The large -scale spread of the coronary virus epidemic in the world not only caused a rare world public health disaster, but also caused a global economic recession.The world economy faces the most severe challenges since the 1930s, and once again triggered a fierce discussion on the fate of globalization.
Indeed, this epidemic highlights the negative effects of globalization, that is, the virus can quickly spread globally with the convenience of cross -border flow brought by globalization.At the same time, with the implementation of home isolation and border blockade, production activities have almost stopped, and the global supply chain system has been severely impacted, which has led to the negative accumulation of international economic activities.As a result, globalization is about to go to bed at the end of life.
In fact, anti -globalization has a long history, and after the global financial crisis in 2008, it was even more arrogant.The Brexit, the populism of the European continent, and the trade protectionism of the Trump administration have made the globalization difficult. The global impact caused by the crown disease epidemic provides ammunition and ammunition and ammunition for anti -globalization waves.Real scene.
It is foreseeable that the epidemic is superimposed with the various events before, which will be temporarily damaged by globalization.However, the cause of globalization is still there, and globalization will also move forward in difficulties, and try to find a new source of motivation.
Few people have denied that globalization has greatly promoted global economic growth and technological progress, and increased the overall benefits of global producers and consumers.But globalization is also a double -edged sword, and it does bring a lot of problems.For example, uneven distribution of growth, cross -border crimes brought about by population flow, terrorism, cultural conflicts, and spreading diseases.However, these problems must be solved with corresponding global governance and global cooperation.
Like the economy of a country, not only the market system is required to effectively allocate resources, but also the system construction and government governance to ensure the reasonable distribution of market fair transactions and results.Globalization is a global resource trading system that will increase economic efficiency goals, but globalization itself does not automatically guarantee the reasonable distribution of benefits; an effective global governance system is a necessary condition for global operation.
With this global crown disease, it happened in an era of globalization, and people flow, information, and resources flowed in a market -oriented global system.However, when a major infectious disease occurs, its huge negative externality has caused a market -oriented global trading system to fail. At this time, it is urgent to intervene in a strong international governance institution.
But unfortunately, we did not see an effective global leadership and the emergence of global collective actions.As the highest coordination agency of global public health, the World Health Organization has not received the support of some great powers, making it difficult for it to cope with such a major global public health crisis.
As a global leadership, the United States is an important part of the development of the epidemic.What we see is the sleeves, the respective battle, the neighbor as the neighbors, and the lack of communication, and lacks international cooperation in technologies such as vaccine development.It is sad to see the result of this kind of lack of global governance, and the disaster is still continuing and not seen.It can be said that this global popularity is the crisis of global governance, not a crisis of globalization.
In fact, globalization has played an important role in the anti -attack epidemic.When China became an epidemic seizure, the world provided China with scarce medical supplies through various channels. After falling into the disaster area in Europe and the United States, it was the international community led by China, providing a lot of support to these countries.Does this mutually supportive process explain the importance of the global production and supply chain system, the importance of supporting global disasters?Without the global supply chain constructed by globalization, how can international rescue supplies quickly reach the disaster area?The epidemic increased the needs of medical rescue supplies such as masks in the short term, which caused major shortage of such supplies.As a result, some people think that this is a problem caused by the global supply chain. The future solution is the localization of medical supplies.
However, this reason is very reluctant. It is neither in line with the principle of efficiency, nor can it guarantee the timely supply of key supplies during crisis.Because such rare public health events have frequently occurred in a country, and we cannot know in advance which country in the crisis.Only when this key material is scattered in global production can it be possible to cross support during crisis, which is more in line with the principles of efficiency and supply chain security.
The essence of globalization is economic efficiency and competitiveness.As long as the company pursues the maximum profit and consumers pursue the maximum consumption satisfaction, the state must improve the economic benefits of all citizens, and globalization will not end.When the income of multinational allocation resources is greater than the cost, multinational companies will continue to lay out global layout.Political interference will indeed be in a short -term influence of globalization, but cannot change the economic motivation behind globalization.
Global competition forces multinational companies to implement a global strategy, otherwise it will be eliminated, which is the law of iron.Globalization has suffered countless political interference in history, but globalization will always move forward against the wind.Under modern economy and technical conditions, no country can be prosperous before globalization.
Since globalization is inevitable, we should focus on solving the problems and challenges brought by globalization.As mentioned earlier, strengthening global governance is the most critical, because globalization has led to a complex system that countries depend on each other. Globalization without global governance is fragile or even dangerous.
The scale of globalization is subject to two opposite factors, one is the economic drive to promote scale expansion, and the other is the increase in transaction costs caused by global governance defects.To accelerate the development of globalization, we must solve the bottleneck of global governance.The globalization system is only a functional system, and global governance is the system construction.Therefore, the correct prescription is to strengthen global governance, rather than denying globalization.We unfortunately see that the existing global governance system has been severely damaged in recent years, which has led to the out of control of globalization.
The existing global governance system was established and led by the United States after the end of World War II, which made a positive contribution to enhance the prosperity of the world and prevent global war.For more than 70 years, fundamental changes have taken place around the world, and developing countries have continued to grow, but lack of speech in global governance.The power of the United States has continued to weaken and cannot maintain the rule of its single hegemony.
The Trump administration took the initiative to withdraw from many global governance areas, and partially reflected the power of the United States.Therefore, the world must form a governance system for multi -pole cooperation as soon as possible. On the one hand, it is necessary to reform the existing governance system, and on the other hand, it is necessary to establish a new institution and inject new vitality.However, no matter what method is adopted, the participation of multilateralism and developing countries should be important content.
This must be through global efforts, especially the cooperation between the two major powers of China and the United States.The total economic volume of China and the United States accounted for nearly 40%of the world's.If you want to successfully resolve many survival crises facing humans, Sino -US cooperation is a necessary prerequisite.Although the hope of cooperation is slim, this is indeed the only correct direction.
Imagine the increasingly severe global climate warming, large -scale cross -border infectious diseases, global terrorism, global development inequality, and global financial risks, which crisis can be successfully cope with a single country?This time the crown disease is popular, and once again shows that there is no effective international governance system and no close Sino -US cooperation, human beings will pay an extremely heavy price.
In the face of the global crisis, the narrow and best choice of the nation -state is actually not the optimal strategy, which cannot save the country and cannot save the world.It is the best time to cooperate between China and the United States. Any attempt to decompose between China and the United States cannot withstand the test of the global crisis.
The connotation of globalization is also urgent to keep pace with the times.This epidemic has brought unprecedented impact on the world, including public health, social, economic, geopolitics and human life forms.We must rethink the significance and connotation of global cooperation. Globalization cannot be limited to the economic level. It must also include a wider goal of global health and safety, global environmental protection, and global human development.
This global disaster caused usI have never felt the importance of global cooperation like today. I hope we can think about the next development direction of human beings through this major crisis.Churchill once said, don't waste a crisis in vain.Humans have accumulated quite a lot of cognition and consensus, and now they lack far -sighted global leadership.
(The author is an associate professor at the School of Public Policy, the National University of Singapore)
