Globalisation: Japan And China’s Economy

Globalisation is currently happening rapidly around the world, aiming to bring different ideologies and infrastructures from various countries and join them together and turn it to be worldwide interconnected. According to The United Nations ESCWA, globalisation is actually not a new phenomenon since it has already emerged in nineteenth century, but it started spreading bit by bit from the World War I until the third quarter of twentieth century and it has been defined in many certain ways such as economic field and social field. Globalisation can be defined as entrenched and enduring patterns of worldwide interconnectedness on physical, normative and symbolic ranges, causing distant happenings and developments and it may bring serious local impact towards affected countries. The original idea of globalisation is not trying to bring the new principles, materials or infrastructures to replace or take over the old one, just embed within more expansive sets of networks and interregional relations power (Held D. & McGrew A. 2003, P.3). Today, the world has been slightly changed by globalisation, and it may keep changing in the future, many countries have benefit from globalisation, but also fall victim to it, therefore it is valuable to explain the effect brought by globalisation with the examples of China and Japan.

China is actually one of the countries that fall victim to the globalisation, the major issue is unequal distribution of wealth which caused by local inflation, and numbers of other negative effect such as environmental pollution, and family member staying apart in the nation. China is the country that having the largest population size in the world, there are more then eight hundred labour force out of thirteen hundred million total population size currently in the country, ranking number one in labour force in the globe according to the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook. It is an undeniable fact that China nowadays is the world factory, many international firms are likely to manufacture and produce various variety of goods such as toys, clothes, computers, and vehicles’ parts, but also perform different kinds of outsourcing in China, due its largest number of factory workers, good quality of the products and the low wages of factory worker. Outsource is various business processes in order to achieve a huge variety of business objectives ranging from decrease of cost to invention and business alteration(Mani D., et al, 2010); However, these factory workers not only working with low salary, but also have to work long hours and having no government welfare. The Chinese Government did not increase the lowest wages standard and trying to retain it instead even inflation has happened in the region in order to keep and gain more foreign companies produce goods and perform outsourcing in China.

The inflation appeared because foreign investment increased in China therefore lead to a boom in the economy which causing local inflation. Meanwhile, the other simultaneous occurrences of workers earning retained low salary and working with no welfare, they have to spend more money for living because most of the goods in society have increased in price; by the time the economy has increased by more foreign investment, more workers are tend to work within these sort of careers, however, the number of jobs did not increase as the amount of workers increased, therefore more workers may be unemployed or underemployed (Kwong Leung T. & Chack Kie W. 2003, P.16). Nevertheless, owners of local companies have earned more profits due to more foreign investment has been made in the country, but these owners did not provide higher salary to the workers while companys’ profit increased. It is causing a current social problem in China that the rich gets richer, and the poor gets poorer, consequently engendered the issue of unequal wealth distribution as a result of globalisation.

Secondly, increase in environmental pollution will be caused as a result of the increase in production in China. According to the World Health Organisation report in 2007, there were six hundred and fifty six thousand Chinese citizens killed by indoor and outdoor air pollution and another ninety five thousand and six hundred were killed by consuming polluted water. Variety of a large amount of chemicals and may be even toxic materials is possible to be discharged into the air, water and soil during the production process, acid rain is one of a very common effect due to these problems; meanwhile, after one manufacturing is finished, the discarded after-manufacture raw materials turned to be useless and majority of them will be piled up and place at a landfill, releasing detrimental substances and this is harmful to the local environment. It is able to be believed that this is another reason of China falls victim into globalisation.

Thirdly, majority of factory workers came from different areas in China initiate the family crisis. Numbers of these workers were even moved from rural areas within the nations and working far away from home, this part of workers are willing and likely to work even earning low wages in the factory. Nonetheless, they still chose working there because comparatively the amount of money they earn as working in the factory is a lot more then the sum of they earn at home place and so from rural areas. It is possible for them to make the earnings to afford normal live in city, and even send money back home, therefore many workers like to work in a factory even with low wages. It is possible to say that this is another reason of China fall victim to globalization due to the family problem, and it is able to be widely believed that the given reasons and examples are capable to explain why China is one of a victim in consequence of globalisation.

