Chapter 71 Chapter 12 The Third World 5

5 However, just as the Third World and the various ideologies based on it are in full swing, the concept of the Third World itself begins to crumble.The gap between countries is huge, and it became more obvious in the 1970s.Up to now, it is no longer covered by one word.Although the name of the third world is still quite useful, it is enough to distinguish many poor and rich countries in the world.The gap between the rich and the poor, known as "South" and "North" at that time, is obviously still widening day by day, and differences and differences are inevitable. The gap between the average GNP of the "developed" world (that is, the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and that of the lagging countries ("low" and "moderate" economic development regions) is also gradually widening: in 1970, the former It was 14.5 times of the latter; by 1990, it had expanded to more than 24 times (World Tables, 1991, Table 1).But despite this, members of the third world clearly no longer have a single homogeneous attribute.

The biggest reason why this "one size" no longer fits each family's stature comes from different economic development conditions.The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries won the price war in 1973, and for the first time in the world, a group of poor and backward third-world countries emerged in the world, but now they have transformed into global superpowers. Millionaire countries; among them, those sparsely populated desert or jungle small countries ruled by chieftains (mostly Islamic).Take the 500,000 citizens of the United Arab Emirates (1975), who theoretically each have a GNP of more than $13,000—nearly double that of the United States during the same period (World Tables, 1991, pp. 595, 604).How can a country like this continue to be compared to - say - Pakistan - a country that is pigeonholed?In impoverished Pakistan, the gross national product per capita is only a pitiful $130.As for other oil-producing countries with large populations, they naturally cannot achieve such a sudden wealth.But getting rich from oil proves a new phenomenon: these countries that only rely on a single export can become extremely rich even if they are lagging behind in other aspects.Even if these easy-earned gains are squandered in the same way, it will not change this fact (easy come and go quickly, and by the early 1990s, Saudi Arabia had already turned itself into a debtor country).

Second, it is common knowledge that some countries in the Third World have rapidly transformed into industrial countries, joining the camp of the First World - although their financial resources are still much weaker by comparison.Take South Korea as an example. Although the achievements of the country's industrial construction are astonishing, its per capita gross national product (1989) is only slightly higher than that of Portugal, the poorest member of the European Community (World Bank Atlas, 1990, p. 7).But South Korea is no longer comparable to Papua New Guinea, even without qualitative differences.The average gross national product of the two countries was exactly the same in 1969, and by the mid-1970s, they were still close to each other and belonged to the same level; but now the gap between the two countries is five times (World Tables, pp. 352, 456).We have already introduced it before, so a category, the title of the so-called "emerging industrial countries" was born at this time, and entered the roster of international terms.This list does not have a certain version and definition, but the list must include the "Four Asian Tigers" (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea), India, Brazil and Mexico.The industrialization of the Third World has grown by leaps and bounds, so Malaysia, the Philippines, Colombia, Pakistan, Thailand, and some other countries have also been on the list.In fact, this type of rapidly rising industrial power has crossed the boundaries of the three worlds, because strictly speaking, the original "industrialized market economy" countries (that is, capitalist countries) such as Spain and Finland, as well as the former societies of Eastern Europe Communist countries should also be included in the ranks of newly industrialized countries.As for China since the end of the 1970s, it is naturally not a problem.

In fact, in the 1970s, observers began to notice a "new order of international division of labor", that is, industrial production targeting the world market began to move from the first generation of old industrial economic zones that had previously dominated this industry to the world. A large number of other regions have been transferred. The formation of this phenomenon is, on the one hand, due to careful calculation and careful calculation, and the deliberate transfer of its production and supply operations from the old industrial centers to the second and third worlds.As a result of the transfer, eventually even some extremely sophisticated high-level technical operations in high-tech industries, such as research and development work, also flowed out.Revolutionary advances in modern transportation have also contributed to the feasibility and economic benefits of global production operations.In addition, the governments of the third world countries have also worked hard to achieve their own industrialization goals by conquering the export market.Sometimes it is even better to give up the inherent protection of the domestic market.

