Oleh/By : DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : MERDEKA HALL, PWTC, KUALA LUMPUR
Tarikh/Date : 27-06-2001
Tajuk/Title : THE 10TH WORLD ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT CONGRESS
Versi : ENGLISH
Penyampai : PM
"GLOBALISATION AND ITS IMPACT ON DEVELOPING ECONOMIES:
THE CHALLENGE, THE RESPONSE"
I have been asked to speak on globalisation and
its impact on the developing economies, focussing
specifically on the key challenges that face the
developing world and the key responses that must be
made.
2. Please let me apologise for not being hypocritical
and for not saying some of the things that some may
wish me to say. I am tempted to try but as a medical
doctor I am a little worried about the effects of a
physiological process called "choking". I am sure you
would not want me to choke on my words and to collapse
right before your very eyes.
3. Please let me also apologise for saying some
politically incorrect things. We so obviously live in a
world where some things are politically correct and
where some things are politically incorrect. The
sacred truths of the new economic religion called
"globalisation" or the "the market system" or "neo-
liberalism" are very simple and completely clear. The
penalty for any developing-country leader who does not
get up every morning to declaim these sacred truths,
and the punishment for any developing-country leader
who does not go to bed each night without declaiming
these sacred truths, are altogether well known. I will
not tell you the intimate details of what I do when I
get up in the morning and what I do before retiring at
night. But I must apologise to those who are offended
by the fact that I am not a wide-eyed believer in this
new religion - a religion which so insistently demands
complete, unquestioning belief and complete,
unquestioning obedience -- especially from the poor and
the weak, especially when they are in great and urgent
need of money.
4. Having, hopefully, apologised enough, let me state
my belief that for the developing world, with regard to
"globalisation", there are at least five central
challenges.
5. The first is the most basic. It is the simple
challenge of independent thought, of thinking for
ourselves. This is not very easy, especially since
there are so many kind people who are very happy to do
the thinking for us, and who get so upset when lesser
beings like us try to do our own thinking.
6. The second challenge is the challenge of truth.
This is also not so simple because we live in a world
in which there are not so many facts on globalisation
and where there is so much globalisation nonsense. It
is not so easy to think straight when there are so many
corporate giants showing their teeth and so
convincingly hiding their ambition at gobbling us all
up.
7. The third challenge that confronts the developing
world is the challenge of fairness and justice. How
can we ensure a new world order that is not only new
but also much fairer and much more just?
8. Why is it that everywhere, there is pressure to
ensure "one man, one vote"? Except in the IMF and the
World Bank. In these important organisations, what has
to be sacred is "one dollar, one vote"?
9. Why is it that so much of the developed world,
despite all their globalisation and liberalisation
rhetoric, will not open their agriculture market? Why
do they subsidise their farmers handsomely when they
declare the subsidies distort the market and the
economy and all food and fuel subsidies in poor
countries must be stopped or no promised loans will be
disbursed.
10. Why is it that so many of the rich countries,
despite all their globalisation and liberalisation
rhetoric, will not remove the barriers on those
products - textiles, clothing and footwear - in which
the poor countries are world beaters? Why instead is
there tariff escalation on all those important products
where the developing world is able to develop awesome
global competitiveness?
11. I believe that the fourth central challenge that
faces the developing countries is the challenge of
mutual benefit. How do we maximise the number of
winners in the process of globalisation and minimise
the number of losers? How do we ensure that we have a
win-win game? How do we ensure that the results and
the pattern of winners and losers is not so
indefensibly skewed?
12. In 1960, the total income of the wealthiest 20
percent of humanity was 30 times greater than the total
income of the poorest 20 percent. Today, after all the
wonderful globalisation, it is more than 85 times
greater. This figure in fact grossly understates the
concentration of wealth amongst the wealthiest. The UN
estimates that "the assets of the 200 richest people
are more than the combined income of 41 percent of the
world's people." Just imagine, 200 people owning
assets equal to the total wealth of 2.5 billion of
their fellow creatures. How many meals a day, how many
wardrobes of clothing, how many pairs of shoes, how
many houses do these 200 men need in order to survive.
And yet they want more and the world must accommodate
them.
