises and 15000 small and medium-sized enterprises in six countries including the United States and Britain. The famous ABB company is headquartered in Switzerland, its working language is English, its financial statements are in US dollars, and its production and sales are all over the world. Its president once said: "ABB is a worldwide company, which is an alliance of companies from many countries to cooperate around the world."
The large increase of transnational investment, production and trade activities inevitably requires the rapid development of international financial markets to ensure the effective operation of such transnational economic activities. For example, the daily trading volume of the global foreign exchange market rose from $620 billion in 1989 to 1995 or more. The foreign exchange market operates 24 hours a day, and the financial foreign exchange markets of various countries communicate in real time, and funds flow rapidly around the world. The development of ocean transportation technology, air freight technology and information technology has greatly improved the efficiency of transportation and communication, reduced the cost and provided a strong technical guarantee for economic globalization. For example, according to the estimation of the World Trade Organization, the cost of air transportation has dropped from 1990-97 1980 to 65,438 cents per ton-kilometer, and the transportation cost of world export goods only accounts for 2% of its value; 1930- 1996 When you make a three-minute call from new york to London, the phone bill will drop from $330 to 1 USD, and it is estimated that it will drop to 3 cents by 20 10. Due to the development of information technology, a large amount of information and data can be transmitted quickly and economically around the world, so that managers of multinational companies can distribute all stages of production widely around the world, and through information transmission, they can organize these productions in a unified way without losing management control, thus making a leap in management science. It also enables managers to know the market situation around the world in an instant, make necessary calculations, allocate resources for the local market most effectively, and obtain profit opportunities.
Second, the post-war changes in the international economy have created conditions for economic globalization. After the end of World War II, economic factors became more and more important in the whole international relations. Realizing the effective allocation of resources in a wider range has become the strategic goal of international economy and cooperation. At the same time, developed countries, with their strong international competitiveness and economic strength, spare no effort to promote trade and investment liberalization in establishing international bilateral and multilateral economic relations. Former colonial countries became independent after World War II, and most of them encountered setbacks when exploring their national economy. However, some countries and regions that have implemented export-oriented development strategies have achieved great success and become newly industrialized countries. Driven by its exemplary role, more and more developing countries have implemented trade, investment and financial liberalization reforms.
With the international industrial division and technology diffusion, the comparative relationship between developing countries and developed countries has also changed. Developing countries no longer only export primary products, but gradually become important suppliers of labor-intensive goods in the world market, and some even change from net capital importers to net capital exporters. In this situation, developing countries also put forward new requirements for further lowering trade and investment barriers. After the end of the Cold War, the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries embarked on the road of economic transformation. In order to get rid of the shackles of the original planned economy as soon as possible and seek development opportunities on a global scale, they also chose the open policy. Implementing the policy of trade and investment liberalization is an active choice for developing countries to pursue their own interests. More and more countries have implemented liberalized economic policies, creating a broader space for the transnational flow of goods, services and production factors.
However, due to the huge differences in the development levels of countries around the world, it is impossible to simultaneously promote the process of economic liberalization. Therefore, some countries and regions with similar geographical location and development level provide trade and investment convenience to each other, promote economic integration, and form some regional economic organizations, such as Europe, North America Free Trade Area and ASEAN Free Trade Area. The liberalization of trade and investment in their region conforms to the purpose of multilateral trade relations. As long as there is no exclusive trend, regional collectivization will also promote the process of economic globalization on the other hand.
Second, the impact of economic globalization analysis:
It should be admitted that the process of world economic globalization has just begun, and its impact on national economies and even the whole world economy is unpredictable, but one thing is very clear, that is, economic globalization is a "double-edged sword". Judging from the progress of human society and the development of science and technology, from the standard of improving productivity, economic globalization can indeed promote the improvement of economic benefits and the expansion of world industrial scale, cause changes in production and consumption from structure to location, and stimulate the research and development of various new technologies ... Similarly, economic globalization will also have some negative effects, and the impact of these effects on specific countries and specific fields will vary with the policy choices of various countries. Specifically, the performance is:
(a) The positive impact of economic globalization:
1. Economic globalization can effectively and reasonably allocate funds, technologies, products, markets, resources and labor on a global scale.
