Bill's Comment Page

Is 'anti-globalisation' the reason the poorer countries stay poor?

There was a very interesting and powerful programme on Channel 4 on Sunday evening (I've only just had a chance to watch my video recording) by Johan Norberg, the Swedish author of "In Defence of Global Capitalism" and one of the world's leading advocates of globalisation.

His contention is that those countries that became rich a long time ago (Europe, North America) and those which have become wealthy more recently (East Asia) did so because of their ability to export goods they could produce cheaply to countries that could pay for them - and more importanly who allowed access to their markets. He believes that globalisation eventually leads to greater democracy, and as no democracies have ever fought each other, to a redution in conflict.

In modern times he focussed on Taiwan, Vietnam and Kenya. Taiwan has become enormously successful, initially by producing lots of things cheaply, for export, in 'sweat-shop' conditions and later by producing more technologically sophisticated items - with Taiwan having living standards comparable today to those in Spain. In the process it transformed from being a dictatorship to a pretty robust democracy. Vietnam is still at the 'sweat-shop' stage and of course is a communist tyranny still. Kenya is hampered greatly by limitations on imports imposed by wealthy countries on the things it can produce best - agricultural produce and textiles. Except for cut flowers, where the EU has allowed it very low tariffs, and for some vegetables, it is impossible for them to farm profitably for export - specially when the EU (and the US) have enormous subsidies for their own agricultural producers, which allows them to export to the very poorest countries and so undercut local producers.

China, whilst still a one-party tyranny, now has a very robust economy in parts and appears to be moving, very gradually, to a somewhat more free society in some respects. A lot of this is based on it being a huge exporter of raw and manufactured (and increasingly high value) items to the US and the EU.

Norberg's ideas make a lot of sense to me, indeed they bring into focus a lot of my own ideas gained from my experience of living in various developing countries, amongst which Vietnam. Some of the countries I have lived in, in the Middle East for example, could certainly not be called democracies in any way, but in practical terms the inhabitants were pretty free and were certainly free to develop their own potential in economic terms - the UAE is a shining example,

Johan Norberg considers the 'anti-globalisers' to be ignorant and dangerous and that genuinely free-trade is the route to more widespread wealth - I tend to agree (sorry, I agree completely!).