13. The globalisation theologians tell us all about
"the gains from trade". Why do they not also tell us
of "the pains of trade"? Why don't they tell about the
trading by a few currency traders which earn them
billions at the expense of millions losing their jobs,
their subsidised rice and fuel, and at times their
lives. How do these many gain from trade.
14. It is blatantly clear that if globalisation is to
proceed apace - without a war in the streets - we need
a new globalisation that works less diligently in the
service of the very wealthy and much harder in the
service of the very poor - between nations and within
nations.
15. I believe that the fifth central challenge is the
challenge of creating a more compassionate and caring
world, a world where the winner does not take all and
the loser does not lose all, where much success must go
to the strong and the competitive, without the weak and
the uncompetitive having to descend to the depths of
hell.
16. One of the central operating principles of
globalisation is economic efficiency. The other is
economic competitiveness.
17. In a more caring and compassionate world, all
would bow to the fact that economic efficiency cannot
be the be-all and the end-all of every public policy.
Economic efficiency, per se, cannot be the highest
priority in all societies, at all times, under all
circumstances. The idea is preposterous. If you have
millions of workers jobless in a poor country, can they
accept the products of the workerless automated plants
in the rich countries in the interest of efficiency?
Should millions starve and die in the interest of
efficiency?
18. In a more caring and compassionate world, decent
and civilised men and women must surely want to see
some efficiency sacrificed in the interest of millions
of poor people. The weak, the backward, the
handicapped and the uncompetitive must surely also have
the right to exist, to have a place in the world and to
be given a helping hand. We cannot just eliminate them
as Hitler tried to do with the handicapped and the
mentally retarded.
19. Each of the five challenges I have mentioned
constitutes an awesome challenge for the developing
countries, which are poor, weak and un-empowered. Let
me concentrate on the first two.
20. Let me try to stress the importance of independent
thought by pointing out the danger of taking our ideas
and our beliefs off the shelf. The reason is that we
have so often been sold the most shoddy of products.
21. I cannot think of a profession more prone to being
wrong than the profession of economists . except, of
course, for the profession of politicians. This, I
suspect, is why they try so hard to make economics
appear so complicated and mysterious, an inner sanctum
to which ordinary humans (certainly people like me who
have to run countries) must not go. In reality, when
you take all the concocted mysteries out of it, it is
clear that the economists have been hawking the most
rudimentary ideas ever since our dear friend, Adam
Smith, started the whole economics business in 1776.
22. If, fifty years ago, someone somewhere were to
stand up to argue that "the market" should make the
major economic and social decisions for society, that
the market should discipline Governments, or that the
State should reduce its say in the nation, he or she
would have been regarded as intellectually deficient or
patently uncivilised - or both. Even the much narrower
assertion that "the market" should be in charge of
dictating economic policy would have been laughed out
of court.
23. The new economic religion of our time sincerely
believes that it is only right and proper, indeed it is
a religious duty to believe, that the market mechanism
should be allowed, in the words of an observer, to "be
the sole director of the fate of human beings." It is
only right and proper that "the economy" should lay
down the law to society.
24. It is only right and proper that hedge funds and
currency speculators and quick turnaround equity
traders, with trillions of dollars in the bank and able
to borrow many trillions more, "discipline" Governments
and determine the future of hundreds of millions of
men, women and children whose faces they will never
see, whose names they will never know. Should these
young men and women come and see the mountains of
humanity they throw on the rubbish heap of history as a
result of their quick grab for profit and their modest
quick kill? Not on your life! All they see are the
figures on their computer screens moving as they
depress the buttons.
25. How did the "lunatic fringe" move to centre stage?
How did "neo-liberalism" make the transition from the
intellectual ghetto to become the dominant doctrine of
our time? The process by which the old economic
religion has so completely given way to the new
economic religion is, like the theology, the stuff of
fairy tales.
26. The economic historians trace it to the tiny
religious cell around Friedrich von Hayek and his
student disciples at the University of Chicago, student
disciples like Milton Friedman. From this small
nucleus has sprung a huge global network of
foundations, institutes, research centres, scholars,
writers and public relations hacks.
