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...bulwark against from which they can implement their own national strategies for development--strategies that are qualitatively different from those followed by the non-aligned movement after Bandung. While each country is pursuing somewhat different path, their collective might within the G-20 is already forcing concessions on trade, agriculture and subsidies from the US and EU. But do such growing South-South economic linkages have the potential to transform the global balance of power?
Keywords: Bandung, Beijing Consensus, Doha, FDI, G-8, G-20, globalisation, non-aligned movement, transnationals, WTO
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China, Brazil and India have emerged as important global powers, creating political waves across Europe and the US. Not only are they becoming more assertive in transnational institutions like the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but their economic weight is felt through out the world. As the Financial Times has pointed out, the rise of China and India 'heralds a transformation of the global economic and political order as significant as that brought about by the industrial revolution or by the subsequent rise of the US'. (1)
The global integration of China, India and Brazil reflects their emergence as powerful modern economies. But this transformation creates tension between nation-centric class interests and the newly created relationships linked to transnationalised accumulation. This shift and its resulting contradictions constitute the dominant process in the world today. The struggle is both global and internal, as each national economy is remoulded to fit into the emerging global mode of production. This conflict pits descending forms of national production against rising forms of globalised capital. The old international system that arose with industrial capitalism rooted itself in building national markets, exporting abroad, using the state for economic development, creating a social contract with the working class and projecting power into the Third World for its own national monopolies. The globalist accumulation model is based on cross-border mergers, foreign direct investment, transnationalised assembly lines, global labour stratification, the free flow of capital and multilateral institutions developing common rules on trade, finance and investments. This regime is based on the revolution in information technology that has transformed the tools of production and made possible the reorganisation of capitalism on a qualitatively more integrated level.
The remoulding of each national economy creates an array of contradictions between the old and new forms of accumulation. As each country transforms its social relations and institutions, it enters a process conditioned by its own history and culture. Thus, uneven development determines the pace and nature of local insertion into the global economy. This process is occurring in China, Brazil and India, with ramifications for their internal class struggles as well as their place in the global order. Each of these countries now sees its national development in terms of globalisation. Although they all share similar political origins in socialist ideology or state-led economies, they no longer pursue the strategy of import substitution and developing large state-protected enterprises so common in the Third World from the Bandung era and throughout the 1970s. Although their nationalist histories affect their transformation today, state-directed development is now geared to global production chains linked to transnational capital.
This is not a comprador surrender to imperialism, but a developmental strategy promoted by the new political and economic elite of the transnational capitalist class. Within their particular political and historic contexts, the aim of China, India and Brazil is, in each case, to enlarge the middle class, create jobs for the poor, develop a technologically advanced economy and increase its political power in the international arena. But does global capitalism have the social capacity, political will and environmental flexibility to move millions of working poor towards decent living standards and higher income levels? Globalisation is driven by a race to the bottom in which transnationals seek out the lowest wages and most exploitative conditions. Any reversal of this accumulation strategy is highly doubtful without a revolution from below and a radical shift in thinking and power. Yet can economic growth and modernisation increase the organisational and political capacity of the working masses to the point where they can independently transform society to create a more democratic and just world? And, if so, what level of support should working-class organisations and popular social movements extend to Third World globalists? Such strategic questions of transitional reforms and revolutionary change, framed in the context of globalisation, are key concerns as the process of development unfolds.
China
China's national history is deeply affected by its struggle against imperialism and its communist revolution that led to state-directed economic development. Even under the current globalist regime, Chinese leaders have been careful to retain control of their economy. So far, they have avoided the pitfalls of financial speculation and the loss of capital controls that placed other countries under IMF-dictated structural adjustment programmes. Chinese leaders intend to insert themselves into the global economy as fully respected and integrated members of the transnationalised capitalist class, not as indebted junior partners. They have used their control of the government and their statist experience to remould local economic institutions and jettison their communist past without losing their power. In fact, the state-owned sector still produces 68 per cent of GDP and employs hundreds of millions of people. Unlike their Russian cousins, who lost any sense of national purpose in a chaotic surrender to the new oligarchy, Chinese communists have transformed their socialist ideology into a new national project that defines modernisation in globalist terms. But their heritage of national independence, shorn of its Maoist egalitarianism and radical impulse, helps to determine their insertion into the globalist structure.
Although Newsweek complains that 'lingering absurdities of Chinese communism continue to foil the multinational dream of huge profits', many of these 'absurdities' are realistic concerns over national development and uncover the contradictory process of Chinese globalisation. (2) This nationalist/globalist dialectic is revealed in an interview with Samsung's CEO Yun Yong. When asked what it was like working with Beijing, Yong replied, 'Chinese officials are perhaps the most accommodating in the world to foreign investors, because their job performance is evaluated on the amount of foreign capital they attract. There are unions in China, but they don't pose serious problems.' Yet Yong also explained, 'You cannot survive in China without becoming a Chinese company. That includes local technology development, product design, procurement, manufacturing and sales.' (3) For Chinese capitalism, the road to national development runs parallel to globalisation. In fact, China's stock of foreign direct investment to GDP was 36 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent for Japan and 5 per cent for India.
The massive expansion of the Chinese economy is being driven by the huge movement of the rural population to the cities, plus an industrial revolution that is transforming China into the centre of world production. Eight hundred million people still live in rural China, but it is predicted that, over the next fifteen years, 250 million will move to urban centres. That is nearly equivalent to the population of the United States. The implications for building the infrastructure necessary to accommodate such a move over such a short period of time are almost incomprehensible. The need for housing, sewerage, energy and transport is akin to creating an entire nation from the ground up. This internal transformation will create a massive need for steel, coal, oil, cement and all other basic commodities and could fuel an explosive economy well into the future. Some Chinese cities already approach the size of some countries. Shanghai has a GDP of US$80 billion, putting it on a par with Hungary, Chile and Pakistan. Tianjin, a port city close to Beijing, has attracted 3,678 companies to its economic zone, including many top transnationals such as Coca-Cola, Motorola, Nestle and Samsung.
Higher urban wages are pulling many into the cities, with approximately 150 million former peasants roaming from job...
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