Globalaffairs

Issue 3/June -July 2007
By Moisés Bolekia Gallego

Microelectronics, telecommunications and computing (telematics) are especially important in contemporary society. For a large number of governments their development, research and implementation are priority for social and economic development in their countries. China is not an exception and bids for ICT thus increasing international cooperation in this area. However, the present article will focus on advances in ICT cooperation between China and Asia-Pacific countries stressing multilateral agreements among China, Japan and South Korea, and on the other hand China- ASEAN.

ICT: a Key sector for Chinese socio-economic development

January 2007 statistics of the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) estimated a total of 137 million Internet users, around 45 millions hosts and more than 4.1 million domains in China, 43.9% of them are .CN. Furthermore, 256.69 Megabytes of broad band connected with the global net (the USA, Russia, France, the UK, Japan, Singapore, etc.). Regarding mobile phones, according to the China Information Industry in December 2005 China reached 374 millions people subscribed to mobile phones services and expectations for 2009 are 595.46 million. GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) users at the same date were 380 million but due to the increase in third generation services (3G) this number will decrease.

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Issue 3/ June-July 2007
By Aurora M. Alcojor

The 15th of November 2006, the Guinean dictator Teodoro Obiang visited Spain and he was received by the president of the Government, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, with whom he maintained a meeting for almost one hour and a half. During the same visit, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Angel Moratinos, assured that - as it was showed in several journals - the duty of Spain is to help, accompany and boost Equatorial Guinea in its reforms independently of the opinion of certain sectors of the Spanish society. The leader of the Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy also met the dictator and assured that the gestures - of Guinea for the democratic reforms- are in the right direction but they are clearly insufficient. Meanwhile the rest of parliamentary groups were trying to block the reception of the dictator in the Congress and his signature in the book of honour. On the other hand, the dictator committed President Zapatero to releasing all political prisoners but he did not fix a deadline for such target.

Teodoro Obiang has been governing Equatorial Guinea – the only country in Africa where the Spanish is the official language - 27 years since the 3rd of April 1979 leaded a coup against his uncle, the also dictator Francisco Macías Nguema. Since then he has won all elections held in the country with percentages close to 100%, he has eliminated all opposition or has convinced them to go over to his party and he and his family have become wealthy. But this is not enough to condemn his policy and to press for political changes.

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Issue 3/June -July 2007
By I. Mañez

With a total GDP of 13 billion dollars, the US has the largest and most technologically advanced economy in the world. However, the high dependence on fossil fuels from other countries continues to be the Achilles heel in its model for economic development. Americans top the world raking for oil consumption, a fuel which is controlled by foreign producers. The US accounts for 25% of the world’s oil consumption.

On close analysis for the data for importing and exporting crude, the balance tips over. The US contribution to world oil production is just 9%., while its import rate amounts to 60%. In line with this ‘oil addiction’ figures, Soeren Kern, the Senior Analyst to the Elcano Royal Institute on US-Spanish Transatlantic Dialogue, maintains that ‘America’s addiction to foreign oil is costly in other respects, too. For the US economy, each 10 dollar increase in the price of crude triggers a cut in household buying power of around 35 billion dollars which is approximately 0,5%’.

Kern believes that ‘the US has traditionally tried to solve its problem of oil dependence by using it military power to protect its supply routes and by supporting or installing friendly regimes’. Maybe the time has come to drop this policy and look for new sources of energy. In this sense, the experiences of foreign companies in the renewable energy sector, like Iberdrola and Gamesa from Spain, could become a cure for US ‘oil addiction’.

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Issue 3/June-July 2007
By Evgeny Lykov

Russia is a federal state that consists of 49 oblasts (districts), 21 republics, 10 autonomous okrugs (areas), 6 krays (territories), 2 federal cities and 1 autonomous oblast (region). Russian government consists of executive; legislative and judicial branches. The executive branch is comprised of president (head of the state) and cabinet of ministers. Legislative branch includes bicameral Federal Assembly or Federalnoye Sobraniye that consists of the Federation Council or Sovet Federatsii (178 seats; as of July 2000, members appointed by the top executive and legislative officials in each of the 89 federal administrative units - oblasts, krays, republics, autonomous okrugs and oblasts, and the federal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg) and the State Duma or Gosudarstvennaya Duma (450 seats; currently 225 seats elected by proportional representation from party lists winning at least 5% of the vote, and 225 seats from single-member constituencies; members are elected by direct, popular vote). Finally, judicial branch is comprised of Constitutional Court; Supreme Court and Superior Court of Arbitration. Judges for all courts are appointed for life by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the president (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html ).

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Issue 3/June-July 2007
By Mohamed Hassan

In a state established on a founding myth that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord, rather than that they were ethnically cleansed- and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, deception becomes a political way of life. Israel’s Ambassador to Kenya, Mr Emmanuel Seri, demonstrated this in his article on January 12.

A relative calm has followed Israel’s month-long pounding of Lebanon since last year, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south’s returning refugees, and the residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each week.

Many of Israel’s war lies have already been deeply implanted in Western consciousness by the media:

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Issue 3/ June-July 2007
By Eva Díez Ajenjo

Constructivism helps to grasp a deeper understanding of the way that Huntington builds his thesis. Constructivists hold that normative or ideational structures are just as important as material conditions in order to shape the behaviour of social and political actors. Constructivism emphasizes the particularities of culture, identity, and interest and their powerful influence on social and political action. According to Christian Reus-Smit ‘constructivists argue that material resources only acquire meaning for human action through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded’ (Burchill 2001: 217). Moreover, they focus on the importance of normative and ideational structures because these are thought to shape the social identities of political actors. Furthermore, in order to explain interest formation, constructivists focus on the social identities of individuals or states.

