In The News

We Have to Make Globalization Work for All

Joseph Stiglitz October 17, 2003
Why has globalization gained such a bad reputation? It was once the phenomenon supposed to 'save' the world system and provide a framework for global equality and integration. So is the concept inherently flawed, or does the fault lie with the implementation of policies? Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz asks these questions and reflects on what went wrong with globalization during the...

Tough Struggle at Sea

September 30, 2003
Women are increasingly manning the world's ships, yet they continue to face discrimination. According to a new study published by the International Labor Office, women currently represent between 1 and 2 percent of the world's 1.25 million seafarers, serving on some 87,000 ships. Even in the Philippines – the world’s largest supplier of seafarers to the global merchant fleet – only...

Connect the Dots

Thomas Friedman September 25, 2003
The US has refused to cut agricultural subsidies to its farmers for years, and it refused again at the recent WTO meeting in Cancún. Thomas Friedman laments that fact, arguing that a real connection exists between US hypocrisy on world trade issues and the roots of anti-American terrorism. Countries like Pakistan, mired in poverty, would produce fewer angry fundamentalists willing to bomb the...

China Joins the Global Economy - Part Two

Deborah Davis September 17, 2003
In part one of this 2-part series, David Zweig explained the processes by which China joined the global economy. In part two, China scholar Deborah Davis discusses the prospects for China's continued economic growth. While incomes have improved and everyone's boat has risen, Davis says, so has the country's once-low income inequality. Increased differences in wealth, as well as...

The War on Terror is Not a Clash of Cultures

Alexander Downer September 15, 2003
Following the violence of September 11th and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has become common to hear that Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations" thesis (presented over a decade ago in a Foreign Affairs article) has come to pass. Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Alexander Downer is not so quick to agree. Rather than see the war on terror as a vindication of...

Protesters Swarm the Streets at W.T.O. Forum in Cancún

Ginger Thompson September 14, 2003
Developing nations lost the trade battle this weekend in the WTO talks, as richer countries pushed through a proposal that kept most of the 3 billion dollars worth of agricultural subsidies intact. Defending the subsidies, which nations in Africa and Latin America consider akin to "dumping practices" and which the US and EU states call necessary, wealthier nations called on groups such...

Only a Miracle Can Save China

Moisés Naím September 14, 2003
China may be growing too strong too fast for its own good. Rapid urbanization, an upwardly mobile middle class, and strained utilities and resources make an economic or political "accident" within the next decade inevitable, argues Moisés Naím. No state thus far has managed to expand so quickly in so many different directions without experiencing some sort of collapse—and China's...