Globalization in Beijing: Impacts and Responses

[pic 1]ULMS543 Globalization, Global Governance and Global Economy

                                                                                      23rd November 2015                                                                           

Globalization in Beijing: impacts and responses

1. Introduction

With the development of transportation and communication technology, international communication become more and more convenient. Nowadays, people are familiar with the word ‘globalization’ and it affects everyone’s life. Globalization is a multi-dimensional concept because it covers a lot of areas, such as economic, political and social areas (Kilic, 2015). Although there is not a completely accepted definition of globalization, when we take all the definitions into account, we could describe it as the integration of capital, investment and labor markets or its integration with world markets (Kilic, 2015). The aim of this essay is to find out whether or not globalization is conducive to national development. This essay will focus on theories of globalization to discuss the impact of globalization in two aspects (economy and culture) and analyze how has it been responded to with the case of Beijing.

2. Theories of globalization

There is much debate over globalization because it interconnects various aspects of contemporary social life, from the cultural to the criminal, the economic to the spiritual (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton, 1999), and it has the different impact on different countries. Currently, there are three theories of globalization are well-known by people: the hyperglobalist thesis, the skeptical thesis, and the transformationalist thesis.

For the hyperglobalizers, globalization creates a new era in human history. They suggested that traditional national economies are much less significant and have become unnatural, or even no longer existent, because of the role of capital mobility, multinational companies, and economic interdependence (Martell, 2007). They argued that economic globalization has achieved a ‘denationalization’ of economies with the establishment of transnational networks of production, trade, and finance (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton, 1999).