By Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada, Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC).
Abstract This paper analyzes the impact of Globalization as in the main reason of the fast spread of Wuhan-COVID-2019 worldwide. We divided into three large pillars how Globalization works worldwide followed by: (a.) the institutional, legal, and political approach of Globalization; (b.) the massive transportations systems and the development of information communication technologies (ICT’s); (c.) the free trade liberalization and labor mobility. Hence, the main objective of this research is to show that Globalization is the major responsible of the fast and unstoppable spread of Wuhan-COVID-2019 globally. Finally, the same research suggests a deep reform of Globalization to avoid again any massive contagious epidemic diseases to reduce its impact economically and socially.
Keywords: Globalization, Contagious Diseases, China, 2019-nCopV, Policy Modeling.
1. Introduction
In the past two months’ we experience some of the worse worldwide massive contagious epidemic diseases such as the Wuhan-COVID-19. The Wuhan-COVID-19 is spreading unstoppable globally (WHO, 2020). According to different academics from different fields of research (medical, pharmaceutical, economic, political and social view points) have explained the evolution and negative effects of the Wuhan-COVID-19 on the world economy. Different types of research have been developed and applied to understand and evaluate the Wuhan-COVID-19. All these studies permit to have a better understanding of Wuhan-COVID-19 from a multi-disciplinary perspective (economic, political, medical, biological, sciences, social, and technological). In our research, the single disciplinary analysis is not enough to explain this massive contagious of WuhanCOVID-19 worlwide. For this reason, this research suggests the study of WuhanCOVID-19 requests a multi-disciplinary analysis to understand much better the trend and multiple negative effects on different societies and regions around the world. Hence, this research proposes that the Wuhan-COVID-19 crisis is part of the darkness side of the Globalization. Therefore, the next section of this paper is interested to give us a general overview of Globalization respectively.
2. An Overview of the Globalization Pillars
In the past thirty five years, the whole world has been experiencing dramatic changes in different areas such as economic, technological, political and social changes. Many intellectuals in different research fields in economics, sciences, politics, technology, and sociology refer to these fast changes as “Globalization”. Globalization started as a common word among certain high specialized intellectual groups in the 1990’s, with reference to the dynamic integration and the fast development of new soft technologies (knowledge and software) and hard technologies (machines and tools or hardware). Together with the development of massive and accessible prices transportation systems, mobile telecommunications, and high speed internet.
Subsequently, the uses of the word “Globalization” started to expand worldwide, until it became used into our common vocabulary. It is no longer a special vocabulaty used by historians, economists, political scientists, technological scientists, and sociologists. It is regarded to as the most relevant socio-political-economic-technological revolution until our days. Probably, there is no other word that can better define the fundamental challenges in the post-world modern socio-economic-political-technological in the end of XX and the beginning of XXI century than “Globalization”. But it was not until the 1990’s that globalization made its formal consolidation worldwide. Furthermore, Globalization is a dynamic, complex, and multidimensional phenomenon taking place simultaneously in different levels and transforming the way to see and analyze political, social, economic and technological events in different parts of the world. However, Globalization embodies particular pillars to support its ideological, economic, social, political framework which are as follows:
a. First Pillar of Globalization: The Institutional, Legal, and Political Reforms The first pillar of Globalization is the institutional, legal, and political reforms based on less public sector participation into the market. The institutional focus is supported by the idea to reduce the government participation into the market under the argument of unnecessary bureaucracy barriers. The elimination of unnecessary bureaucracy barriers uses the mechanism of privatization (free market) based on the sale of assets from the government (production plants and public services) to the private sector. The sale of government assets to the private sector assumes a better performance of public goods and services under the statement of high productivity and better public services and products. The mission of privatization is to look for an efficient allocation of resources into the market of any country under the private sector full control.
The new institutional approach and deep legal framework and political reforms that constitute the first pillar of Globalization is based on less government participation in the market. The idea behind the reduced the government size is that exists an unnecessary bureaucracy can create the non-efficient allocation of the production factors. The elimination of the unnecessary bureaucracy is implemented through the mechanism of privatization, where public goods and services are sold to the private sector. The sale of government assets to the private sector is assumed to give rise to higher productivity and better products to the consumers. This is in line with the mission of privatization, that is, to achieve efficient allocation of resources in any economy. However, this new political and institutional framework is supported by the strong promotion of democracy (more participation of the civil society to selects its leaders and authorities in a fixed period of time) and human rights respectively.
In counterpart, we can see that the intervention of government plays a crucial role in any massive contagious epidemic diseases crisis such as Wuhan-COVID-19. The private sector cannot handle so heavy social resposability and allocation of human and material resources to implement a large quarantine under strong sanitary measures, public hospitals, medical and nursing staff, medical equipment, rescue groups, and security in case of a massive contagious epidemic diseases such as Wuhan-COVID-19 according to recently events. In fact, Globalization needs to integrate a new politica, legal, and institutional framework reform that can help to find new mechanisms and schemes in integrating the public sector and private sector together in cases of any massive contagious epidemic diseases. This new scheme can be called “Post-IntegralGlobalization”. This new scheme permit the fast implementation of mechanism and policies (Ruiz Estrada, 2011 and Ruiz Estrada & Park, 2018) to prevent and control possible eventual massive contagious epidemic diseases anywhere and anytime. The Post-Integral-Globalization includes the possible joint of research and development for medications and medical treatments, controls and monitoring systems of epidemics, private-public parthnerships scheme, and different mechanisms of cooperation domestically and institutionally.
b. Second Pillar of Globalization: The Massive Transportation Systems and the Development of Information Communication Technologies (ICT’s)
The second pillar of Globalization is the development of massive transportation systems and the development of information communication technologies (ICT’s) mechanisms resulting in the use of advanced hard technologies (hardware) and soft technologies (software). The massive transportation systems and ICT’s sector uses technological innovative tools such as large massive, heavy, and powerful transportation systems (large airplanes, fast trains, heavy ships, and long highways), Internet services (Web), sophisticated software and hardware systems, satellite T.V., GPS, and satellite mobile phone systems. These tansportion abd ICT’s enable quick accessibility to people mobility and information exchange and hence, easier people and business interconnectivity. The present advances in the massive transportation systems and technologies have come a long way since the third industrial revolution (internet, energy, and new financial systems). With advanced massive transportation systems and technologies, new Research & Development (R&D) systems, methods, models, and tools emerged, which in turns led to expansion in the centralization of world production (the largest manufacturing center of the world as China) and business (free trade promoted by U.S.) However, the above benefits of massive transportation systems and ICT’s revolution are mainly enjoyed by developed countries and less proportion for developing countries. This observations are based on the high concentration of production, massive manufacturing, better income distribution, large infrastructure projects, sufisticated technologies, opportunity of low and high qualified jobs, amongst developed countries. Therefore, developing and least developed countries continue to be highly dependent on developed countries under the scheme of high dependency on the high raw materials demand and cheap labor for their manufacturing and consumption goods needs.
Suggested Citation:
Ruiz Estrada, Mario Arturo, Is Globalization Responsible of the Wuhan-COVID-19 Worldwide Crisis? (March 10, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3551944 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3551944