Author: Pan Huasheng
It is not uncommon for viruses to change the history of the world.On the eve of the change of many dynasties in China, and the annihilation of the East and West Rome, they often started from abnormal climate and epidemic.The outbreak of the epidemic broke out, and the main areas of the world economy were seriously impacted.It has almost been determined that the global economic growth of this year and next year will shrink sharply and even enter the stage of recession.
Mainland China first overcomes the challenges of the epidemic. Most European countries have passed the critical point of the epidemic, which seems to have revealed a front line.Although the global epidemic may be over the peak and enter the stage of decline, how long will the long -tail effect of the epidemic continue?Will over time, the rapid evolution of the virus or the peak of the second epidemic spread?This will worsen the global economy that has been weakened.Even if the world's manufacturing plant has overcome the epidemic alone and has entered the stage of economic reassembly, the shrinking of global demand and the disconnection chain of multinational supply chain, China is still difficult to restore the economic vitality alone.
The two most typical countries in Britain and the United States who believe in capitalism and individualism have not seen a significant shift in the epidemic crisis.The atmosphere of disaster, the decline of the economy, the frustration of superiority caused by the defeat of war, bringing stronger ectopic racial consciousness and high nationalism.Only a little imagination is needed, now we can feel the confusing atmosphere: the future world seems to be about to produce structural subversion.
First of all, the globalization of the epidemic will have a profound impact on the existing global division of labor.
After World War II, the United States led the globalization of the international division of labor based on the comparative interests of various countries, and was indispensable for the prosperity and wealth of the world today.Although the process of globalization has also undergone several crises and retreats, it still moves in the direction of stable and open.Prior to the epidemic, countries have accumulated profound contradictions in continuing globalization.While the existing global international framework has been crumbling, the sudden outbreak of the epidemic highlights the inherent vulnerability of this highly dependent international division of labor system.When many so -called advanced countries cannot even meet the needs of the most basic personal protection equipment, they are alert to their lack of manufacturing capabilities.Based on the principles of national security and priority, we must start to restore its own local manufacturing system, which will generate questions about whether globalization is about to end.
Secondly, the voices of de -Chineseization of globalization are resurrected.
When China entered the peak of the epidemic in February, when the global industrial supply chain followed the broken chain, many countries began to think about how to reduce the risk of excessive concentration of China.However, China becomes the focus of the world's manufacturing industry, which is based on the market choice results based on a more interest -based global division of labor.China has a large number of high -quality workers and engineers, the manufacturing industry chain formed by small and medium -sized enterprises with countless collaborations, and the two largest geographical industrial groups in the world. Over time, China has the world's most complete industrial category, the world's largest world's largestIt is equivalent to the industrial scale of the United States, Japan, and Germany. This is the basis for the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry, and it is why the manufacturing industries of various countries are placed in China.
In order to reduce the risk of excessive concentration, or at least the second production base.This is also the main thinking of the Taiwan government in today's southbound policy.Recently, Japan announced that it would spend 2.2 billion US dollars to encourage Japanese companies to move back to Japan or scattered to Southeast Asia.The White House economic adviser, Kurdlo, believes that the United States should pay the relocation cost of American companies that want to leave China.After the epidemic, the global industrial chain will set off a new wave of de -Chinaization.
In fact, as the development of the Chinese economy has increased, the cost of manufacturing has gradually increased. In the past ten years, the global industrial industrial chain's de -Sinicization has also been slowly carried out.The industrial chain is not necessarily a bad thing, and China cannot develop in the direction of high value -added value such as R & D and brand.
However, once the principles of comparative interests are separated, unless countries have re -established trade barriers, for example, to set up an economic sector or implement the supporting measures such as restricting globalization such as quotas and tariffs in trade, otherwise it will inevitably be difficult to face competition from China's existing manufacturing industries from China.EssenceImagine, can the mobile phone and the mask assembled in the United States or Japan compete with the same products in China?Therefore, the prerequisite to de -Chinaization must be the end of globalization, which is still extremely unrealistic in the short term.
Taiwan is a medium -sized export -oriented economy. The economy is deeply combined with the industrial chain of mainland China. It must rely on open and peaceful cross -strait and globalized environment.During this economic crisis, once the globalization trend ends or the cross -strait economic break, Taiwan may fall into an embarrassing long -term structural crisis.
(The author is an associate professor at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology)
