Chapter 1: New Trends in Globalization and China's Strategies

Economic globalization has been a hot topic ever since 1985 when it was first raised by Levi. As mentioned in World Economic Outlook 1997 (IMF, 1997), economic globalization refers to the growing integration of commodity, labor, and capital markets worldwide since the end of World War II. The setting up of the world communication system in the 1970s initiated the era of globalization — an era when all human societies are interdependent upon each other. Though there were a lot of cross-border economic activities before 1970s, interdependence and risk sharing had not been an obvious characteristic of the human society. With the development of information technology and the spread of Internet in the 1980s, globalization has become one of the most important characteristics of modern economy, and it now continuously exerts great influences on economic decisions. However, further globalization meets greater barriers since the subprime crisis in 2007. World economy was seriously harmed, and people began to contemplate on the impacts of globalization on countries, firms, and even themselves. More attention is paid to the future trend of globalization. This chapter will unfold with a detailed analysis of the characteristics, influences, and motivations of globalization. Based on this, we will then discuss about the future trend of globalization, and China's strategy of further opening up.