Globalization of Markets

The Asia-PaciŽ c region comprises a wide range of countries and national systems. Geographical factors feature so strongly, with the PRC so clearly pre-eminent in terms of land mass and population. The countries of the region range from those with very

large populations like the PRC, to ‘city-states’ like Hong Kong and Singapore with a

few million inhabitants.2 This population variable will, among others, help to shape the nature of the labour market and the labour force, as will the level of economic development, among other factors. However, this variable is relatively invariant in the

short term. An attempt to evaluate where Asia-PaciŽ c economies, including that of the PRC, are going has been made by the present writer and a colleague based on ‘the Late- Development effect’ (see Ng and Warner, 1999). It breaks down the whole into two

sectors, namely the advanced economies and sectors, on the one hand, and the less developed countries, on the other. Yet there remain problems with compressing so much into a basic dichotomy. The economies of the region have, on the other hand, been economically and industrially dominated by another nation, namely Japan. The

‘little dragon’ economies in turn also stand apart from many others in terms of the level

of economic development they have achieved. Most of the region’s economies have had

a rapid rate of growth over the last two decades, although it may have been uneven from

year to year Whether the Asian so-called ‘miracle’ will be able to be sustained into the

twenty-Ž rst century is of course moot. Even if Asian economies grow at respectable

rates of growth, they may not pick up the pace of the 1990s. China has had a  uctuating

Convergence Divergence

Hard 1 4

Soft 2 3

Figure 1 Convergence/divergence: a four-fold analytical framework

Warner: Globalization, HR and Asia-PaciŽ c economies 385

growth rate for the last ten years and it was down to around 8 per cent per annum for 2000, if ofŽ cial statistics are to be believed.3 But even this level is well above the

average for, say, EU economies. The growth variable is highly variant even in the short

term, however.

Globalization

‘Globalization’ was the byword of the 1990s; it was to herald the creation of both

world-wide markets and transnational enterprises. Its theoretical origins