Economic globalization not only effectively promotes international cooperation, but also intensifies competition among countries. The reason for the competition is that the world resources are limited and the capital is expanding economically. Politically, because of the existence of the country, all countries try to realize the dependence of other countries on themselves by strengthening their own strength, so as to gain more benefits and pay less costs. Economic globalization has accelerated the free flow of production factors around the world and formed a unified global market, thus promoting the global operation of multinational corporations and the adjustment of global industrial structure, and maximizing the optimal allocation of resources. From the perspective of a country, domestic enterprises will break through the restrictions of domestic resources and domestic market and seek the optimal allocation and effective utilization of resources on a global scale. Developed countries can give full play to their advantages in capital and technology, open their markets to developing countries through the export and transfer of capital and technology, and make use of the rich resources and cheap labor in developing countries to make profits. On the other hand, developing countries can develop their own and national economies, meet people's material interests and gradually narrow the gap with developed countries by absorbing and introducing capital and technology from developed countries. This effective combination of economic factors in different countries and regions objectively promotes the development of global social productive forces, promotes the economic development of developing countries, and reduces or avoids the waste of existing resources in human society.
2. Economic globalization provides opportunities for developing countries to meet opportunities and challenges.
First, it is conducive to the utilization of foreign capital and foreign investment by developing countries. The World Investment Report 1997 issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development pointed out that developing countries received foreign direct investment of 129 billion US dollars and foreign investment of $510 billion US dollars, both of which reached record highs. Their proportion in the total world investment increased from 30% in 1995 to 37% in 1996. Among them, the capital inflow of 48 least developed countries also increased by 56% in 1996.
Second, promote the optimization of the export commodity structure of developing countries. Due to the inflow of capital, the direct investment activities of transnational corporations and the adjustment of domestic industrial structure, the export commodity structure of developing countries has improved, and the proportion of manufactured goods in exports has increased from 56% in 1980 to 73% in 1990 and 77% in 1994.
Third, force developed countries to consider and solve the problems faced by developing countries. Developed countries are increasingly aware that their economic stability and development depend on developing countries under the background of economic globalization. We must consider the rights and interests of developing countries on issues such as debt settlement, regional economic integration and United Nations reform.
Faced with opportunities and challenges, due to the different levels of economic and technological development of countries around the world, their status and interests in economic globalization cannot be equal. In this fierce market competition of the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest, developing countries are inevitably at a disadvantage in many aspects. However, we believe that as long as developing countries can seize the opportunity, dare to meet the challenge, absorb and digest foreign advanced technology, carry out technological innovation on this basis, establish their own economic entities, actively participate in international competition, and produce products with high quality and low price, they will certainly occupy a place in the world market (China, India, Brazil and Mexico are the best proof). What's more, with the continuous development of economic globalization, the principles, systems and order of world economic integration will gradually become equal, and the economies of all countries will become more and more mature.
3. Economic globalization provides people all over the world with a good opportunity to choose high-quality goods and high-quality services.
With the development of market globalization, logistics will become the main form of international trade. People all over the world can choose the goods they need according to their hobbies and consumption needs. Trade barriers and defense lines set up in various ways will be gradually abolished. The situation of state monopoly or individual monopoly will never return, and the situation of charging consumers exorbitant prices in exchange for inferior services will end.
4. Economic globalization will promote the emergence and development of world culture.
Economic globalization will not only affect the global economic structure and order, but also impact the cultures of different nationalities to varying degrees. The collision and impact of this kind of culture will produce a great culture that all mankind can agree with. The main contents include:
First, "economic culture" has been recognized by all mankind. Such as the laws of market economy and the rules of commodity circulation, have been generally recognized and followed.
