A2: Globalization Doesn’t Benefit Africa

China grew because it protected its industries from globalization

Dani Rodrik, Spring 2012, This article is adapted from the author’s book The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the World Economy, Norton, 2011,America’s Quarterly, “Global Poverty Amid Plenty: Getting Globalization Right,” http://americasquarterly.org/rodrik DOA: 1-1-15 Dani Rodrik is Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

China’s experience offers compelling evidence that globalization can be a great boon for poor nations. Yet it also presents the strongest argument against the reigning orthodoxy in globalization, which emphasizes financial globalization and deep integration through the World Trade Organization (WTO). China’s ability to shield itself from the global economy proved critical to its efforts to build a modern industrial base, which would in turn be leveraged through world markets.

Since 1978, income per capita in China has grown at an average rate of 8.3 percent per annum—a rate that implies a doubling of incomes every nine years. Thanks to this rapid economic growth, between 1981 and 2008 the poverty rate in China (the percent of the population below the $1.25-a-day poverty line) fell from 84 percent to 13 percent, much of it from reducing rural poverty.⁵ This meant a whopping 662 million fewer Chinese in extreme poverty, a number that accounts for virtually the entire drop in global poverty over the same period.

During the same period, China transformed itself from near autarky to the most feared competitor on world markets. That this happened in a country with a complete lack of private property rights (until recently) and run by the Communist Party only deepens the mystery.

China’s big break came when Deng Xiaoping and other post-Mao leaders decided to trust markets instead of central planning. But their real genius lay in their recognition that the market-supporting institutions they built, most of which were sorely lacking at the time, would have to possess distinctly Chinese characteristics.

China’s economy was predominantly rural in 1978. A Western-trained economist would have recommended abolishing central planning and removing all price controls. Yet without a central plan urban workers would have been deprived of their cheap rations and the government of an important source of revenue, resulting in masses of disgruntled workers in the cities and the risk of hyperinflation.

The Chinese solution to this conundrum was to graft a market system on top of the plan.

Communes were abolished and family farming restored, but land remained state property. Obligatory grain deliveries at controlled prices were kept in place, but once farmers had fulfilled their state quota they were now free to sell their surplus at market-determined prices. This dual-track regime gave farmers market-based incentives and yet did not deprive the state of revenue nor deprive urban workers of cheap food.⁶ Agricultural productivity rose sharply, setting off the first phase of China’s post-1978 growth.

Another challenge was how to provide a semblance of property rights when the state remained the ultimate owner of all property. Privatization would have been the conventional route, but it was ruled out by the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology.

Once again, an innovation came to the rescue. Township and village enterprises (TVEs) proved remarkably adept at stimulating domestic private investment. They were owned not by private entities or the central government, but by local governments (townships or villages). TVEs produced virtually the full gamut of products, everything from consumer goods to capital goods, and spearheaded Chinese economic growth from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. The key to the success of TVEs was the self-interest of local governments, which would reap substantial income from their equity stake in the enterprises.

China’s strategy to open its economy to the world also diverged from received theory. The Chinese leadership resisted the conventional advice to remove trade barriers. Such an action would have forced many state enterprises to close without doing much to stimulate new investments in industrial activities. Employment and economic growth would have suffered, threatening social stability.

The Chinese decided to experiment with alternative mechanisms that would not create too much pressure on existing industrial structures. While state trading monopolies were dismantled relatively early (starting in the late 1970s), what took their place was a complex and highly restrictive set of tariffs, nontariff barriers and licenses restricting imports. These were not substantially relaxed until the early 1990s.

In particular, China relied on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to generate exports and attract foreign investment. Enterprises in these zones operated under different rules than those that applied in the rest of the country; they had access to better infrastructure and could import inputs duty free. The SEZs generated incentives for export-oriented investments without pulling the rug out from under state enterprises.

What fueled China’s growth, along with these institutional innovations, was a dramatic productive transformation.

The Chinese economy latched on to advanced, high-productivity products that no one would expect a poor, labor-abundant country to produce, let alone export. By the end of the 1990s, China’s export portfolio resembled that of a country with an income-per-capita level at least three times higher than China’s.⁷

Foreign investors played a key role in the evolution of China’s industries. They created the most productive firms, introduced new technology to the economy, and became the drivers of the export boom. The SEZs, where foreign producers could operate with good infrastructure and with a minimum of hassles, deserve considerable credit.

