globalization

Globalization has been a vast and hotly-debated topic over the past few years, which always comes with the idea about free and fair trade, exchanged goods and services, economic and industrial development etc. Therefore, it is not easy to define what's the exact meaning of such a word. In other words, it includes all the integration of economic, political, and cultural systems across the globe. However, it has a generally definition given by economists as global expansion of the division of labour. "The diminution or elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result." ( Globalization Is Grrrreat, Tom G. Palmer, 2002) On one hand, it creates new markets and wealth; distributes lots of resources; on the other hand, it causes widespread environmental degradation, disorder and unrest; loses diversity, local culture and traditions as well. Thomas Lauren Friedman, an American journalist, columnist and author claimed "the pace of globalization is quickening and will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice." (The Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention, 2008) Now, various different areas have been influenced by globalization such as industry, finance, economy and so on. It is generally believed that this kind of development has aroused enormous controversy. Therefore, this essay will examine the both positive and negative aspects that globalization has, especially in economic fields.

Globalization has distributed much more growing share of resources than ever before, thus, everyone could share the benefits of increased international trade within the country. In particular, it helps people to improve their income. An example of this is China, where per capita income rose from around $1400 in 1980 to more than $4000 by 2000. Another example is India, whose per capita income rose by over 100% between 1980 and 1996. It seems that the policy of opening the door to all over the world will lead a country becoming wealthier.

Unsurprisingly, globalization has created more favourable conditions for more countries and regions accessing to international capital markets. In recent years, the conditions for developing countries access to international capital market are significantly improved. Consequently, more and more countries participate in the inter-mediation activities of international capital markets, therefore, many kinds of barriers in the way of capital market have been eliminating.

In some developing countries, globalization has made a sufficient progress of economic growth and poverty reduction, particularly in the East Asian such as China, Vietnam, Thailand etc.

In spite of the fact that there have been many substantial advantages, they are not given the whole pictures. Take the growing share of international trade for example, which is mentioned above. The figures are "average", that is to say, the increasing income has been seen in a small minority of people, and the vast majority have only owned a slight improvement.

Furthermore, globalization makes the richer get richer whereas the poorer get poorer, especially between the superpowers and developing countries. This is easily exampled by the fact that in the United States, the gap between the richest families and the poorest ones is widening from 9 percent in1992 to 70 percent in 2001. At present in the United States, 20 percent of the highest income paid own 50 percent of the income, the richest five percent of the total United States to the percentage of total revenue in 2000 from 22.1% to 22.4% in 2001.

Accordingly, globalization provides a potential rule which is much more unreasonable and unfair to poor countries. As we know, globalization has broken the traditional market boundaries which is definitely result in a problem that the poorer countries have to face more intense competition.

In a word, globalization has both positive and negative effect on the entire society, it provides a kind of wide resources for human beings to share, although the figures are not reflecting the whole picture; it creates favourable conditions for more countries to come into the international capital markets, although it has more pressure on the poorer countries to catch up with such higher level of industrial world; it makes improvements of economiy and reduction of poverty, although it's not equal in imports and exports between superpower and poor countries. It could be predicted that such thing is exiting and will be exiting for a long time.