Chapter 25 Excessive dependence on foreign capital: the more "developed", the more it is invaded

The United States has a saying for prediction, "educational guess", which means an educated guess, not a random guess. In our Chinese popular saying, it is scientific prediction.The analytical theory of globalization is the basis for Fang Ning's frequent speeches to the international community in recent years.When it comes to Fang Ning, people will think of his two famous sayings: "capital flows all over the world, profits flow to the West" and "development trap". These two classic Fang's quotations have been handed down from the 1990s to the present, and have been enduring for a long time, and have become a ideological label of Fang Ning.

Fang Ning was the first Chinese scholar to warn against globalization and put forward the "trap of development".And this concept intends to reveal the objective law of the globalization movement dominated by Western capital, and reveal the result of global division that is not conducive to the third world.Fang Ning believes that the "peripheral" countries and the third world countries will definitely be rejected by globalization, and then there will be a clash of civilizations between the West and the non-West, between the "center" and the "periphery".This is the basic basis for his "educational guesses".

When the tide of globalization was raging in the 1990s, Fang Ning asserted that globalization could not lead to the reduction of human differences, nor could it bring about world unity.Globalization will inevitably lead to fragmentation.Later, he analyzed the global division caused by globalization in more detail in "China's Road Under the Shadow of Globalization". Globalization has indeed inspired many aspirations for the future, with Marshall McLuhan calling the world a "global village" and Buckminster Fowler describing our planet as a "spaceship Earth".People originally thought that the international circulation of capital and the increasing economic and trade connections could eliminate the differences and differences between human beings, and that globalization would bring all human beings into the global village to live in harmony.

However, the reality is far from the wish.Fang Ning said that from the history so far, we can see that economic globalization is only the globalization of capital movement, not the globalization of economic gospel.In the process of globalization, the West is the biggest winner of economic globalization, but the third world is sadly playing the role of loser.In the process of international circulation of capital, the developing countries as the "periphery" become the objects of capital accumulation of the developed countries in the "center". The developed countries rely on their monopoly advantages in capital, technology, information, etc. The unequal exchange of funds, labor, and interest to obtain huge profits, the consequence is that "capital flows all over the world, and profits flow to the West."

"Capital flows all over the world, profits flow to the West" is Fang Ning's profound revelation of the economic mechanism of globalization. Fang Ning was a guest on Phoenix Satellite TV's "Current Affairs Lecture" and gave a lecture on "Reflection on Globalization".He actually took a "Barbie doll" to the scene as a prop, and talked about the unequal exchange in international trade in the era of globalization.He said that this American-invented doll—Barbie doll is a toy that many female students present like, and American girls have an average of 10 Barbie dolls.In the United States, a Barbie doll sells for $10, and most are made in China.The CIF price of Barbie dolls made in China to the United States is two dollars, one of which is shipping and management fees.In the end, there was only one dollar left, and the processors in China still couldn't get it.Because there is another condition for this item to be sold to the United States, that is, the item must be processed with supplied materials.The material cost of the Barbie doll was 65 cents, but the final processor only got 35 cents, equivalent to 3 yuan.A producer is only paid 3 yuan, but the product can be sold in the United States at a price equivalent to 80 or 90 yuan.

Fang Ning pointed out that in the case of the same organic composition of capital, the price of labor force is different, that is, the wage level is different, which means that there is a large transfer of surplus value.Through the process of globalization, as in the case of Barbie dolls, countless profits, countless economic surpluses have been transferred to developed countries.It can be seen that in the process of economic globalization, the industrial structure of the third world countries has not been optimized, nor are they the real beneficiaries. Due to the extensive and profound unequal exchange and profit transfer within economic globalization, the world is increasingly divided into two opposing economies, with the "center" accumulating the "periphery". The industrialization path of the "periphery" is essentially different from that of the "centre". The two processes are completely different in nature, function, and direction, and they are an "isomer".The result will inevitably be the accumulation of contradictions and poverty in the "periphery", which will eventually lead to the reversal of industrialization in the "periphery", that is, the deterioration of the industrial structure, the decline of agriculture and rural areas, the differentiation of society and the terms of trade in economic exchanges with Western countries. Decline.Fang Ning refers to these phenomena that have occurred or will occur in the “peripheral” areas due to globalization as “development traps” in globalization.

In Fang Ning's works, there are many discussions and demonstrations on the "trap of development".He pointed out that in the era of globalization, the "three rural issues" are a global phenomenon.Because the essence of globalization is the globalization of capital movement.Capital will always flow to places where labor prices are low and profit rates are high.A little surplus capital in the countryside tends to be concentrated in the cities.Therefore, in the whole world, with economic globalization, agriculture in developing countries is shrinking continuously.In the 1950s, almost all developing countries were self-sufficient in food except for some dry areas in the Middle East.According to statistics in the 1990s, 60% to 70% of the developing countries were not self-sufficient in food.

Globalization also divides society, because after all, there is a "Matthew effect" in the process of economic globalization.In this process, the production of high value-added products is the high end of the entire economic activity.The material basis of economic globalization is the global division of labor system, which is a vertical division of labor system.In the vertical division of labor system, developing countries are at the low end, producing low-tech, low value-added products; developed countries are at the high end, producing high-tech, high value-added products.