But if China welcomed foreign companies, it always did so with the objective of fostering domestic capabilities. It used a number of policies to ensure that technology transfer would take place and that strong domestic players would emerge. Early on, they relied predominantly on state-owned national champions. Later, the government used a variety of incentives and disincentives to foster joint ventures with domestic firms (as in mobile phones and computers) and expand local content (as in autos). Cities and provinces were given substantial freedoms to fashion their own policies of stimulation and support, which led to the creation of industrial clusters in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and elsewhere.⁸

Many of these early policies would have run afoul of WTO rules that ban export subsidies and prohibit discrimination in favor of domestic firms—if China had been a member of the organization. Chinese policy makers were not constrained by any external rules in their conduct of trade and industrial policies and could act freely to promote industrialization.

By the time China did join the WTO, in 2001, it had had created a strong industrial base, much of which did not need protection or nurturing. China substantially reduced its tariffs in preparation for WTO membership, bringing them down from the high levels of the early 1990s (averaging around 40 percent) to single digits in 2001. Many other industrial policies were also phased out.

However, China was not yet ready to let the push and pull of global markets determine the fate of its industries. It began to rely increasingly on a competitive exchange rate to effectively subsidize these industries. By intervening in currency markets and keeping short-term capital flows out, the government prevented its currency (renminbi) from appreciating, which would have been the natural consequence of China’s rapid economic growth.

Explicit industrial policies gave way to an implicit industrial policy conducted by way of currency policy.

Asia’s economic experience violates stereotypes and yet offers something for everyone. In effect, it acts as a reflecting pool for the biases of the observer. If you think unleashing markets is the best way to foster economic development, you will find plenty of evidence for that. If you think markets need the firm, commanding hand of the government, well, there is much evidence for that too.

Regulated globalization can work

Dani Rodrik, Spring 2012, This article is adapted from the author’s book The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the World Economy, Norton, 2011,America’s Quarterly, “Global Poverty Amid Plenty: Getting Globalization Right,” http://americasquarterly.org/rodrik DOA: 1-1-15 Dani Rodrik is Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Globalization as an engine for growth? East Asian countries are a case in point. Globalization needs to be tamed? Ditto. However, if you leave aside these stale arguments and listen to the real message that emanates from the success of the region, you find that what works is a combination of states and markets. Globalization is a tremendously positive force, but only if you are able to domesticate it to work for you rather than against you.

Globalization reduces inequality where the right policies are in place

These structural factors have to be seen in conjunction with the perspective of Lewis (1976) that initial differences in advantage can be magnified by the appearance of economic opportunity. Thus, perhaps the best interpretation of the East Asia experience is being supportive of both a structuralist view and a neoclassical perspective based on the H–O model. The land reforms and the wide spread of education simultaneously reduced surplus labor while at the same time making the distribution of assets (land and human capital) much more equal. The stage was thus set for an opening up and integration into the global economy to deliver growth with equity. However, the outcome was dependent on the initial conditions at the time of the opening up, conditions that need not necessarily hold in other countries, or at other time periods.

Redistribution solves inequality

Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University, 2015, Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2, pp. 1845-1881

20.3 and 20.4 of this chapter discussed the skill bias that characterizes technical progress today. Demand for skilled labor is rising globally, and openness in trade and investment is transmitting this global demand to the country level. In the absence of policy intervention, these market processes will lead to rising inequality within countries. As discussed earlier, closing off economies in order to block this channel of inequality increase is neither feasible nor desirable. However, Asian economies have tended not to counteract these pressures, either by addressing structural inequalities in skill levels, or by redistributing market income sufficiently to mitigate inequality. However, Latin American economies have purposively redistributed income through cash transfers and have done it in such a way as to help the buildup of human capital through conditioning these transfers on keeping children in school.