Second, the universality of "science and technology culture" is undeniable. Nowadays, both developed and developing countries have focused on science and technology and education in order to survive and develop, and have realized that science and technology are the foundation of a strong country. Although the level of scientific and technological development among various nation-states is unbalanced, scientific and technological exchanges have become an irresistible trend. Science, technology and culture have already broken through the boundaries of nation-state and penetrated into every corner of the world.
Third, with the development of "economic culture" and "scientific culture", it is easier to spread and communicate literature, art, philosophy, religion and customs among various nation-States, and information network technology and transportation technology provide modern tools and means for this kind of communication. People will always consciously or unconsciously absorb the nutrition of these foreign cultures to varying degrees to fill the shortcomings of their own nation and country in some aspects. This is also a form of cultural globalization.
Fourth, "democracy and the rule of law", as an institutional culture, will also become an irresistible historical development trend.
5. Economic globalization will promote trade and investment liberalization.
Trade and investment liberalization is the product of world economic globalization, and it is also a powerful driving force of globalization. It is the accelerated development of trade and investment liberalization that promotes the process of world economic globalization. Conversely, the development of world economic globalization requires the further improvement of trade and investment liberalization. The most important content and core of world trade liberalization is to reduce and eliminate tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers. After the formal operation of the World Trade Organization, non-goods trade, such as service trade, intellectual property rights and investment, has been included in multilateral rules for the first time, making it the core function of the World Trade Organization to expand the field of multilateral liberalization and expand the process of international trade liberalization. In addition, investment liberalization has become the mainstream of international investment development, and not only developed countries, but also more and more developing countries are actively adopting investment liberalization measures. On the one hand, a large amount of foreign investment was introduced, on the other hand, foreign investment was actively made, which led to the rapid increase of world direct investment, investment activities spread all over the world, and the normative framework and rules of global investment began to take shape.
6. Economic globalization has accelerated the process of technology transfer and industrial restructuring.
Economic globalization has brought about the great development of international division of labor, the great transfer of industries and the great flow of factors of production such as capital and technology, which is very beneficial for developing countries to make up the gap between domestic factors such as capital and technology, give full play to their advantages of backwardness, quickly realize industrial evolution, technological progress and institutional innovation, and promote economic development. In the process of economic globalization, investment and technology transfer promote each other and accelerate constantly. In order to prolong the life cycle of technology, expand the utility of technology and find a way out for their own technology, multinational companies have greatly accelerated technology transfer activities. This accelerated transfer is objectively beneficial to the technological development of developing countries, accelerating the upgrading of industrial structure and industrialization process in developing countries, and accelerating the transformation from traditional economy to modern economy. In addition, the accelerated development of economic globalization has also accelerated the process of attracting foreign investment in developed countries, which helps to make up for the lack of capital in developing countries. Furthermore, the development of economic globalization not only provides more opportunities for developing countries' products, especially labor-intensive products, to enter the world market, but also helps to make up for the shortcomings of developing countries' market development. In particular, the organizational form of multinational companies has increasingly broken through national boundaries and so-called borderless enterprises have emerged, which is very beneficial for developing countries to introduce advanced management experience from developed countries.
7. Economic globalization can promote international political coordination.
In the tide of economic globalization, great changes will take place in social structure, values and lifestyle. After people's material needs are relatively met, they must pay more attention to their political environment; Citizens' political awareness and political participation quality will be greatly improved, and they hope to fully express their political demands and widely demand to participate in the management of the country and society; Powerful independent interest groups, driven by interests, will inevitably put forward corresponding political participation requirements; The increasingly developed information media network technically supports the people's right to choose independently, publicizes the people's dominant position and value consciousness, and also makes the system of "ignorant people policy" lose its foundation. Therefore, the development of economic globalization to a certain extent will inevitably require countries to coordinate with each other politically as a new driving force for economic globalization, which is also determined by the relationship between economic base and superstructure. Although the process of political coordination is long, it is the decisive factor for the further development of economic globalization.
