Japan: Not Enough Globalization

Naota Kan, known as Japan's Tony blair, is the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, the main opposition to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Last year, the DPJ won a majority in the upper house of the Japanese Diet.
Naoto Kan spoke with NPQ Japan correspondent Shun Daichi and editor Nathan Gardels in his Tokyo office in November.     

关于全球化与社会主义的思考

全球化的实质不是资本主义化,但现实中的全球化是在资本主义国家主导下进行的.社会主义作为全球化发展到一定阶段的产物,作为一种在本质上高于资本主义的社会制度,必将在新一轮全球化进程中走向发展壮大.     

Globalization: From domination to resistance

Recent political reforms in the Gulf Arab countries have been variously understood as regime survival strategies, correlates of economic globalisation, and even the end result of US pressure to democratise. This paper examines the possible role played by the introduction of modern information and communication technologies (icts) in stimulating political liberalisation in the Gulf Arab states. Rather than attempting to quantify their democratising impact, this paper utilises the concept of agency, examining how the range of agents of ict production and diffusion in the region have sought to influence the actual impact upon political space. It concludes that modern icts have demonstrated the potential to expand the existing public sphere, and to create new opportunities for liberal political activity. However, the particular configuration of agency in the countries in question has meant that the state and its allies have retained a significant degree of control over the extent and nature of the political space, a process in which local society may have in some instances collaborated. Thus, while the introduction and diffusion of new icts may have contributed to the pressures which led to some of the political reforms in evidence in the Gulf Arab states, one cannot argue that they amount, at least as yet, to a sustained and effective attack on illiberal political structures. The first part of this paper surveys the existing body of literature in an effort to devise a framework for the subsequent study of two principal contemporary icts (satellite television and the internet) in the Gulf Arab states.     

The Gospel and Globalization

Going through a protracted period of transition since the end of the Cold War, the world order in the making is neither what was nor what it is yet to become. It is in “the middle of the future.” To get our bearings in this uncertain transition, we explore the two grand post‐Cold War narratives—“The End of History” as posited by Francis Fukuyama and “The Clash of Civilizations” posited by the late Samuel Huntington. Mikhail Gorbachev looks back at his policies that brought the old order to collapse. The British philosopher John Gray critiques the supposed “universality” of liberalism and, with Homi Bhabha, sees a world of hybrid identities and localized cultures. The Singaporean theorist Kishore Mahbubani peels away the “veneer” of Western dominance. Amartya Sen, the economist and Nobel laureate, assesses whether democratic India or autocratic China is better at building “human capacity” in their societies.     

全球化与中国的对策

全球化是世界经济发展的一种客观趋势.全球化是一个长期的、复杂的、反复较量竞争的曲折过程.虽然当前发达国家在全球化进程中处于主导和支配地位,但全球化也给发展中国家提供了一次难得的赶超机会.全球化对中国既是机遇,也是挑战.中国必须树立国际意识,深化改革,扩大对外开放,调整经济结构,转变政府职能,以积极的姿态迎接全球化的挑战,抓住机遇,实现中华民族的腾飞.     

全球化与印度的工人

全球化在印度造成有组织部门的工人减少,而无组织部门的工人大量增加,工人队伍中还出现了知识工人和边际工两大新的力量群体.尽管不同的工人群体面临着不同的挑战,但印度工人作为一个整体也面临着一些共同的挑战.尽管形势不容乐观,但全球化还是促进了印度工人前所未有的新型团结与合作,激发了印度工人的创造力和自我发展的潜力.     

Japan: Shifting Away from American-led Globalization

Thanks to the draining effects of the Iraq war and the financial meltdown emanating from Wall Street, a powershift away from American dominance is taking place. Caught between a rising China and an America in relative decline, the new leadership in Japan is recalibrating its post-World War II relationships. The G-20 has usurped the role once played by the G-8 as the governing committee of globalization. And the symbiotic coupling of Chimerica, born out of the credit bubble built up over the past two decades, is being put to the test.
In this section, the new prime minister of Japan, the president of the European Union, the president of Brazil and a leading economic historian assess these shifts.     

Bound Together: The Future of Globalization

Globalization has indeed flattened the earth, paving the way for new beginnings and the resurgence of old cultures alike by levelling the playing field for all comers. While this new era of post‐globalization certainly heralds de‐Westernization by century's end, is it more likely to mean a revival of the old ways of the East or the new hybrid ways of the first global civilization? Some of Asia's most provocative voices, as well as the world's most renowned cellist and cross‐pollinating musician, offer their views.     

New Paths: Globalization in Historical Perspective

This essay argues that the historical–structural framework of analysis is still useful to describe the transformations generated by globalization in the underdeveloped countries, provided that it is employed with the subtlety needed to avoid reductionism. Globalization, in the same way as dependency, is nothing more than an unfolding of the capitalist system in today's historical conditions. The structural starting point conditions—but does not determine—the shape taken by economic and political processes. Political strategies for integrating into the global economy have a certain margin of autonomy. Still, the range of feasible strategies depends on factors that differ from country to country, such as the local capacity of income accumulation, the presence of foreign direct investment, the mix between nationally controlled production and production controlled by multinationals, the participation of the public sector in production, the capacity of the leadership, the prevailing ideologies, and so forth. In other words, there are alternative paths.     

Globalization 2.0

For 500 years the West was on the rise, culminating in Globalizaiton 1.0—the open system of trade, information flows and the spread of technology on the terms and in the image of the West. The benefits of that system over the last 30 years have led to the rise of the emerging economies. As a result we are entering the new era of Globalization 2.0 characterized by new forms of non‐Western modernity and the interdependence of plural identities. The advent of this new era has been hastened by the fiscal and financial crisis in Europe and the United States. Turkey, with its Islamic‐oriented democracy that has become a template for the liberated peoples of the Arab Spring, and China, with its effective neo‐Confucian form of governance, are the most sharply defined new players in this multi‐polar and multi‐dimensional world. In this section, one of Turkey's most insightful sociologists examines the post‐secular transformation of that nation. One of China's more provocative philosophers proposes a hybrid model that combines what has been learned from the experience of Western and Chinese governance in a way that “enhances democracy” in both systems.