Emerging Countries, Globalization and Alter- Globalization
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Emerging Countries, Globalization and Alter- Globalization Documents & Analysis JANUARY. 2014 Documents and Analysis Acknowledgements Intercoll wishes to acknowledge the generous support by the Hao Ran Foundation for this publication and this project. Many thanks also to CEDETIM (Paris) and the School of international development and global studies (Ottawa) Intercoll 21ter rue Voltaire, 75011 Paris, France www.intercoll.net 2 INTERCOLL — JANUARY 2014 Table of contents Introduction Pierre Beaudet and Gustave Massiah ................................................................................................4 Globalizations Pierre Beaudet ......................................................................................................................................6 Current Debates about Emerging Countries • China’ Dilemmas Samir Amin ...................................................................................................................................15 • Is China stalling ? Hung-Ho Fung .............................................................................................................................21 • Emerging Southern America. Constraints and Perspectives Pierre Salama .................................................................................................................................25 BRICS and Beyond • The BRICS Summit in Durban Patrick Bond ..................................................................................................................................30 • Future Trajectories for BRICS Achin Vanaik .................................................................................................................................32 • The Global Economic Chessboard and the Role of the BRICS Jayati Gosh ....................................................................................................................................34 Fractures and Alternatives • China’s Rise: Strength and Fragility Sean Ledwith .................................................................................................................................38 • The Virtues of Deglobalization Walden Bello .................................................................................................................................41 • System Change, not Climate Change Nicola Bullard and Tadzio Muller .............................................................................................43 • Challenges for Social Movements Christophe Aguiton & Nicolas Haeringer ..............................................................................47 • Towards an Alter-Globalisation Strategy Gustave Massiah ...........................................................................................................................50 What is Intercoll? ............................................................................................................................53 EMERGING COUNTRIES, GLOBALIZATION AND ALTER-GLOBALIZATION 3 Introduction Pierre Beaudet and Gustave Massiah For social and citizen’s movements acting world-wide cesses which all are sites of intense struggles. (what we define as the alterglobalist movement), the inter- national dimension of the construction of another world Our initiative is key. Around that concept, movements build convergent problematiques, articulating scales of local, national and This is where INTERCOLL wants to concentrate its international spaces throughout distinct temporalities. efforts. Our starting questions are: Rise and fall of the New World Order • From the point of view of social movements engaged in the battle of ideas, what are “emerging countries”? The World Social Forum was born from resistance of How to define them? Do they have common charac- social movements against neoliberal globalization in the teristics? late seventies. It went further through struggles against • What are the contours and fractures of the new geo- hunger, debt and structural adjustment programs and political and geo-economic order? What roles can moreover. It resisted the attempt to build a new “world play new actors and networks such as the BRICS, the (dis)order” around the G7 (later G8) that coalesced Shanghai Security Organization, the G20? around the US-led Empire who thought for a short period • More importantly, what are the places, strategies (after the implosion of the Soviet Union) to “end history” and agendas of social movements in “emerging around liberal “democracy”, “free markets” and outright countries”, particularly Brazil, India and China? (We reconquest. By the 1990s, that neocolonial dream abruptly might extend that to other countries taking into ac- ended. Multitudes took the streets from Chiapas to Seattle count resources and expertise). via Genoa and Johannesburg. The flagships of the new • How do social movements in these countries engage “world order” such as the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, the state and political power? NATO, G8 became hated symbols for masses of wor- • How do they work in international networks, particu- kers, peasants, women, shantytown dwellers, indigenous larly within the World Social Forum? people, migrants and solidarity movements of all sorts. • What global platforms are emerging on social trans- Throughout these intense struggles, old and new social formation, environmental sustainability, human movements created new identities. They refined their rights, debt and trade, social protection? analyses, strategies and modes of operations. They were • What are the demands and lines of confrontation of able to win the “battle of ideas” many times, especially these movements in the context of global processes through the series of crises that started in the 1990s until and policies promoted by the WTO, the IFM, the the 2008 Wall Street crash. They built new paradigms and G8? concepts on sustainable development, taking account the necessity to preserve all life-forms that inhabit our planet, Seminar in Tunis pachamama. Western imperialist hegemony became chal- lenged by movements and their collective intellectuals as With the support of the Hao Ran Foundation, we it was by cultural and educational activists from all over. have convened a seminar in Tunis on the occasion of the World Social Forum (May 2013) several researchers and “Emerging” movements in “emerging” countries activists from China, India, brazil, South Africa, the USA, Senegal, Kenya, France, Tunisia, Morocco, Canada, basi- As the world situation has evolved, many new processes cally to kick-start our research. Several debates took place came about. The relative equilibrium of forces around the on some key issues: G8 elites was shattered. States and nations from the glo- bal south were motivated by their own people to stand up and affirm anti-hegemonic policies. While not neces- sarily challenging capitalism, these “emerging countries” have modified the geopolitics and the geo-economics of our world and opened new spaces for social and citizen’s movements. Confronted with these new realities, move- ments and intellectuals have started to desegregate the conflicting realities of the “emerging countries”. The cur- rent narrative built by elite think-tanks is pressing together very different realities. The emphasis on growth rates and market-shares totally overwhelms the complexity and the conflictuality of social, political and environment pro- 4 INTERCOLL — JANUARY 2014 Some our key findings were the following: that are close to or even already fallen into cycles of conflicts including the dislocation of states, massive • Capitalism under its neoliberal mantle has entered famines and violent conflicts, especially in the “arc of a profound crisis engulfing financial and commer- crisis” criss-crossing Asia and Africa. cial flows and governance systems. “Reforms” put • This attempt to repaint neoliberalism is confronted forward by the different dominant forces can only also to organized resistance by popular movements aggravate the assault on peoples’ lives and deteriorate across the globe. Powerful movements, in G7 and further the natural environment, despite talks (with G20 countries as well as in many other regions are no actions) about “greening” capitalism. blocking the « reforms » through popular insurrec- • It is undoubtedly a “crisis of crises” comparable (wit- tions and mass mobilizations of an unprecedented hout being identical) to the prolonged crisis of the scale. 1920-30s. Ruling classes all over the world are des- • Additionally, many popular movements are creating tabilized, divided and uncertain, while pursuing the new “tools” and emancipatory projects. A new gene- “reform” agenda by more repression, militarization ration of “popular intellectuals” in the tradition of and various “disciplinary” programs targeting wor- Gramsci, CLR James and Bourdieu is exploring new kers, farmers, unemployed, migrants, indigenous, etc. paths via new alliances, networks and organization • The select club of the G7 is however worried for and communicational forms. obvious reasons. One of the path presently explored • In the so-called “emerging” countries, this takes many is about enlarging the responsibility of managing the shapes. In Brazil and in South America, peasants and corrupted system to other “emerging” nations, some- indigenous movements are struggling against mega times defined by the media as the BRICS (or the BICS) projects to transform the environment and reinforce and more lately, as the “next eleven”. This discourse the agro-industrial