In line with constructivist assumptions Mozaffari argues that ‘world order is a human phenomenon. Like other human phenomena, it is a social construction’ (2002: 37). He proposes in order to understand the world order to go beyond its description and to look to some deep structures in what the phenomenon is rooted. ‘The remarking of the world order’ stated by Huntington has its roots in the sharp cultural and religious divisions between civilization thus conflict arise in the fault lines between civilizations. Throughout his thesis he devises a dangerous and insecure world where the underlying assumption is the fear to what is different. This world is reified in the lexicon used such as Islam’s bloody borders, hate, fear, foes, dominance and decline.

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Issue 3/June-July 2007
By Roger Casas

Last April, several Western media covered the inauguration of a gigantic statue located in Xinzheng, Henan province, People´s Republic of China (PRC). The statue represents Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, together with Yandi, the Red Emperor, legendary fathers of the so-called “Chinese civilization”. As media statements have made clear, and apart from its tourism-promotion goals, the sculpture is an example of the increasing importance the Chinese Comunist Party (CCP) grants to nationalism as a means of political legitimation.

The opening of this colossal statue was the highlight of a celebration which is held anually in Xinzheng the third day of the third lunar month, conmemorating the birthday of the Yellow Emperor in this place. Apart from the opening, this year several academic and trade meetings related both to the figure of the Yellow Emperor and to the promotion of tourist industry in the area have been held in Xinzheng. But the Henan celebrations are not the sole devoted to the Yellow Emperor in the PRC. Huangling, a county located in the nearby province of Shaanxi, is seat to the (also gigantic) mausoleum of the Emperor, where every April 5, during Qingming, the Tomb-sweeping festival, when Chinese people pay homage to their ancestors, a big public offering ceremony is held to honour the spirit of Huangdi, officially considered as the common ancestor of the “Chinese nation” –a concept which somehow reflects the contradictions within present-day Chinese nationalism.

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Issue 3/June-July 2007
By Soraya Carvajal B.

Democrats condition the approval of the treaty in the USA Congress

The path of the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the USA is very thorny due to a serial of political changes not only internal but also external that has stopped the ratification by the congress of the USA therefore its implementation.

The path of the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the USA is very thorny due to a serial of political changes not only internal but also external that has stopped the ratification by the congress of the USA therefore its implementation.

The Democrats return to control the North American congress last November and its tense relation with the Republican government, especially for the Iraq war; the political weakness of President Bush and the Para-Policy scandal in Colombia that daily involves politicians close to the Government of Alvaro Uribe, Vice-president and Minister of Defence included are the causes for the non-ratification of bilateral agreements.

It is necessary to specify that after 3 years negotiation, the FTA between the USA and Colombia was signed in November 2006, despite the specific request of the Democrat party to Bush to not do it. This trade agreement negotiated together with the FTA of Panama, Peru and South Korea, is promoted by the Colombian government as the best opportunity for trade and national economy.

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Issue 3/ June-July 2007
By Manel Ollé

1.The bus

Boris Vian wrote a novel titled Autumn in Peking where it was told a history of an endless trip in bus in which he got in and he never got off. In vain, the reader tried to find any trace of the Chinese capital in the book. Sometimes similar sensations are felt looking at some articles or depending on wheter articles or book are read. Those are capables of reducing the extreme complexity which becomes entagled in the historical experience by a fifth of mankind by a simple moral of a tale, of an insulting simplicity and happy or catastrophic end, as it comes. The bus of generalization, statistics and solid theory seems to lead us far away, but it does not nearly let us discerning the landscape’s shadow by his way in a circular and tautological route.

2. Summer in Peking

The humble, biased and tentative purpose of these local oints more than global, is to transcribe some remarks and thoughts imprint, without getting in the bus. Taking up again some brief notes quicked on the uptake not during the autumn but during a summer in Peking, at the northwest spot of the third ring road (bei sanhuan), near Lian siang qiao’s bridge. It is not meant here a metaphor of the whole just describing one part. Neither a deep research of the case: just some opaque outlines, irrelevants or important reports in itselves. Only essays.

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Issue 3/June-July 2007
By Eva Díez Ajenjo

First of all, in order to analyse the impacts of the global division of labour it is essential to define the term division of labour. This term refers to ‘how people fit into the production process’ (O’Brien, p.198) and therefore how tasks are allocated to particular individuals or groups. Going further, there is an international division of labour which refers to a process whereby different countries specialize in particular things for export. But when globalization influences the division of labour, it appears the concept global division of labour which describes a form of organization present around the world, where the work is not confined by particular countries.

As for theories that tackle the division of labour in GPE, it is important to mention classical liberalism and Adam Smith. The Adam Smith’s argument is ‘the development of a division of labour within society generates a natural harmony of interests when the ‘invisible hand’ of market competition turns self-seeking individual behaviour into socially beneficial outcomes’ (Ravenhill, p.20). For Smith this division of labour increases productivity and it is implicit in human nature because humans are prone to trade. Moreover, liberals believed that the most advanced societies have the greatest division of labour therefore states have to support this division because it increases its productivity and thus its wealth.

A central idea of liberalism is that ‘the benefits of division of labour and liberal policies flowed down to the lowest members of society’ (O’Brien, p.201). However, this idea is arguable because as this paper argues below, currently the global division of labour has increased the gap in wage rates and it has displaced unskilled workers therefore its benefits are not equal and they do not flow down.

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