Ancillary 4 — Pandemic and Globalization

After reading through the background information, I decide to stand on the side that the pandemic may temporarily negatively impact globalization, but it will recover eventually and come out with wiser economic integration strategies. There are several key components of globalization: international travel, migration, supply-chain risk, export controls, and information sharing, and according to the article, Globalization will look very different after the Coronavirus Pandemic; different components point to different directions. Currently, the intensity of trade in goods is down, whereas in services it is up. Therefore, I think international travel, migration, and even study abroad will not be impacted in the long run, maybe not as significant as the globalization peak, but there will still be a great number of people engaging in traveling. I do agree that the risk of dependence on international trade and supply chain is a challenge to globalization after the pandemic since when China locked down, the global supply chains had been influenced. And indeed, the speed of vaccination among different countries, especially between developed and developing countries, is not at the same pace. Meanwhile, I don’t think future nations would generate a national production cycle like what David Faris proposed in his article Did the pandemic end globalization. First, not all nations have the natural ability and technological advancement to form the whole production cycle. Take Mongolia as an example. Its location determines that they have no access to seafood and any waterpower, which implies that if Mongolian people need any sea products, they must rely on international trade. For developed countries like the U.S. or Canada, self-production may be easy to stress by those protectionists, but it is simply not possible for many developing countries in the world. Second, for developed countries, it is mostly the corporations in charge of their own business, making decisions like outsourcing services or production lines to the third-world countries to maximize their benefits. Though international transportation might contain certain risks, as the speed of vaccination is not the same, the benefits may overweight the risks, which would still drive the capitalists/Bourgeoisie to seek cheaper foreign labor. After all, higher risks mean higher profits. Third, self-production may cause countries to lose the acuteness of new technological development or inventions, which may cause them to lose the international competitions. A direct example would be Tsing Dynasty in China — because it closed its border to foreigners, all people became extremely egoistic and arrogant and failed to keep up with the industrial revolution in the world. Therefore, China appeared fragile in the Opioid War and World War II. History is like the mirror to current events. We need to be careful, not leaning towards hyper-nationalism.