Over the past year or so, we have seen more political and social strife than during any election campaign. While policy debates have been reduced to empty sloganeering, the emotional level in politics is escalating. This is especially true in the debate on globalization and localization.
Some equate localization with ethnic grudges, while others believe that Taiwan should embrace globalization and bring its localization work to a close.
Taiwan has long been globalized at both political and economic levels. It is a major exporter of capital, ranking 16th in the world in terms of the value of direct overseas investments. Import and export trade take up a stable 40 percent or more of GDP.
To maintain its competitiveness, Taiwan should continue with the process of globalization, but globalization does not mean sinicization or embracing China on every front.
Those calling for the downplaying of Taiwan's sovereignty -- or even for the acceptance of "one country, two systems" -- are turning a blind eye to Taiwan's relations with other economies, as well as its strategic industrial position. In fact, the extensive sinicization of Taiwan's economy is downright alarming. Taiwan's investments in China are equivalent to 2.4 percent of its annual GDP. In comparison, Japan has invested only 0.04 percent of its GDP in China and the US 0.03 percent.
Taiwan's economic growth is rooted in its near-peripheral niche of efficient manufacturing and utilization of technologies and capabilities from abroad.
In the process of globalization, therefore, Taiwan should not blindly move closer to the fringes, or worse, take the fringes as its center. Instead, it should utilize its current strategic position and capabilities, maintain its relationships with the (world's business) centers and improve its R&D capabilities and its capacity for innovation, to achieve genuine globalization.
Localization is not an obstacle to globalization, nor is globalization bringing the localization work or even nationhood to an end. Globalization brings an equal number of negative and positive results. When multinationals are able to freely select and reshuffle the elements of the manufacturing process, they give rise to a migrant, exploitative economic model.
Multinationals rely on political and economic order, which is maintained by sovereign states. They also single-mindedly de-mand as corporate "indivi-duals," that states provide them with better public assets, such as infrastructure, human resources and so on. However, they also try to exclude themselves from the responsibilities of citizens of a sovereign state. Through various tax incentives, they enjoy the lowest tax burdens. The result is a draining of national tax bases, a widening gap between rich and poor, high unemployment and high GDP growth coupled with falling wage levels.
It is because globalization deprives states of the ability to regulate multinationals that there is an increasing need for states to maintain a fair and equitable distribution of resources in society.
On the cultural level, globalization has a double impact. Monocultural trends have made globalization almost equivalent to Americanization or "McDonaldization," which can kill cultural diversity and creativity.
However, cultural globalization brings about the re-emergence and enrichment of local cultures that have been affected by post-colonial cultural hegemony. Good examples are Japanese singer Namie Amuro, who was born and brought up in Okinawa, and Taiwanese pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), who hails from an Aboriginal village in Taitung. Their cultural backgrounds have infused new, creative possibilities into increasingly monocultural mainstream pop music.
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