1. What is the definition of globalization?
Globalization is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture.[1][2] In particular, advances in transportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the Internet, are major factors in globalization and precipitate further interdependence of economic and cultural activities
2. Globalization: a trendy word for an old process
Globalization is a trendy word today. Globalization, they say, is not just an irresistible trend. It is already a fact.
1) one could trace it to the early caravans across the Sahara Desert and along the Silk Road;
2) the trade around the Mediterranean , trade across the Atlantic after the discovery of America
3)In the 1980s and 90s, especially after the Cold War, with the help of GATT (today the WTO), the World
Bank , and with easy transportation and communication facilitated by technological advances
3. Are you for or against globalization? In general, could you list some examples which show the positive aspects of globalization? Please list some examples which show the negative effects of globalization?
Globalization is a double-edged sword. It is much like fire. Fire itself is neither good nor bad. Used properly, it can cook food, heat our homes. Used carelessly, fire can destroy lives, towns and forests in an instant.
Current Economic Globalization
New products More debt
New services More instability
New investment and markets A greater gap between rich and poor
New technologies and management skills Worse environmental degradation
Higher living standards Loss of identity
Global village is often a term that describes telecommunications and/or the World Wide Web.
Advantages are:
1. better communications throughout the world.
2. a wider source of information in addition to mainline media
3. ease at which information can be accessed
Disadvantages are:
1. abuse in the form of posting unreliable or untrue information
2. people accepting what they read without digging for the truth or questioning sources
4. Was it wrong for China to seek WTO membership and embrace globalization?
Globalization is a trendy word today. More and more people now believe that the world is becoming more and more integrated. Even the most secluded and isolated countries are taking their first cautious steps in this direction. Indeed, people now think that it is becoming a small global village. However, this is only one side.
There also exists the opposite tendency, the tendency of protectionism, regionalism, separatism, anti-globalization. In spite of all the promises of a win-win situation, in this game, nations are not equally positioned. They do not have a level playground. Therefore, there are bound to be winners and losers. This does not mean that globalization is completely wrong. It simply means that it is more complicated than we thought. It means that many new problems will have to be looked into and properly resolved. Globalization probably will eventually prevail. But it will have to be a more equitable, more humane, more universally beneficial kind of globalization. While there is no denying the fact that our country has benefited greatly from globalization--- many people overseas in fact have gone as far as to claim that China has been the biggest beneficiary of globalization so far, it is also increasingly clear that it has given rise to more and more risks and challenges. Therefore, while we must not dismiss globalization as a thing of the past, we do need to deepen our understanding of the implications of this trend.
China’s 15-year-long unremitting efforts to join the WTO show that we have made
our choice. We have decided, after weighing the pros and cons carefully, that we cannot afford to be left out of this trend, the trend that we decided to embrace in 1978
5. What is your understanding of and attitude to globalization? In what way do you think it will affect
your career?
