The liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG), as we knew yesterday, was the brainchild of some of the most developed countries aimed at tremendously enhancing their market reach. The advancements in technology as a result of extensive research and development helped them to invent novel new products and services that could have huge potential globally. So, the idea of free market was floated in a way that would sound as a path towards prosperity for most countries around the world if marketed as a win-win for all. The market restrictions prevented them to scale up their businesses beyond their borders. Slowly, other countries started easing up in the hope of selling their own products also to the developed world at lucrative prices.
Since last couple of years, China’s story is being sold as a success story of the LPG. China started welcoming foreign capital in almost all spheres of industrial activity without any restrictions. Most of the advanced countries made huge investments in China mainly because it offered a cheap hard-working labour-force and ease of setting up shops there. Chinese coastal areas became the centers of assembling processed products, which were then exported abroad. Jobs in these factories helped workers to fight with the poverty they were facing. Chinese model of opening up to the outside world is a classic example of LPG’s success which motivated other countries to follow the suit. But by then Chinese had already established themselves as a ‘world factory’ and also perhaps as an indispensable global power having the 2nd biggest economy after the United States. China has never looked back after joining the WTO in 2000.
China as the world factory essentially displaced million of workers around the world and disrupted their economic and social lives. Factory workers in America, Europe and elsewhere often blame China for stealing their jobs. There is no doubt that China has benefited enormously from its vast pool of people who are willing to work for a fraction of what their Western counterparts might earn.
The foundation of the LPG got a big blow with the arrival of the internet age. Highly talented skilled workers got opportunities for their growth in developed countries who welcomed them to overcome the local shortages in order to make rapid advances and achieve their supremacy in emerging modern technologies. The internet age coupled with spread of multi-cultural workforce, particularly in the US, slowly transformed the huge world into what was known as ‘global village’. The whole feeling of being in the global village was so gratifying for the elite class everywhere that we forgot the dangers of such a huge (artificial) contraction of the physical boundaries we were actually living and working in. The myth of ‘global village’ was there for everyone to see with the sudden arrival of the covid-19 pandemic – a phenomenon that is perhaps going to remain mysterious forever. The ‘global village’ was the first real world ‘artificial reality’ we were emersed in.
Then came the Russia-Ukraine wars first in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, and then in February 2022 which is still ongoing. The second war is going on as a result of long pending Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The sheer helplessness (or unwillingness) of topmost world leaders to stop these wars (and hence the open violation of international laws and treaties) reflects the collapse of not only the UN, WHO, and their agencies but also hundreds of ‘so called’ peace organizations of international level spread all over the world.
There is also a trend of violent anti-immigrants protests in most countries who essentially formed the global village. These very people now want to get out of this village leaving their ‘guest co-workers’ in the lurch. Needless to say, world-leaders stand exposed on multiple fronts!
The liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG), as we knew yesterday, was the brainchild of some of the most developed countries aimed at tremendously enhancing their market reach. The advancements in technology as a result of extensive research and development helped them to invent novel new products and services that could have huge potential globally. So, the idea of free market was floated in a way that would sound as a path towards prosperity for most countries around the world if marketed as a win-win for all. The market restrictions prevented them to scale up their businesses beyond their borders. Slowly, other countries started easing up in the hope of selling their own products also to the developed world at lucrative prices.