Progressive taxation solves inequality

Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University, 2015, Handbook of Income Distribution, Volume 2, pp. 1845-1881

The additional expenditure on conditional cash transfers requires revenues, and the progressivity of the tax system is another major determinant of how globalization related increases in inequality can be mitigated. Progressivity is also important in addressing the rise in very high incomes the world over, especially in Asia. Asian tax systems do not generally score highly on progressivity. In fact, it is argued that raising progressivity of taxation would have a greater impact on inequality in Asia than elsewhere in the world.³⁸

Leveraging globalization on top of structural changes solves poverty

OECD Insights, May 4, 2012, Getting Globalization Right: China Marches to Its Own Beat, http://oecdinsights.org/2012/05/04/getting-globalization-right-china-marches-to-its-own-beat/ DOA: 1-1-15

China’s experience offers compelling evidence that globalization can be a great boon for poor nations. Yet it also presents the strongest argument against the reigning orthodoxy in globalization, which emphasizes financial globalization and deep integration through the World Trade Organization (WTO). China’s ability to shield itself from the global economy proved critical to its efforts to build a modern industrial base, which would in turn be leveraged through world markets.

Since 1978, income per capita in China has grown at an average rate of 8.3 percent per annum—a rate that implies a doubling of incomes every nine years. Thanks to this rapid economic growth, between 1981 and 2008 the poverty rate in China (the percent of the population below the $1.25-a-day poverty line) fell from 84 percent to 13 percent, much of it from reducing rural poverty. This meant a whopping 662 million fewer Chinese in extreme poverty, a number that accounts for virtually the entire drop in global poverty over the same period.

During the same period, China transformed itself from near autarky to the most feared competitor on world markets. That this happened in a country with a complete lack of private property rights (until recently) and run by the Communist Party only deepens the mystery.

China’s big break came when Deng Xiaoping and other post-Mao leaders decided to trust markets instead of central planning. But their real genius lay in their recognition that the market-supporting institutions they built, most of which were sorely lacking at the time, would have to possess distinctly Chinese characteristics.

China’s economy was predominantly rural in 1978. A Western-trained economist would have recommended abolishing central planning and removing all price controls. Yet without a central plan urban workers would have been deprived of their cheap rations and the government of an important source of revenue, resulting in masses of disgruntled workers in the cities and the risk of hyperinflation.

The Chinese solution to this conundrum was to graft a market system on top of the plan.

Communes were abolished and family farming restored, but land remained state property. Obligatory grain deliveries at controlled prices were kept in place, but once farmers had fulfilled their state quota they were now free to sell their surplus at market-determined prices. This dual-track regime gave farmers market-based incentives and yet did not deprive the state of revenue nor deprive urban workers of cheap food.  Agricultural productivity rose sharply, setting off the first phase of China’s post-1978 growth.

Another challenge was how to provide a semblance of property rights when the state remained the ultimate owner of all property. Privatization would have been the conventional route, but it was ruled out by the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology.

Once again, an innovation came to the rescue. Township and village enterprises (TVEs) proved remarkably adept at stimulating domestic private investment. They were owned not by private entities or the central government, but by local governments (townships or villages). TVEs produced virtually the full gamut of products, everything from consumer goods to capital goods, and spearheaded Chinese economic growth from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s. The key to the success of TVEs was the self-interest of local governments, which would reap substantial income from their equity stake in the enterprises.

China’s strategy to open its economy to the world also diverged from received theory. The Chinese leadership resisted the conventional advice to remove trade barriers. Such an action would have forced many state enterprises to close without doing much to stimulate new investments in industrial activities. Employment and economic growth would have suffered, threatening social stability.

The Chinese decided to experiment with alternative mechanisms that would not create too much pressure on existing industrial structures. While state trading monopolies were dismantled relatively early (starting in the late 1970s), what took their place was a complex and highly restrictive set of tariffs, nontariff barriers and licenses restricting imports. These were not substantially relaxed until the early 1990s.

In particular, China relied on Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to generate exports and attract foreign investment. Enterprises in these zones operated under different rules than those that applied in the rest of the country; they had access to better infrastructure and could import inputs duty free. The SEZs generated incentives for export-oriented investments without pulling the rug out from under state enterprises.

What fueled China’s growth, along with these institutional innovations, was a dramatic productive transformation.

The Chinese economy latched on to advanced, high-productivity products that no one would expect a poor, labor-abundant country to produce, let alone export. By the end of the 1990s, China’s export portfolio resembled that of a country with an income-per-capita level at least three times higher than China’s.

Foreign investors played a key role in the evolution of China’s industries. They created the most productive firms, introduced new technology to the economy, and became the drivers of the export boom. The SEZs, where foreign producers could operate with good infrastructure and with a minimum of hassles, deserve considerable credit.