Japan is one of a country that can be said as benefiting during the globalisation process according to its exports of goods, services and technology toward many other countries around the globe and its culture and language exchange with the other countries. Base on the Central Intelligence Agency World Factbook, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Japan has stop rising rapidly until 2007 and start increasing less from 2008, and even more in 2009 as well. However, Japan is still the second largest economy around the globe, just behind the United States of America (International Monetary Fund Report, 2005). Japan has a huge amount of export with its vehicles, electric equipments, technologies. This is a fact that all these goods from Japan are currently using by different individuals in different countries.

Japan has a very large quantity of export with the local products of vehicles and electronic devices. There are many famous vehicles manufacturing company has export products to the other countries, for instance, United States of America, India, Australia, China, Indonesia and some other nations; for electronic devices, for examples, computers, laptops, cameras, printers, mobile phones and various of other sort of electronic devices are extremely well-known around the world. The brands of these goods are very familiar in daily life, such as Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Honda, Sony, DoCoMo, Canon, Panasonic, Sharp. These are very common brands of motor vehicles and electronic tools.

Japan is one of a member of G8 and it is the only single country which joined the group within Asia. Meanwhile, Japan is also one of a member of World Trade Organisatio, can be also called as WTO (Central Intelligence Agency World FactBook, 2010). This is showing that Japan is capable to trade with other nations and states. Hence, in the course of large amount of exporting goods such as motor vehicles and electronic devices, this raise up the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Japan most of the time and make Japan to be the second largest economy in the world for a long time.

Japanese culture is another issue that is valuable to be mentioned. There are many different kinds of Japanese culture have keep spreading all over the world. For instance, gourmet culture, music culture, and some other sort of popular culture such as cartoons and anime have been spread around the world; For gourmet culture, it can be said without questions that sushi can be easily seen in the majority of developed countries, this lead to a Japanese food culture bring into the other places and increase the reputation; for music culture, a lot of music style and different types of genre of Japanese music are very music have been bought into the other nations especially Asia, hence, the musical manner imported towards other places and so increase to CDs sales in foreign market; for the popular culture such as cartoons and anime, some well known cartoons and anime are not only broadcasting in local Japan, but also broadcast in many other countries such as Asia countries, and a big amount of these cartoons and anime are selling in the other foreign nations as well.

These is able to proof that Japanese popular culture have been spread and bought into the other places, and simultaneously increase the popularity and reputation about Japanese culture therefore raise up Japan local economy due to the demand of Japanese goods which are related to its culture have increased. For example, more Japanese chiefs and local Japanese raw materials for gourmet field are demanding more and more in other nations; Japanese music get into foreign markets therefore the export of Japanese music CDs can sell are at higher price because the demand enlarged; for culture of cartoons and anime, it is probably the same occurrence of music CDs, also the level of popularity and reputation increased, so increase its sales thus higher the demand and lastly improve the Japan economy. Nevertheless, other than the economical benefit in the globalisation, the introduction of mentioned different types of culture importing to other states, widened the areas that adopted Japanese culture and civilisations, so Japan has also benefited from globalisation in this area as well.

Lastly, according to various categories of Japan exported goods has imported to other nations, the reputation of Japanese culture improved within the other nations, therefore, individuals in other countries getting more interested in Japan culture and so does Japan, too. Because of that, more tourists are likely and feel interested travelling to Japan, for this reason, the tourism level in Japan increase and bring up the economy with the expenses from the tourists and earnings from tourism; Consequently, it is possible to say that Japan has benefit from globalisation in the economic and cultural area since large amount of exports of goods and culture.

In conclusion, globalisation is able to be said as happening in a fast pace around the world, it is advantageous to some countries, however it is disadvantageous to some of the others. For example, China is being disadvantaged as the result of regional inflation, and plenty of additional effects have been brought, for instance, polluting the environment, and causing some family members aloof from the families. These points are able to proof that China has fall victim from globalisation. On the other hand, Japan can be said as one of a country that being benefited due to globalisation with the reasons of great amount of export, such as motor vehicles, electronic instruments, and so do different sort of cultures including eating culture, musical culture and the cartoons and anime culture, and also increase in tourism, these caused an increase of Japan economy, so it could be believed that Japan is benefited from globalisation. Globalisation is aiming to develop society and bring the pros together and share it to the whole world even though some cons might be brought to particular nations, but it is still a positive incidence to the community.