Globalization in China

Kiely defined that globalization refers to a world in which societies, cultures, politics and economies have, in some sense come closer together. Globalization gives a huge influence to the world, especially to the developing countries such as China.

In globalization, China’s GDP grew fast and the companies are becoming bigger and stronger. These evident indicated a continuous economic development in China. Is that means globalization is totally good for China?

It’s true that China enjoy lots of benefits in globalization. Firstly, as a developing country, china embraces the benefits of trade and direct investment because of globalization. Before 1987, china’s foreign trade was negligible. But after china opening the door to the world, the ratio of trade to GDP has quadrupled—from a mere 8.5 percent in 1978 to 36.5 percent in 1999. Moreover, due to globalization, china’s opening up was undertaken step by step. At the begining, it started geographically with special economic zones, then advancing gradually in various industries from the more competitive manufacturing industry to the weak agriculture and service sectors.

So we can see, under globalization, china seize the chance and realized that it is crucial to develop itself but not protect for a developing country. And china increases its advantages to absorb foreign capital and maximize the benefits of opening up. That’s why China gain a lot in globalization.

However, in my opinion which from my experience, while the Chinese economy has dramatically increased its openness over the past two decades, income inequality has risen as well, which cause a big suffering with the poor. For example,the World Bank estimates that China's Gini coefficient—a measure of the inequality of income distribution in a society (0 being perfect equality and 100 being complete inequality)—rose from 28.8 in 1981 to 38.8 in 1995. These data indicate an increase in inequality among residents. Moreover, I find some figures about the inequality of 100 urban areas, since this kind of inequality constitute 75% change in the general change of inequality in China from 1980 to 1990. We can find a clear evidences from the data that cities which have opened up quickly also had a quick decline in urban-rural inequality.

In addition, referring to the income distribution, from 1988 to 1995, the poor who live below the normal standard in terms of the purchasing power complained the decline of income in most rural areas. Moreover, along with the opening in rural area, an obvious reduction in poverty we can see.

Therefore, we can see that globalization brings both advantages and disadvantages to countries. What we can do is utilize the opportunities we can seize to make the country stronger. At the same time, we also should admit the demerits that brought by globalization, and try to improve them step by step.