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Singapore, Malaysia high on 'globalization' scale
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Two
Southeast Asian nations - Singapore and Malaysia -
ranked highest among developing countries on a list of
the world's most "globalized" states, while Iran was at
the bottom.
The third annual edition of Foreign Policy magazine's
Globalization Index was released on Tuesday. The index
measures the degree to which 62 countries, representing
some 85 percent of the world's population and more than
95 percent of its economic output, were integrated into
global trade, finance, politics, and technology at the
beginning of 2002.
Besides Europe and North
America, the most integrated region was East Asia, led
by Singapore (No 4 on the list) and Malaysia (18),
followed by South Korea (28), Taiwan (34), Japan (35),
Thailand (47) China (51), the Philippines (52), and
Indonesia (58).
The seven least globalized
countries of the 62 surveyed were Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Venezuela, Peru, Indonesia, Brazil, and India. Led by
Ireland, Switzerland, and Sweden, the countries of
northern and Western Europe are once again the world's
most "globalized" nations.
The survey found the
greatest changes during 2001 in: Morocco, which advanced
from 46 in 2000 to 29 in 2001, largely due to a sharp
increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) and worker
remittances; South Africa, which jumped from 54 to 38,
also due to increased FDI; and Russia, which fell from
39 to 45.
The report, which is based on data
compiled for 2001 - the year for which the latest
relevant statistics were available - found that global
economic integration actually declined during the year
due to the sharp slowdown in the world economy, which
was worsened by the impact of the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks on the United States.
Trade
levels declined by 1.5 percent during the year, while
global FDI dropped by more than 50 percent, from US$1.5
trillion in 2000 to $735 billion in 2001.
But
political, social and technological connections among
nations continued to grow at a rate that offset the fall
in economic integration. Indicators of personal
connections across borders, such as international
telephone traffic, saw steady growth during the year,
while political engagement deepened as a result of
factors like the "war on terrorism" and China's
membership in the World Trade Organization, according to
the index.
"Globalization is not only dependent
on the ebbs and flows of business cycles," said Moises
Naim, Foreign Policy's chief editor. "Economics
integration lagged, but political and technological
integration increased."
Rankings on the index,
which is a joint project of Foreign Policy, a
publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace here, and A T Kearney, an international
business-consulting firm, consists of the combined score
of a dozen weighted variables covering economic,
personal, technological, and political categories.
Economic variables include the percentage of
trade as a share of the country's gross domestic product
(GDP), inward and outward FDI, and other portfolio
investment; and international income payments and
receipts as shares of GDP.
Personal variables
cover the number of minutes of international phone
calls, the number of travelers per capita, and
remittances from expatriate workers as a share of GDP,
while technological variables include the percentage of
the population with Internet access and the number of
Internet hosts and secure servers in the country.
Political variables include the country's
memberships in international organizations, its
participation in multilateral peacekeeping missions, and
the number of countries where it has embassies.
As in the previous two surveys, smaller northern
and Western European states outperformed the field,
accounting for 11 of the first 15 rankings. Aside from
Singapore, Canada (7), the United States (11), and the
Czech Republic (15) were the three exceptions.
The Czech Republic was rated ninth in the
combined economic variables, the first time a country
from Central Europe had broken into the top 10 most
globally integrated economies, ahead of Britain, France,
and Germany, among other Western European economies. The
United States, by contrast, ranked 50 in overall
economic integration, underlining its relative economic
independence from the global system.
Among the
six Latin American countries covered in the survey,
Panama, like Singapore a small center for international
trade and finance, ranked 30, followed by Chile (31),
Argentina (48), Mexico (49), Colombia (55), Brazil (57),
Peru (59), and Venezuela (60).
"Latin America is
more integrated into the rest of the world than it was
10 years ago," Naim said. "But it hasn't integrated fast
enough to catch up with others, particularly in
Southeast Asia."
Only six African countries were
covered in the survey, primarily due to the lack of
statistics. Of those, Botswana ranked 33, followed by
Uganda (36), Nigeria (37) South Africa (38), Senegal
(41), and Kenya (43). Most scored highest on one or more
political variables.
The least integrated
regions featured in the survey were South Asia and the
Middle East and North Africa. While Israel ranked 19 and
Morocco 29, the next rankings were Tunisia (39) Sri
Lanka (44), Egypt (46), Pakistan (50), Turkey (53),
Bangladesh (54), India (56), Saudi Arabia (60) and Iran
(61). The Middle East, according to Paul Laudicina, vice
president of A T Kearney, "is moving in the opposite
direction from the rest of the world".
As in
previous years, the new index was accompanied by a
report that debunked common perceptions about the
negative impacts of globalization on economies. Last
year, the globalization index was compared with other
indices on political freedoms, corruption, and income
inequality. Researchers found that the more globalized
countries tended to enjoy more freedom, less corruption
and greater income equality.
In the latest
survey they compared their globalization rankings with a
recent index of 23 countries compiled by the Yale Center
for Environmental Law and Policy and found that greater
globalization correlates positively with more
environmental protection.
In yet another survey
using World Bank data, researchers found that more
globalized countries tend to pay more to workers in
their manufacturing sector.
"The data simply
[do] not support the notion that globalization begets a
'race to the bottom'," said Laudicina.
(Inter
Press Service)
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