27. As you all know, the neo-liberal religion has many
prominent temples. The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO,
the most powerful among them, work closely with those
who walk the corridors of power in the great capitals,
and who have such spectacular views from the
skyscrapers of money on Wall Street. This once lunatic
fringe who now inhabit the citadels of wealth, power
and orthodoxy has huge sums of money and vast
reservoirs of intellectual resources. And each year,
tens of thousands more from around the world - the best
and the brightest from the developing as well as the
developed world -- graduate from the groves of academe
where the sacred truths are meticulously and lovingly
taught, to swell the ranks of the priesthood.
28. As you know, this new economic religion has an
impressive list of cardinals, the custodians of the
holy writ, who develop, preserve, refine and interpret
the theology. And it has developed a vast army of
missionaries.
29. Think of any publication or media organisation
that we refer to as "the world media", which is
supposed to ensure the world a great diversity of
views, opinions and perspectives. ABC, Bloomberg, CBS,
NBC, CNBC, CNN, BBC. Think of the magazines: Time,
Newsweek, Fortune, Economist, Far Eastern Economic
Review, Asiaweek. Think of the newspapers: Asian Wall
Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times,
International Herald Tribune, New York Times,
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times. I challenge you to
find the world newspapers, magazines and TV networks
that are opposed to globalisation, that do not have an
ideological commitment to globalisation, that do not
daily spew and propagate, directly and indirectly,
explicitly and implicitly, the sacred mantras of
globalisation. I am sure there must be some. But one
would have to be extremely diligent to find one or two
or three or four in the entire world.
30. I am sorry to belabour this point. As you will
discover in the second half of my remarks, I am not
opposed to globalisation. I believe it has tremendous
potentials. I know that in the case of my country,
several aspects of globalisation have been heaven sent.
But it is important for all of us - not only for the
humanity of the developing world but also the humanity
of the developed world - to come to their own
independent judgements about the dozens of facets of
this complex, multi-faceted thing we call
"globalisation".
31. Is it not clear enough that globalisation must be
an instrument for humanity's development and not the
other way around? Surely it is not right that humanity
should be the instrument for the glory of
globalisation. Surely globalisation must not be the
God whom we worship. Surely globalisation cannot be
excused from culpability no matter how many bones it
crunches, no matter how much misery it wreaks, no
matter how many financial crises it causes, no matter
how many societies it demolishes. Surely people must
matter, even as profit must be secured.
32. Let me now proceed to the challenge of truth.
33. There are some who wish us to deduce truths from
theology and from the sacred texts - from Adam Smith to
Milton Friedman. In matters economic, I am sorry. I
prefer to deduce truth from facts.
34. Unfortunately, the facts are not that easy to
obtain, even in this mature stage of the Second Great
Age of Globalisation. In part, this is because the
ideology and the theology and all the globalisation
hocus pocus - on both sides of the debate -- has helped
to blind us.
35. In part, it is because we live in a world where we
are up to our necks in global nonsense. It is entirely
possible that 99.99 per cent of the global
manufacturers of the globalisation facts have an axe to
grind, a vested interest to protect, salaries to
increase, a belief system to foster and intolerant Gods
to satisfy. I believe that in recent times, there has
been only one subject which has been propagated with
greater enthusiasm and a greater disregard for the
facts and for that quality which we call "wisdom".
Except only for the ranting and the "dotcons" on the so-
called "dot coms", it might be argued that never before
in the history of human affairs has so much nonsense
and so many lies been told in such a short time as on
globalisation.
36. Even through the fog of the deliberate
manufacturing of truths on both sides of the debate,
however, some things are clear enough. It is simply
not true that in the process of globalisation, all are
winners. There are obviously winners and there are
very obviously, losers.
37. Second, there are winners and losers in the
developing world. And there are winners and losers in
the developed world. It is no accident that 58 percent
of Americans say that they are opposed to
globalisation.
38. Third, because of differing social welfare safety
nets and different levels of poverty and wealth, the
immediate negative consequence of globalisation in the
rich countries for most is the loss of a job. The
immediate negative consequence in the impoverished
countries is the termination of the practice of eating
. at least for a while. I am afraid I see no moral
equivalence between a family that does not eat this
week-end and a family that cannot afford to go to the
movies this week-end.
39. I believe I am on the side of the angels when my
heart goes out more to the losers in poor countries
than to the losers in rich countries. Especially since
there are so many, many more of them in the developing
world than in the developed world. Especially since
the very poor benefit so very little from some aspects
of globalisation and are amongst the first and the most
devastated when things go wrong.