8. Economic globalization is conducive to reducing international conflicts.
In the process of economic globalization, most countries in the world have participated in a deeper international division of labor system. The investment and technology transfer activities of multinational corporations have more closely linked the production, management, sales and R&D activities of various countries than ever before. As a direct result, the degree of interdependence and mutual penetration among countries has deepened, and changes in economic relations will inevitably lead to changes in the political field and international relations. Consultation and dialogue are increasingly becoming the main means to deal with international relations today. It has gradually become a development trend to strengthen trust and cooperation between countries, curb international conflicts or at least reduce the intensity of conflicts. There is reason to believe that this trend will be strengthened with the further development of economic globalization.
(b) Negative effects of economic globalization:
1. Economic globalization has aggravated the imbalance of the world economy and widened the gap between the rich and the poor.
Economic globalization first impacts the national economy of developing countries, and this impact is based on unequal relations. On the one hand, international economic organizations (World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, etc. ) are in the hands of developed countries, and all the principles, systems and orders formulated for the operation of the world economy are formulated by them. On the other hand, the economic, technological and management advantages of western developed countries are beyond the reach of developing countries. Therefore, developed countries with highly developed social productive forces have benefited the most from economic globalization, while developing countries with relatively backward economy and technology have benefited little or no in the near future or long term, and may even suffer great damage and impact, such as the loss or closure of many national enterprises.
Although economic globalization can objectively lead to the increase of global material wealth, in the process of marketization, competition is the first law. While creating high efficiency, it will inevitably lead to the increasing concentration of wealth to a few countries or interest groups, leading to the widening gap between the rich and the poor. According to the statistics of the World Bank, the per capita GDP of high-income developed countries was 43 times that of low-income developing countries in 1983, and it was 62 times in 1994, which made the social distribution more unfair. There are many specific reasons for this widening gap, including institutional reasons, market development reasons and structural changes, but two factors are obvious:
First, the benefits of economic globalization are unevenly distributed. Theoretically, all countries participating in the globalization process will benefit from it to varying degrees, but not all benefits will be shared. In fact, as the main owners of capital and advanced technology, developed countries have always been at the center of globalization and have obvious competitive advantages. This position makes them rely on their dominant position in price setting and gain more benefits in exchange with developing countries.
Second, it is market competition that challenges some social policies. As we all know, competition is the driving force of market economy, and the imbalance brought by competition depends on social policies to repair it. Every country has its own welfare policy, and social stability is maintained through labor-capital compromise. However, globalization has destroyed this social contract, and fierce transnational competition with exports and direct investment as the main content is affecting wages and employment, and social policies are pale and powerless in stabilizing the gap. Economic globalization has opened up a region and space for international capital, mainly developed countries, to seek higher profits. Against the background of great differences in economic strength between developed and developing countries, economic globalization has widened the income gap between developed and developing countries.
2. Economic globalization has aggravated the instability of the world economy.
Economic globalization has made the economies of all countries more closely linked with the world economy. The stability of domestic economies of all countries depends not only on domestic factors, but also on international factors to a greater extent. With the continuous expansion of international trade and service trade, the economic situation of other countries, especially major trading partners, such as inflation and financial crisis, will affect their own countries through the transmission mechanism of the international economy. If there are some similar hidden dangers in China's economic structure, these economic fluctuations will inevitably appear in China. Even if there is no problem with the domestic economy, the economy will fluctuate to a certain extent because of psychological factors. This is especially true for developing countries. Because economic globalization is the globalization of finance, trade and investment, developing countries are more vulnerable to external unfavorable factors because of their underdeveloped markets and fragile economic structures. Moreover, due to the incomplete legislation in developing countries, it is easy to speculate; Coupled with the lax enforcement of laws in developing countries, there is an opportunity for "international hot money". As a result, a large number of hot money from western countries have hit the financial markets of developing countries from time to time, and even triggered a financial crisis, causing war-like damage. Economic globalization makes the changes of economic cycle, exchange rate and interest rate in developed countries transmit to developing countries, which often leads to adverse economic fluctuations in developing countries. The Mexican financial crisis at the end of 1994 and the southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997 have fully illustrated this point.
