Raja Muhammad Zafar-ul-Haq, Secretary General, World Muslim Congress represented the organization at the 61st Session of the UNESCAP in Bangkok and presented a paper on "Managing Globalization - The Asian context" on the 13th of May 2005. Text:

Globalization is a powerful and irreversible phenomena which is offering new opportunities to countries at the upper end of the competitive ladder but is also creating insurmountable difficulties for many low income countries because they are unable to face competition in an unequal world.

The basic concepts that propel globalization are sound but like all good ideas, they have their limitations and pitfalls. The pre-conditions under which these concepts can be practiced and implemented are also not readily forthcoming in all developing countries. Globalization has indeed helped millions of people to improve their living standards particularly in high and middle income countries by liberalizing the economy to allow freer movement of capital and technology. The unprecedented communication revolution and the spread of information technology has not only facilitated greater integration of the world economy but also promoted the spread of democracy and vibrant civil society.

But globalization has not worked for half the world population or 3 billion people living on less than $ 2 a day. At least 1.2 billion of these or one-fourth of mankind are chronically poor and barely survive on less than $ 1 a day. The poverty situation in the 48 least developed countries is much worse than that in the rest of the developing world, where 240 million people or 40 percent of their total population is seriously under-nourished. This number was half or 120 million 10 years ago.

The past five years have witnessed an unprecedented public uproar about the impact of globalization on the poor. The media has been showing thousands of young people, mostly from western countries, protesting at all major international meetings. But, apart from limited progress on the debt issue, there are as yet no signs that major changes that are needed in global governance, in the policies of international economic institutions and in the theology of the free market, are being seriously considered.

Unless these drastic changes are made fairly quickly and decisively, the present global system will further impoverish the already poor, pushing them to desperation and violence. The millennium summit goal of halving poverty by 2015, adopted by heads of state and government in September 2000, is not just a pious wish but a critical threshold which the rich members of the global community must cross if they want to see a more stable and orderly world in the future.

The Challenge for Asia
Despite these difficulties, Asia is in a very strong position to meet the challenge of globalization in the 21st Century for several reasons.
First of all, Asia has been the cradle for many old civilizations, starting with the Mesopotamian civilization to various Chinese dynasties and the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. Despite the prolonged exploitation by colonial powers between the 16th and 20th century, Asia retains its rich cultural and social heritage, which itself will be a great source of vitality in the future.

Secondly, several Asian countries have made significant economic and technological progress in the past three decades. After the end of the Second World War, when the process of decolonization began, there was only one developed country in Asia namely Japan. But in the 1970's four new Asian Tigers appeared on the scene: Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. In the 1980's, three other countries, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia joined the club of 'Asian Tigers' by achieving rapid growth through industrialization, supported largely by Japanese investment. But the most outstanding addition to these rapidly growing Asian economies in the 1980's was China and more recently India.

Simultaneously, the oil boom that started with the increase in oil prices in the early 1970's has transformed the economies of the Middle Eastern Asian countries. These countries have also attracted migrant workers from many countries and as a result, the flow of remittances have benefited these countries also.

Thirdly, the economic progress of Asia in the past three decades is based on solid foundations of education, science and technology in the countries concerned. This has helped them to upgrade their industrial structures and move into many hi-tech knowledge based sectors like information and communication technologies. This factor will be decisive for Asia's capacity to compete with other countries in the open markets created by the process of globalization.

While in overall terms, many Asian countries are ready to face the challenge of globalization, there are several countries which still encounter enormous difficulties. There is need for more active regional cooperation to overcome some of these difficulties. Asean is so far the most successful example of regional cooperation in Asia. SAARC has also started moving forward, after the recent thaw in relations between India and Pakistan. These efforts can be further strengthened in a broader framework, if some of the lingering political disputes in Asia can be resolved with foresight and wisdom.

The recent Afro Asian Summit held in Jakarta in April to celebrate the golden jubilee of the 1955 Bandung Conference has also reaffirmed that collective development has to come through collective action.

There is also some concern that the unprecedented growth in China's GDP and exports is proving to be less friendly to other developing countries in Asia and some other parts of the world, particularly in items like textiles and consumer durables. The growth in China's textile exports to Europe and USA, after the end of the quota system under WTO from 1 January 2005, for example, has displaced many traditional textile exporters. Similarly the rising demand in China for petroleum products, iron & steel and other raw materials is one of the main causes of the recent rise in petroleum and other prices.

However, recently China's growth is becoming more dependent on domestic demand rather than exports. Since domestic demand is less dependent on imports, there is some slow down in the rate of growth in China's imports. This trend will be welcomed by other countries.

There is a common saying in Asia that globalization seems to be good for business but bad for citizens. This seems to be a true statement at least in terms of the experience in Pakistan. Pakistan has $ 12 billion in foreign exchange reserves and even the GDP growth rate has accelerated to 6-7% in the past two years, but poverty and unemployment have not diminished. Asia with its age old wisdom and ingenuity has to evolve its own model of globalization under which the benefits of progress are more widely distributed and even unskilled poor people can safeguard their minimum basic needs.

The Global Dimension
It is undoubtedly the responsibility of developing countries to develop and implement their own strategies for poverty reduction and for improving the lives of their citizens, but their efforts will succeed only if there is a conducive global environment and a level playing field, particularly for trade and investment. Today the average tariffs by OECD countries on manufactured imports from developing countries are on the average three to four times higher than those from other OECD countries and agricultural subsidies of $ 300 billion a year encourage farmers in developed countries to grow surplus commodities that are dumped on the international markets, pushing commodity prices to the levels that, in real terms, are the lowest in decades. A fair globalization that creates equal opportunities for all and does not discriminate against the weakest and the poorest members of the international community has become the most important moral imperative of our time.