Regionalization replacing globalization

Editor's Note: Chairman of the Center for China& Globalization Long Yongtu delivered a speech on economic globalization at a forum on the global development of Chinese manufacturing industries last week. The following are excerpts:

The process of economic globalization is irreversible, but it will show a series of new trends, which is evidenced by the changes in its driving forces, carriers and forms.

New technologies represented by the digital economy, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and blockchain are becoming new driving forces of economic globalization.

The carriers of economic globalization are no longer restricted to the large-scale multinational corporations, as more and more medium and small-sized enterprises are taking part in it.

And the form of economic globalization is transforming from the deployment of industrial chains worldwide to regionalization and localization of industry and business.

In this process, with the rise of unilateralism and protectionism, the forming of new industrial chains is prone to be influenced by politics. That means some Western countries reject some countries out of pure political reasons and are rebuilding their industrial chains.

But since these moves violate market laws and international rules, they will not be sustainable in the long run.

Despite the countercurrents, the process of economic globalization will not be reversed.

The advancement of new technologies drives it forward, and enables more market players to take part in it. Technological progress will continuously bring about structural changes to economic globalization, and enterprises should seize the historical opportunity to adapt to the development of new technologies and take part in the process of economic globalization.

A growing number of medium and small-sized enterprises are taking advantage of the internet to deploy their supply chains around the world, and improve their manufacturing and services, while cross-border e-commerce companies are delivering large amounts of commodities to the whole world.

The era when a handful of multinational corporations could monopolize economic globalization has passed. The raging COVID-19 pandemic has fragmented the global industrial and supply chains, and regional cooperation in production, design and research and development is replacing global cooperation, and thus is becoming a new form of the economic globalization.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a case in point. And it is predictable that the Asia-Pacific, with China as a key player, will assume a more important role in the reconstruction of the global industrial chains.