40. Fourth, quite obviously, those with a lot of money
have a wonderful chance of ending up the winners
compared to those in the middle class who have little
to play with, and compared to the poor, who have none.
41. Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young does a
global annual survey of what they call "high net worth
individuals" who have cash, stocks and other liquid
assets worth at least US$1 million.
42. In last year's survey, Merrill Lynch and partner
found that in 1999, there were slightly more than 7
million individuals who had at least US$1 million in
investable liquid assets. In 1999, their total assets
grew by 18 per cent, roughly US$4,000 billion, close to
5 times the total GDP of China with a population of 1.3
billion. In the latest survey published on May 14,
Merrill Lynch and partner found that because of the
fall in stock markets worldwide, the number of people
with more than $1 million in investable liquid assets
rose by only 180,000 in the year 2000. The 7.2 million
"high net worth individuals" of 2000 had a total wealth
of $27 trillion, up 6 per cent on the previous year.
In the year 2000, their wealth rose by a more modest,
almost paltry US$1,500 billion, not much more than 5
times the total GDP of India, population one billion.
43. It obviously does pay to be rich in a borderless
world!
44. I think I have said more than enough on the
challenge side of the equation for developing
countries. Given the stark and cruel realities, how do
we respond?
45. I believe that just as there are at least five
central challenges that confront us, there are at least
five strategic imperatives that must guide us.
- The first is the principle of rationality.
- The second is the principle of readiness.
- The third is the principle of representation.
- The fourth is the principle of
responsibility.
- The fifth is the principle of self
determination.
46. I believe that rationality is essential because we
must be careful not to throw the baby out with the
bathwater. Of the dozens of dimensions of
globalisation, many are indispensable for a modern
economy and a modern society.
47. We must not turn our back on the good of
globalisation, even as we must not embrace, blindly,
the bad. To do so is irrational. And let us all pray
to God Almighty that we all can summon the rationality
and the wisdom to be able to distinguish between the
good and the bad, in a world where everyone, it seems,
is intent on selling us a false bill of goods.
48. Even when certain aspects of globalisation are
productive, the problem of proper sequencing,
preparation and readiness have to be seriously
addressed. No-where has this been better demonstrated
than in the great East Asian crisis of '97 and '98.
Today, this imperative is moving to the centre of
economic orthodoxy. It is being accepted even by the
high priests of neo-liberalism. Most unfortunately,
the neo-liberal missionaries and salesmen who, in the
late Eighties and early Nineties, pressured us all to
liberalise, liberalise, liberalise; forgot, in their
enthusiasm, to add the proviso "when you are ready".
And too many in East Asia and many other emerging
markets were too starry-eyed to think it through for
ourselves.
49. Thirdly, we must ensure democracy in the processes
by which the international rules and laws which are
imposed on the world are discussed and adopted. It is
not defensible for the rich to discuss amongst
themselves in the marbled negotiating rooms in Geneva
and then to present it as a fait accompli to the
developing world. We should make it absolutely clear:
No liberalisation, no globalisation without
representation. The Bostonian might remember throwing
tea into the sea.
50. Fourthly, within our own domestic jurisdictions,
we must demand the highest standards of ethics,
morality and sense of responsibility from the global
and other corporations whose interest we seek and whose
operations we host.
51. I believe that it is critically important for us
to empower ourselves, to think for ourselves, to ensure
that we have the will, the wit and the wherewithal to
decide our own destiny. This is not easy in a world
where the large majority of the countries of the
developing world are already debt enslaved, or under
IMF rule or massive World Bank conditionalities, or are
dependent on foreign aid from the developed countries.
For most of these countries, who can no longer decide
what they can do for their peoples, my warning, my
urgings are much too late. But as history has shown,
the tide can be turned.
52. One of the central truths about our times is that
the second great age of colonialism is already upon us.
This may be fine and dandy for the perpetrators and the
beneficiaries. It is not so fine and dandy for the
victims and the potential victims.
53. For Malaysia, I say that four hundred and fifty
years of colonialism is enough. Malaysia must be free.
We must be free to decide our future for ourselves.
And we must hope that our friends, who respect freedom,
will accord to us what they so naturally demand and
expect for themselves.
Sumber : Pejabat Perdana Menteri
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