But if China welcomed foreign companies, it always did so with the objective of fostering domestic capabilities. It used a number of policies to ensure that technology transfer would take place and that strong domestic players would emerge. Early on, they relied predominantly on state-owned national champions. Later, the government used a variety of incentives and disincentives to foster joint ventures with domestic firms (as in mobile phones and computers) and expand local content (as in autos). Cities and provinces were given substantial freedoms to fashion their own policies of stimulation and support, which led to the creation of industrial clusters in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and elsewhere.

Many of these early policies would have run afoul of WTO rules that ban export subsidies and prohibit discrimination in favor of domestic firms—if China had been a member of the organization. Chinese policy makers were not constrained by any external rules in their conduct of trade and industrial policies and could act freely to promote industrialization.

By the time China did join the WTO, in 2001, it had created a strong industrial base, much of which did not need protection or nurturing. China substantially reduced its tariffs in preparation for WTO membership, bringing them down from the high levels of the early 1990s (averaging around 40 percent) to single digits in 2001. Many other industrial policies were also phased out.

However, China was not yet ready to let the push and pull of global markets determine the fate of its industries. It began to rely increasingly on a competitive exchange rate to effectively subsidize these industries. By intervening in currency markets and keeping short-term capital flows out, the government prevented its currency (renminbi) from appreciating, which would have been the natural consequence of China’s rapid economic growth.

Explicit industrial policies gave way to an implicit industrial policy conducted by way of currency policy.

Asia’s economic experience violates stereotypes and yet offers something for everyone. In effect, it acts as a reflecting pool for the biases of the observer. If you think unleashing markets is the best way to foster economic development, you will find plenty of evidence for that. If you think markets need the firm, commanding hand of the government, well, there is much evidence for that too.

Globalization as an engine for growth? East Asian countries are a case in point. Globalization needs to be tamed? Ditto. However, if you leave aside these stale arguments and listen to the real message that emanates from the success of the region, you find that what works is a combination of states and markets. Globalization is a tremendously positive force, but only if you are able to domesticate it to work for you rather than against you.

You become what you produce. That is the inevitable fate of nations. Specialize in commodities and raw materials, and you will get stuck in the periphery of the world economy. You will remain hostage to fluctuations in world prices and suffer under the rule of a small group of domestic elites.

If you can push your way into manufactured and other modern tradable products, you may pave a path toward convergence with the world’s rich countries. You will have greater ability to withstand swings in world markets, and you will acquire the broad based, representative institutions that a growing middle class demands, instead of the repressive ones that elites need to hide behind.

Globalization accentuates the dilemma because it makes it easier for countries to fall into the commodities trap.

The international division of labor makes it possible for you to produce little else besides commodities, if that is what you choose to do. At the same time, globalization greatly increases the rewards of the alternative strategy, as the experiences of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China amply show.

Sustained poverty reduction requires economic growth. A government committed to economic diversification and capable of energizing its private sector can spur growth rates that would have been unthinkable in a world untouched by globalization. The trick is to leverage globalization through a domestic process of productive transformation and capacity-building.

Poor benefit from globalization when there are reforms that support them

Anish Bharadwaj, 2014, International Max Planck Research School for Competition and Innovation, Munich Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research, Advances in Economics and Business

2(1): 42, p. 42-57

The poor are more likely to share in the gains from globalization when there are complementary policies in place (Harrison, 2006). The studies on India and Colombia suggest that globalization is more likely to benefit the poor if trade reforms are implemented in conjunction with reducing impediments to labor mobility. In Zambia, poor farmers are only expected to benefit from greater access to export markets if they also have access to credit, technical know-how, and other complementary inputs. The studies also point to the importance of social safety nets. In Ethiopia, if food aid had not been well targeted, globalization would have had little impact on the poor.

Progressive taxation and public services can reduce inequality

Oxfam Briefing Paper, 2014, Working for The Few, http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-en_3.pdf

This dangerous trend can be reversed. The good news is that there are clear examples of success, both historical and current. The US and Europe in the three decades after World War II reduced inequality while growing prosperous. Latin America has significantly reduced inequality in the last decade – through more progressive taxation, public services, social protection and decent work.

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