From January 12 to 14, 2001, People’s Daily, the Hong Kong-based Foundation For Globalization Cooperation and the Ministry of Information Industry held their second globalization forum. During the meeting, high-ranking Chinese Government officials and well-known scholars had in-depth discussions on how to use information technology and economic globalization to develop the economy. Some well-known foreign personages present also put forward suggestions.
Li Shenming, Vice-President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in the face of economic globalization, China should participate actively in the process and deal with it calmly. There is no other choice but to face up to it and participate in economic globalization, he said. Globalization will surely cause risks. All countries and nations in the world have their own merits and respective characteristics. Therefore, every country needs to pursue a policy of opening up to the outside world and learning from others. Particularly in today’s world of rapid high-tech development, no country can afford arrogant parochialism and close itself off to international interaction. Such a country would lag behind, becoming passive and vulnerable to attack. “We should see that globalization will bring China stern challenges but, at the same time, opportunities,” he said. In a sense, the achievements China has made in the past two decades are a result of participating in economic globalization.
Li said China should judge the hour, size up the situation and work out a set of correct development strategies to participate in globalization and measures to deal with it, taking into account the world situation and China’s own national conditions. China should independently decide its measures, speed, depth, patterns and methods of participating in the globalization based on its national conditions and the largest interests of the country and nation. Based on the dual attributes of economic globalization, he said China should boldly learn advanced science and technology, management methods and experience and use them for reference, and resolutely resist privatization, and the practice of plundering and exploiting other countries and nations.
Chen Qingtai, Deputy Director of the State Development Research Center, said information is a tool of industrialization. China can use information to make a leap forward in its development. He said that in the face of the emerging information revolution and new economy, some people in China believe China is far removed from the Internet and information revolution, and to engage in the new economic development is a matter for the United States and other developed countries. They believe China can only engage in industrialization. Others consider that the traditional economy is outmoded and that China should concentrate its resources on the new economy and information industries, leaping across the long process of industrialization to catch up with the industrialized countries in one step. It is obvious that these are two extreme viewpoints.
As for China with its large population, the technological means of developing the economy and instruments of production can leap ahead, but skipping over the stages of industrialization and urbanization is difficult. The emergence of the new economy with the information revolution as the main ingredient has brought new choices for China that is in the process of being industrialized. Here is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that when facing the developed countries with their abundant capital and technology and transnational corporations with high-level management, China’s foundation for developing information technology and using its achievements is backward. The opportunity lies in the fact that China can bypass the old road that others have taken, of first becoming industrialized and then entering the information age. Based on the successes of the information revolution, Chen said, China can push forward industrialization and develop by leaps and bounds through economic growth motivated by both industrialization and information process. As for relations between the information process and industrialization, it can be said that information is a tool of industrialization and industrialization is a carrier of information. There will be no sustained development of information technology in China without drastic industrial investment. Without the support of information technology, it will be difficult to realize a leap in the industrialization development model, he said.
Currently there are many aspects of promoting industrialization: the first is to speed up restructuring. Network technology has provided a new means of information transfer and has made possible the allocation of resources and cooperation in a wider scope; the second is to use information technology to upgrade traditional industries; the third is management innovation; the fourth is to develop e-business; the fifth is to further develop the electronics industry; and the sixth is to participate in the international competition and engage in international management.
Aduardo Aninat, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that today’s China needs to join further in economic globalization. China is an important member of the world community and it will further open up its economy. Doing this can help Chinese enterprises increase efficiency and stimulate foreign direct investment.
He said: “One major task for China is to make further preparations. Thus China will be able to meet the challenge of international competition. China’s economy will surely benefit after China joins the WTO. China has already made some preparations and has expanded exports, particularly in the field of new and high technology. Because relevant measures have been implemented, exports of high-tech products will surely increase. Production can be increased by reducing trade barriers. The IMF strongly supports the elimination of trade barriers worldwide and reducing quota limitations. This should be stipulated by relevant international agreements. We believe the IMF will do something in this respect. Although the world economy was in trouble for a time because of the fallout from the Asian financial crisis, the international economic growth will be healthier and more prosperous in the future.”