‘newly Industrialized Countries Have Been, and Continue to Be, the Driving Force of Globalization.’ to What Extent Do You Agree with This Statement? (40 Marks)

‘Newly industrialised countries have been, and continue to be, the driving force of globalisation.’ To what extent do you agree with this statement? (40 marks)

Globalisation is the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s political, economic and cultural systems. It is caused by the flows of capital, production, services and people, which have all been accelerated by the improvements of transport and ICT. Which are factors which have helped Newly Industrialising Countries accelerate the way they have as well.

A Newly Industrialising Country ( or a newly emerging one) is one whose level of economic development ranks it somewhere between the developing and first-world classifications, a state they have been in for many years. A prominent example would be China.

NIC’s like China and India are extremely powerful and wealthy with a $13.9 trillion GDP in 2015 for China and $2.4 trillion GDP for India. They contribute to the global village in a massive way (in many sectors including agriculture, services and technology). However, they have had to go through several phases in order to get to where they are today. The first shows common statistics which allowed for the industrialisation to happen in the first place; rapid industrialisation due to increased spread of TNC’s, large work orientated and well educated populations (which helps with the acceleration of the technology industry). They also have well-developed infrastructure, are near the coast which allows for easy shipping. Furthermore their government provides the people and companies from other countries with incentives – this includes things like low tax, this along with the less ridged labour enforcement laws means that companies find such places a lot more attractive than their own because they wouldn’t have to pay lots of money to the people and they won’t get prosecuted for it. This allows them to have higher revenue and make more profit. This demonstrates the flow of production and services as most of these companies will specialise in either – whether it’s manufacturing Barbie or call centre work, they go where the work is cheap. Due to the fact some countries like India have moved out of this phase, such work is now being passed to least developing countries like Uganda, especially work like call centres. This not only connects companies from the developing countries to two separate continents, but then it also connects them with people who receive the manufactured goods / the services. For example if someone from the UK called a BT call centre, you used to be directed to an Indian call centre, now because they no longer need them for development, these have now been passed to Uganda, therefore you are connecting with people from across the world just by using the phone – which has only been improved by the easiness and ability of phone lines.

Then a company would move into the next phase, where they have gained a lot of money from the first phase, this means that the costs of everything would go up – including labour. This meant a lot of companies left these countries e.g. Mattell who creates Barbie, they based their manufacturing in Taiwan before it reached stage two to capitalise on the government incentives, however once it reached stage two, the company left because they could no longer afford / or didn’t want to pay the increasing labour costs, especially since they could be prosecuted for it. They have since moved to Indonesia and Korea who are still in the first phase. Even some of the home-grown companies had to leave due to the rising prices which are the opposite of their goals. Countries that are stand out examples, which emerged from this phase are; Malaysia and Thailand. However both of these took a different approach. Rather than using the typical shift from agriculture, into manufacturing and then onto services, they completely bypassed those and went straight to services as they are tourism dependent. This is good because it gives them a lot of money, but also, if anything happened like a natural disaster or a war, their economy would be completely destroyed and take a long time to recover. This displays globalisation and tourism is helping it accelerate – as it is a flow of people. People come from across the world to see the Petronas Towers and the Ubud Monkey Forest and on their way they meet A LOT of other people through interactions in shops, hotels, taxis and even on the street. The tourists are not only experiencing a completely different culture which they are more than likely going to share with people when they get back, but they will also know people from the area and may even become friends with some, increasing the amount of people we know around the world. The more people we know, regardless of the context, the more interconnected we can become meaningless intolerance and ignorance.