3. The current global economic operation rules are unreasonable, and most of them are beneficial to developed countries.
With the development of economic globalization, it is objectively necessary to use rules to regulate and restrain the behavior of participants, and the formulation of rules is powerful. The so-called rule is actually the definition of conflict of interest. In the process of economic globalization, because international economic organizations are manipulated by developed countries such as Europe and America, the rules of the game of economic globalization are mainly formulated by developed countries. Although some existing international economic rules take into account the interests of developing countries, such as the rules of the World Trade Organization, most of them are formulated by developed countries, and some rules are formulated in the absence of developing countries. Some industrial development rules are formulated before developing countries develop their industries, such as information technology industry agreements and labor standards. Once developing countries have developed these industries, they must abide by the rules in which they are not involved and pay the price. In addition, although developed countries strongly advocate economic globalization and trade liberalization, governments still implement various trade barrier measures to safeguard their own interests. In particular, non-tariff barriers such as green barriers and technical barriers deliberately set by developed countries are often difficult for developing countries to achieve. These measures objectively hinder the free flow of factors of production between countries, thus limiting the market-oriented mechanism to a great extent, and the opportunities and interests that developing countries deserve cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, the benefits brought by economic globalization to the world economy at present are based on the loss of economic and political interests of developing countries.
4. Economic globalization may also lead to the destruction of the ecological environment in developing countries.
For example, the increasingly serious problems such as desertification, land erosion, extinction of animal and plant species, marine and river pollution, etc. Among them, developed countries often set up a large number of pollution source industries overseas for their own strategic interests to protect their own ecological environment from pollution, which not only consumes the resources of other countries, but also pollutes their own environment. According to relevant statistics, more than 60% polluting enterprises in the United States are established overseas.
5. Economic globalization has made developing countries pay a huge price.
In the tide of economic globalization, developing countries can't compete with developed countries in terms of enterprise scale, efficiency, technical level and R&D ability, which leads to the brands and products of multinational companies flooding the domestic market and the disappearance of national brands. Transnational corporations have manipulated and controlled pillar industries and markets in many developing countries, and inhibited the independent development of national industries; The large amount of foreign capital introduced by developing countries has increased domestic inflationary pressure and faced exchange rate risk and debt risk. The huge debt owed to western countries has become a serious obstacle to the economic development of many developing countries and often leads to economic and social unrest. Globalization will also lead to brain drain from developing countries, especially skilled talents and advanced technical talents. Multinational companies often hire ready-made talents in the host country with high salaries, without paying attention to implementing training plans locally, thus causing developing countries to suffer double losses of education expenditure and inability to use trained talents. In particular, the economic situation of the least developed countries will deteriorate; Due to weak competitiveness, national enterprises in developing countries closed down in fierce market competition, resulting in a large number of workers losing their jobs. If the social labor security system is not perfect, it will inevitably produce some social unstable factors and cause social chaos. The World Development Index published by the World Bank on April 30, 2004 admitted: "Some factors of economic globalization have damaged the poorest countries, which makes the widening of the huge gap between rich and poor countries face greater risks. In a world that cannot break the cycle of poor countries and is becoming more and more unequal, industrialized countries account for 1/6 of the world population, but monopolize nearly 80% of the world's income. At the same time, the people of 63 developing countries, which account for 60% of the world's per capita, only get 6% of the world's income, and the per capita income is less than 2 dollars a day. "
6. Economic globalization will inevitably have a certain impact on national culture.
This makes the cultural characteristics of each nation rise and fall, highlighting the differences. This phenomenon is not conducive to the development of culture, nor does it conform to the cultural evolution principle of letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend. There are various forms of culture, including commodity culture, system culture, value culture, language culture, science and technology culture, art culture and so on. With the acceleration of economic globalization, the obstacles that hinder the cross-border circulation of capital, technology and products have been removed one after another, followed by the influx of different cultures, values, lifestyles and beliefs. Some of them have formed a new quality world culture through mutual conflict and influence, while others will change their lifestyle, values and cultural characteristics.