Anyone who is interested can see the phenomenon of economic globalization as long as they go to any shopping mall in North America and search for the origin of the dazzling array of commodities.This trend has slowly unfolded since the 1960s. After 1973, it began to advance by leaps and bounds during the 20 years when the world economy encountered difficulties.The rapidity of its progress can once again be corroborated by South Korea as an example. At the end of the 1950s, 80% of the country's employed population was still engaged in agriculture, and three-quarters of the country's total income also came from agricultural income (Rado, 1962, pp.740, 742-743). In 1962, South Korea started its first five-year development plan; by the late 1980s, agricultural production accounted for only one-tenth of its gross domestic product.So far, South Korea has become the eighth largest industrial and economic power among non-communist countries.

For other countries, they are at the bottom of the list of international statistics (some even plummeted to this point), and their hopelessness is even the euphemism prevailing in the world, the so-called "development" Words, and it is difficult to dress them up.Because they are not only poor, but also in the process of constantly falling behind.So a group of ultra-low-income developing countries were separated and skillfully grouped together to cover the 3 billion people whose total per capita production was only 330 US dollars in 1989 (just a few, I don’t know if they really I was lucky enough to get it).This new classification is used to distinguish these ultra-poor countries from other countries in the second category that are not so miserable, and from the third category of countries that are more affluent.The former, such as the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Guatemala, have an average GNP three times that of the first level.The latter includes Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico and other countries, and its production figures are 8 times that of the first group.As for the wealthiest group of countries in the world, their 800 million people can theoretically share an average total production of US$18,280 per person.In other words, their income is 55 times that of the bottom three-fifths of the world's population (World Bank Atlas, 1990, p. 10).In fact, as the world economy became more global in nature—particularly after the breakup of the Soviet bloc, the nature of the world economy changed to a more capitalist and corporate orientation—investors and entrepreneurs found themselves For purposes, there are large swaths of the world that are not profitable at all.Unless, perhaps, they can use bribes to lure local politicians and civil servants to waste the public funds that the latter extract from poor people on armaments or unnecessary fame.

A disproportionate number of countries in this category are found in the unfortunate continent of Africa.With the end of the Cold War, foreign economic aid was also cut off.Over the past few decades, these foreign aids, mostly in the form of military aid, have turned some of them—such as Somalia—into military states and permanent battlegrounds. What's more, as the gap between poor countries deepens, the movement of human beings across the surface of the earth, across different regions and countries, also has the most frequent global orgasms.Tourists from rich countries have flooded into the third world with unprecedented crowds.Taking Islamic countries as an example, in the mid-1980s (1985), Malaysia, with a population of 16 million, received 3 million tourists every year; Tunisia, with a population of 7 million, received 2 million; Jordan, with a population of 3 million, received 2 million tourists (Din, 1989, p. 545).Conversely, laborers from poor countries are also continuously moving to rich countries. As long as the host country does not build a dam to stop it, the trickle of water will converge into a vast stream.By 1968, the number of people from the Maghreb region (Tunisia, Morocco, and especially Algeria) accounted for nearly a quarter of the total immigrant population in France (5.5% of the Algerian population emigrated in 1975) ; Among the immigrants entering the United States, one-third came from Latin America—mainly from Central America at that time (Population, 1984, p. 109).Although most of these workers come from the same nearby area, there are also a considerable number from South Asia and even further afield.Unfortunately, in the difficult 1970s and 1980s, frequent natural and man-made disasters, famine, ethnic liquidation, civil war and foreign aggression caused a mass exodus of men, women, children, and children. This wave of refugees began to be confused with labor immigration.The attitudes of the countries of the first world are committed to helping refugees in theory, but in practice they are wholeheartedly focused on preventing the immigration of people from poor countries, thus forming serious political and legal contradictions.So with the exception of the United States, which actually allows or even encourages large numbers of immigrants from the Third World—and Canada and Australia are not satisfactory—the rest of the countries have succumbed to the growing xenophobia of their own citizens and adopted a policy of refusing to accept them behind closed doors.